Harris,
left, with her sister, Maya, and mother, Shyamala, outside their apartment in
Berkeley, California, in 1970. Photograph: Kamala Harris campaign/AP
Magazine
2020
55 Things You Need to Know About Kamala Harris
A trailblazing prosecutor-turned-politician sits on
the cusp of history.
By
CATHERINE KIM and ZACK STANTON
08/11/2020
06:51 PM EDT
Catherine
Kim is an editorial intern at POLITICO.
Zack
Stanton is digital editor of Politico Magazine.
Kamala
Harris has spent the better part of two decades in public life notching up a
long list of things she was the first to achieve: the first Black woman to be
elected district attorney in California history, first woman to be California's
attorney general, first Indian American senator, and now, the first Black woman
and first Asian American to be picked as a vice presidential running mate on a
major-party ticket.
What do
voters need to know about the woman who sits on the cusp of breaking one of the
highest glass ceilings in American life? Here, culled from books, extensive
media coverage and the archives of POLITICO, is a quick primer on the life of
Kamala Devi Harris, the trailblazing prosecutor-turned-senator who in just a
few months' time could be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
1.
Kamala Devi
Harris was born in Oakland, California on October 20, 1964, the eldest of two
children born to Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher from India, and Donald
Harris, an economist from Jamaica.
2.
Her parents
met at UC Berkeley while pursuing graduate degrees, and bonded over a shared
passion for the civil rights movement, which was active on campus. After she
was born, they took young Kamala along to protests in a stroller.
3.
Her mother
chose Kamala’s name as a nod both to her Indian roots — Kamala means “lotus”
and is another name for the Hindu goddess Lakshmi — and the empowerment of
women.
“A culture
that worships goddesses produces strong women,” Gopalan told the Los Angeles
Times in 2004.
4.
Harris’
parents divorced when she was 7, and her mother raised her and her sister,
Maya, on the top floor of a yellow duplex in Berkeley.
5.
In first
grade, Harris was bused to Thousand Oaks Elementary School, which was in its
second year of integration. For the next three years, she’d play “Miss Mary
Mack” and cat’s cradle with her friends on the bus that traveled from her
predominantly black, lower-middle-class neighborhood to her school located in a
prosperous white district.
6.
As a child,
Harris went to both a Black Baptist church and a Hindu temple — embracing both
her South Asian and Black identities. “My mother understood very well that she
was raising two black daughters,” Harris later wrote in her autobiography, “and
she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black
women.”
7.
She visited
India as a child and was heavily influenced by her grandfather, a high-ranking
government official who fought for Indian independence, and grandmother, an
activist who traveled the countryside teaching impoverished women about birth
control.
8.
Harris
attended middle school and high school in Montreal after her mom got a teaching
job at McGill University and a position as a cancer researcher at Jewish
General Hospital.
9.
In
Montreal, a 13-year-old Harris and her younger sister, Maya, led a successful
demonstration in front of their apartment building in protest of a policy that
banned children from playing on the lawn.
10.
After high
school, Harris attended Howard University, the prestigious historically Black
college in Washington, D.C. She majored in political science and economics, and
joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
11.
While
attending law school in San Francisco, Harris lived with her sister, Maya, and
helped potty-train Maya’s daughter.
“I’m
dealing with this brutal stuff, dog-eat-dog in school, and then I would come
home and we would all stand by the toilet and wave bye to a piece of shit,”
Harris recalled in 2018. “It will put this place in perspective.”
12.
In 1990,
after passing the bar, Harris joined the Alameda County prosecutor’s office in
Oakland as an assistant district attorney focusing on sex crimes.
13.
Harris’
family was initially skeptical of the career choice. While she acknowledged
that prosecutors have historically earned a bad reputation, she said she wanted
to change the system from the inside.
14.
In 1994,
Harris began dating Willie Brown, a powerhouse in California politics who was
then the speaker of the state assembly and was 30 years older than Harris. From
his perch in the assembly, Brown appointed Harris to the California
Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the Medical Assistance Commission —
positions that together paid her around $80,000 a year on top of her
prosecutor’s salary.
15.
In 1995,
Brown was elected mayor of San Francisco. That December, Harris broke up with
him because “she concluded there was no permanency in our relationship,” Brown
told Joan Walsh in 2003. “And she was absolutely right.”
16.
