Kamala Harris’s Historic Selection as Vice Presidential Running Mate

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has named Kamala Harris as his running mate- the first black woman and South Asian American in the role.

Once a rival for the top job, the California senator of Indian-Jamaican heritage had long been considered the front-runner for the number two slot. The former California attorney general has been urging police reform amid nationwide anti-racism protests.

Mr Biden will face President Donald Trump in the election on 3 November.

At a White House news conference on Tuesday, Mr Trump, a Republican, said he was pleased with Mr Biden's choice, adding she did "very, very poorly" in her effort to become the Democratic nominee.

Ms Harris will debate Mr Trump's running mate, Vice-President Mike Pence, on 7 October in Salt Lake City, Utah.

One of the traditional roles is to go on the offensive in exposing the opposition's weaknesses, while the presidential nominee focuses on communicating the party's message.

Joe Biden's selection of Senator Kamala Harris gives him a running mate who can appeal to African American voters who are core to Biden's base of support and serve as a fierce critic of President Donald Trump's record in office.

A former top state prosecutor in California, Senator Harris brings a law-and-order career record that will help Biden steer a tricky, centrist line between Black Lives Matter protesters and white Americans who worry about attacks on police funding.

At the same time, picking a woman who competed with Biden during the presidential primaries and attacked him memorably on race during a debate, shows Biden asserting a degree of self-confidence that he can forge a cooperative, working relationship with her: as political analysts told Al Jazeera.

"Biden faced unprecedented pressure to pick a Black woman," said John Jackson, a professor at the Public Policy Institute of the University of Southern Illinois.

"He wanted someone who is going to command some respect and will balance the ticket with demographic characteristics of gender and race," Jackson said.

"And he wanted somebody who he has personal chemistry with that is good," he said.

Kamala Harris is the first Black and Indian American woman to represent California in the United States Senate. She grew up believing in the promise of America and fighting to make sure that promise is fulfilled for all Americans. Kamala’s father immigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica to study economics and her mother immigrated from India. Kamala’s mother told her growing up “Don’t sit around and complain about things, do something,” which is what drives Kamala every single day.

Kamala started fighting for working families in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, where she focused on prosecuting child sexual assault cases. From there, she became the first Black woman elected as San Francisco’s District Attorney. In this position, she started a program to provide first-time drug offenders second chances with the opportunity to earn a high school degree and find a job.

In 2010, Kamala became the first Black woman to be elected California Attorney General, overseeing the country’s second-largest Justice Department, only behind the U.S. Department of Justice. In this capacity, she managed a $735 million budget and oversaw more than 4,800 attorneys and other employees. As California Attorney General, Kamala fought for families and won a $20 billion settlement for California homeowners against big banks that were unfairly foreclosing on homes.

Kamala worked to protect Obamacare, helped win marriage equality for all, defended California’s landmark climate change law and won a $1.1 billion settlement against a for-profit education company that scammed students and veterans. Kamala also fought for California communities and prosecuted transnational gangs who drove human trafficking, gun smuggling and drug rings.

Since being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016, Kamala has introduced and co-sponsored legislation to help the middle class, increase the minimum wage to $15, reform cash bail, and defend the legal rights of refugees and immigrants.

Kamala served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that deals with the nation’s most sensitive national security and international threats.  She also serves on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee where she oversees the federal government’s response to natural disasters and emergencies, including the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19.

On the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kamala has held Trump administration officials accountable and was a powerful voice against Trump’s conservative judicial nominations.

Some of her biggest achievements and her legislative priorities can be summarised as:

1) During the housing crisis, she won a historic mortgage settlement case that helped more than 84,000 California families

Harris’s landmark accomplishment as California AG came on the heels of the financial crisis. In 2012, during her first year in the position, she brokered a $25 billion settlement deal with the nation’s five largest mortgage companies (Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, CitiFinancial, GMAC/Ally Financial, and Wells Fargo) citing improper foreclosure practices. California homeowners received $18.4 billion in mortgage relief, according to a 2013 report by the AG’s California Monitor Program.

To make this happen, Harris took a major risk. She pulled out of an earlier settlement deal in an effort to hold out for more money for the affected homeowners- a decision that was widely criticized at first. But in the end, her gamble paid off. The New York Times described it at the time:

“In the end, she walked away with far more than California was slated to receive in the early days of the talks and a little more than was on the table as recently as January. Beaming into the cameras last Thursday, she said California homeowners were guaranteed $12 billion in debt reduction, while most other states received only promises.”

2) She’s come out against for-profit colleges

Her next big victory as AG came in 2016 when she won a $1.1 billion settlement against the for-profit (now defunct) Corinthian Colleges for predatory and unlawful practices.

But her track record on predatory higher education schemes is far from perfect. The issue came up during her Senate race in 2016 when her opponent Loretta Sanchez criticized her for failing to investigate complaints against Trump University after it was revealed that her AG office received contributions from Donald Trump in 2003 and 2011.

The New York Times broke the story that Trump has made tens of thousands of dollars in contributions to at least four state attorneys general who were investigating Trump University, including Harris. The Harris campaign told the Times that she donated the money from Trump to charities after the then-presidential candidate made derogatory statements about Mexicans.

Since her election to the Senate, Harris has demonstrated strong support for affordable opportunities in higher ed. She co-sponsored a bill in May of this year with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). If it passes, it would allow students with outstanding loan debt to refinance at the (often lower) interest rates offered to new borrowers.

3) Her work with the LGBTQ community led to the SCOTUS decision in favour of marriage equality

During her time as DA from 2004 to 2011, Harris opposed both Proposition 22 and Proposition 8, which limited marriage to one man and one woman. Though they passed in 2000 and 2008, respectively, both were struck down while she was in office. As San Francisco DA, Harris also created a Hate Crimes Unit aimed at prosecuting hate crimes committed against LGBTQ teens in school.

Harris’s early support of marriage equality in California directly laid the legal groundwork for the US Supreme Court’s decision in 2012 that same-sex couples have the right to marry. The Court cited California’s success in striking down Prop 8 in its opinion. Within hours of the decision, plaintiffs to the Supreme Court case Kris Perry and Sandy Stier became the first gay couple to wed in San Francisco, and Harris officiated their wedding.

4) She has experience prosecuting human trafficking and is sharply critical of the war on drugs

A major priority for Harris during her tenure as AG was prosecuting transnational gangs known for trafficking drugs, firearms, and humans. Her office also led a ground-breaking study on the impacts of transnational criminal organizations and human trafficking in California.

She’s channelled that experience in her criticisms of the Trump administration recently. At the 2017 Ideas Conference in May, hosted by the liberal think tank Centre for American Progress — an event widely seen as a proving ground for potential Democratic presidential candidates — Harris gave a speech where she called out the Trump administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions on their trafficking and drug policies.

“Let me tell you what California needs, Jeff Sessions,” she said, eliciting applause from the crowd. “We need support in dealing with transnational criminal organizations and dealing with human trafficking — not in going after grandma’s medicinal marijuana.”

5) She calls herself “smart on crime,” but some allege she’s really “tough on crime”

When she was first elected AG in 2010, Harris commanded a staff of nearly 5,000 people in the state with the country’s second-largest non-federal prison system. At that time it had 135,000 inmates and 750 individuals on death row, per a New York Times report.

In 2014, BuzzFeed reported that the attorney general’s office lawyer had unsuccessfully argued against the release of eligible nonviolent prisoners from California's overcrowded prisons because the state wanted to keep them as a source of state labour. The federal judges disagreed with this argument and ruled against Harris’s lawyers.

Harris came under fire again in 2016 for signing off on California Gov. Jerry Brown’s sweeping prison reform ballot initiative that would repeal determinate sentencing laws and offer parole programs to inmates in state-run prisons. The state District Attorneys Association alleged that it was forced through without enough time for public comment. That year, Harris’s AG office was also the subject of a 2016 investigation by the Intercept into prosecutorial misconduct and informant misuse.

Meanwhile, Harris’s stance on the constitutionality of the death penalty is a bit of a mystery. During her time as San Francisco district attorney, in a highly publicized and widely criticized decision, she did not pursue capital punishment for then-22-year-old David Hill, an alleged gang member who shot and killed city police officer Isaac Espinoza.

Kamala Harris And Joe Biden

Biden is 77, and his age has been visible in campaign events. He has occasionally stumbled over his words, leading to speculation about mental decline, although he suffers from a lifelong speech impediment. Trump has picked up on the perceived weakness and regularly belittles Biden as "Sleepy Joe" in tweets.

Harris is 55 and has demonstrated a legal mind in her questioning of Trump administration witnesses appearing before Senate committees, notably Attorney General William Barr whom she grilled about whether Trump had asked him to pursue political prosecutions as the nation's top law enforcement official.

"Her demonstrated ability occupy a prosecutorial persona, for all the things that are new about this, that is a very time-honoured and conventional role for a vice presidential candidate," said Jim Henson, a political science professor at the University of Texas.

"The vice president is the person to go out and be more aggressive than the candidate. Kamala Harris, given her professional background and her performance in the Senate, has that reputation," Henson said.

"We saw that in the debate, interestingly with Biden on the receiving end," he noted.

Harris, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this year, had been the front-runner to be Biden's pick for months because of certain considerations like:

* She's been vetted on the national stage due to her own 2020 bid

* She has experience in government -- as both the California attorney general and as a US senator since 2017

* At 55 years old, she represents a younger generation of leader -- something that Biden, who will be 78 on Inauguration Day 2021, said was a major factor in his choice

* She is a historic pick as the first Black and South Asian American woman to appear on a major party's national ticket

* She's from California, a massive treasure trove of both Democratic votes and Democratic donors

* She emerged as an outspoken voice on race and the need for police reform following the death of George Floyd in May and the subsequent protests it sparked around the country.

Harris was sworn in as a United States Senator from California in 2017, only the second African American woman and first South Asian-American senator in history. She served on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Select Committee on Intelligence, the Committee on the Judiciary, and the Committee on the Budget. And quickly earned a reputation for her hard-nosed prosecutorial manner of questioning of witnesses at hearings.

Her website says she has spent her entire life fighting for justice, as a “passion that was first inspired by her mother, Shyamala, an Indian-American immigrant, activist, and breast cancer researcher”.

It now all rests in future to see how things turn out for this historic decision!