After being
recruited to the San Francisco District Attorney’s office by a former colleague
in Alameda, Harris cracked down on teenage prostitution in the city,
reorienting law enforcement’s approach to focus on the girls as victims rather
than as criminals selling sex.
17.
During this
time, Harris courted influential friends among San Francisco’s moneyed elite.
In 2003, they would provide the financial backing to make her a formidable
candidate in her first campaign for office.
18.
In 2003,
she ran for district attorney in San Francisco against incumbent Terence
Hallinan, her former boss. Her message, a top strategist on that campaign told
POLITICO, was: “We’re progressive, like Terence Hallinan, but we’re competent
like Terence Hallinan is not.”
19.
She was
elected in a runoff with 56.5 percent of the vote. With her victory, she became
the first Black woman in California to be elected district attorney.
20.
That same
election, Gavin Newsom was elected mayor, succeeding Willie Brown. Newsom, now
governor of California, is a close friend of hers, and the two have even
vacationed together.
21.
During her
first three years as district attorney, San Francisco’s conviction rate jumped
from 52 to 67 percent.
22.
One of
Harris’ most controversial decisions came in 2004 when she declined to pursue
the death penalty against the man who murdered San Francisco police officer
Isaac Espinoza. At the funeral, Senator Dianne Feinstein delivered a eulogy in
which she criticized Harris, who was in the audience, prompting a standing
ovation from the hundreds of officers in attendance.
Harris
would be shunned by police unions for the next decade.
23.
Later, as
California attorney general, Harris declined to support two ballot initiatives
that would’ve banned the death penalty — raising accusations of political
opportunism and inconsistency on the controversial issue.
24.
She was
under scrutiny during her tenure as San Francisco district attorney when a
technician stole cocaine from the DA’s crime lab and mishandled evidence.
Harris, trying to keep things under wraps, failed to inform defense attorneys.
As a result, about a thousand drug-related cases had to be thrown out.
25.
Her
friendship with Barack Obama dates back to his run for Senate in 2004. She was
the first notable California officeholder to endorse him during his 2008
presidential bid.
26.
In San
Francisco, she vocally supported a controversial 2010 law that made truancy a
misdemeanor and punished parents who failed to send their children to school.
The truancy rate ultimately dropped, but some critics saw the rule as too
punitive.
27.
That same
year, in her second term as district attorney, Harris ran for California
attorney general. Initially, few thought she would win the race — she was a
woman of color from liberal San Francisco who opposed the death penalty and she
was running against Steve Cooley, a popular white Republican who served as Los
Angeles’ DA.
28.
The race
was so tight that on election night, Cooley made a victory speech and the San
Francisco Chronicle declared him the winner. Three weeks later, all ballots
having been counted, Harris was declared the victor by 0.8 percentage points.
29.
As attorney
general, when California was offered $4 billion in a national mortgage
settlement over the foreclosure crisis, Harris fought for a larger amount by
refusing to sign the deal. Although she was accused of grandstanding, she
managed to secure $20 billion for California homeowners.
30.
One of her
signature accomplishments as attorney general was creating Open Justice, an
online platform to make criminal justice data available to the public. The
database helped improve police accountability by collecting information on the
number of deaths and injuries of those in police custody.
31.
The
California Department of Justice recommended in 2012 that Harris file a civil
enforcement action against OneWest Bank for “widespread misconduct” when
foreclosing homes.
Harris,
however, declined to prosecute the bank or its then-CEO Steven Mnuchin, who now
serves as Treasury secretary.
32.
Some
advocates say Harris didn’t do enough to address police brutality while she was
attorney general, especially after she refused to investigate the police shootings
of two Black men in 2014 and 2015. She also didn’t support a 2015 bill in the
state assembly that would have required the attorney general to appoint a
special prosecutor who specializes in police use of deadly force.
33.
In 2013,
President Barack Obama was recorded referring to Harris as the “best-looking
attorney general in the country.” He later apologized after critics labeled the
comment as sexist.
34.
Harris was
rumored to be a potential Supreme Court nominee under the Obama administration,
although she later said she wasn’t interested.
35.
She married
Doug Emhoff, a corporate lawyer in Los Angeles, in 2014 at a small and private
ceremony officiated by her sister. Emhoff has two children from his previous
marriage; they call Harris “Momala.”
36.
She won her
U.S. Senate race in 2016, defeating fellow Democrat Loretta Sanchez, a moderate
congresswoman with 20 years of experience.
37.
She went
viral in 2017 for her sharp questioning of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions
on the Russia investigation. After 3½ minutes of persistent questioning,
Sessions said, “I’m not able to be rushed this fast! It makes me nervous.”
38.
She
implemented a similar strategy of questioning during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme
Court confirmation hearings in 2018, when she grilled him about whether he’d
discussed the Mueller investigation with anyone.
39.
Her most
fervent online supporters were called the “KHive,” a phrase inspired by
Beyoncé’s loyal group of fans, the “Beyhive.”
40.
By far the
most viral moment of her presidential campaign came in the first Democratic
debate, when she confronted Joe Biden over his position on cross-district
busing in the 1970s while using a personal anecdote: “There was a little girl
in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools.
And she was bused to school every day,” she said. “And that little girl was
me.” Though her poll numbers briefly surged after the debate, it was only
downhill from there.
41.
In two TV
interviews over the course of a week in 2019, President Donald Trump called
Harris “nasty” for her questioning of Attorney General WIlliam Barr over his
handling of the Mueller report during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
42.
She had an
inconsistent stance on health care, which also made voters skeptical. Although
she said she supported the abolition of private health care during an earlier
town hall, she later denied her statement and said she had misheard the
question. She eventually released a health care plan that still included
private health insurance.
43.
During the
campaign, Harris shied away from discussing specifics about her career as a
prosecutor, a strategic choice borne of fear that voters on the left would
criticize her over criminal justice issues. She even failed to give a sharp
response to Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s misleading attacks against her record, leaving
voters unclear about her positions.
44.
She ended
her presidential campaign in December 2019, a month before the Iowa caucuses,
after taking a hard look at her campaign’s financial future and low poll
numbers. Internal turmoil cost her presidential bid, with aides accusing Harris
of mistreating her staff with sudden layoffs and allowing her sister, Maya, to
have too much influence.
45.
She delayed
her endorsement for Biden until March 8, when there were no more women left in
the race and his nomination was undeniable. Six days after the California
primary, she threw her support behind Biden and said he was a leader who could
“unify the people.”
46.
She’s an
enthusiastic cook who bookmarks recipes from the New York Times’ cooking
section and has tried almost all the recipes from Alice Waters’ The Art of
Simple Food. Her go-to dinner entree is a simple roast chicken.
47.
She
collects Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers, which are her go-to travel shoes.
48.
Her
favorite books include Native Son by Richard Wright, The Kite Runner by Khaled
Hosseini, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, and
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.
49.
She
typically wakes up around 6 a.m. and works out for half an hour on the
elliptical or SoulCycle. She’ll start the day with a bowl of Raisin Bran with
almond milk and tea with honey and lemon before leaving for work.
50.
She
describes herself as a “tough” boss — although mostly on herself.
51.
One of the
few times her father spoke publicly about her was when he reprimanded her for
suggestively pointing to her Jamaican heritage when asked about her support for
the legalization of marijuana. He criticized her for connecting Jamaicans to
the “fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker.” He said he and his
immediate family wished “to categorically dissociate ourselves from this
travesty.”
52.
She’s not a
fan of being called the “female Obama.” When a reporter asked her about
carrying on Obama’s legacy during her run for president, she said, “I have my
own legacy.”
53.
In June,
her Wikipedia page was edited 408 times — far more than any other candidate on
the shortlist –– in the span of three weeks, which people pointed to as a sign
of her nomination as running mate (The Wikipedia page of Sen. Tim Kaine,
Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, saw more activity than any other
candidate). The edits, mostly made by one person, had scrubbed controversial
information from her page, including her “tough-on-crime” record and her
decision not to prosecute Steven Mnuchin for financial fraud in 2013.
54.
If elected
in November, she will be the first woman, first African American and first Asian
American vice president in the history of the United States.
55.
Her motto
comes from her mom: "You may be the first, but make sure you're not the
last."
Sources:
Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, POLITICO, The New Yorker, The
Atlantic, POLITICO, NPR, USA Today, The Washington Post, The New York Times,
GovTrack, The Guardian, Vox, The Intercept, Smart Voter, Book Riot, SF Gate,
Mercury News, The Cut, The Truths We Hold by Kamala Harris.
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