With her long-awaited announcement on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (on Good Morning America), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is now officially a candidate for the Democratic nomination for POTUS in 2020. So, she is obviously the next of these “life experience” profiles. (Although, last week we had two, so there could be another by the time this posts on Friday. ) If you are new to the series, I introduced it here. It is not intended to preempt diaries/discussions of “electability” or deep dives into platforms, or “How does X win crucial state Y” diaries, or any other perspective in the upcoming (and exciting) primary debate. I think actually having strong candidates in vibrant debates in actual primaries will be our key to getting the best ticket and making sure we take back the White House and get good, progressive, policies once there. The previous candidates profiled (as they announce or form exploratory committees) were Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, and Kirsten Gillibrand. The Gillibrand profile was, initially, poorly edited and proofed, and, for some reason, posted ahead of Tulsi Gabbard’s profile, although I scheduled them to automatically publish in correct order. My apologies to readers.
One note on my interaction with the comments: I do not own a smart phone (by choice) and am not always with my laptop. I do not get email alerts to comments. I am not on social media, having deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts—the first in 2014 and the latter after Putin used it to install Trump. So, I write these diaries in advance and try to schedule them to appear in the middle of the day on Fridays each week, but it could be hours before I am able to engage in the comments.
Alright, back to the action. I should note that Denise Oliver Velez (who keeps us reminded of Trump’s malign neglect of Puerto Rico) wrote on Harris' initial announcement. She also gave an excellent profile of Harris on Black Kos. Laura Clawson, also had an excellent diary on Sen. Harris’ announcement.
Heritage and Early Life:
Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, CA in 1964 as the oldest child of Donald Harris and Shyamala Gopalan Harris. Her name “Kamala” is one of the many Sanskrit names for “Lotus” and can also refer to a Hindu goddess while her middle name “Devi” is a general term for “goddess.” Her father, a professor of economics at Stanford University is an immigrant from Jamaica (of African descent) who came to the United States in 1961 for graduate study at Cal Berkeley, that is, the University of California at Berkeley, a time when, as noted by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the students of Berkeley were serving as the conscience of the nation. Her mother is of the Tamil people and immigrated to the United States in 1960 from Madras (now Chennai) in southern India. Shyamala Gopolan also came to Cal Berkeley to do graduate study, where she met and married Donald Harris. Shayamala is a breast cancer researcher.
Shyamala was supposed to return to India after her studies for an arranged marriage within her Brahmin caste. Instead, she married Donald Harris for love, outside her caste and culture.
Harris grew up in the Civil Rights and Peace movements, being taken to rallies and marches by her parents as an infant and toddler. She grew up very comfortable with her multi-cultural identity. All her friends were black and working class in Oakland, but she served them Indian food she learned to cook and painted henna tattoos on their hands.
Thus, Kamala, along with her younger sister, Maya Harris (b. 1967), was raised in an immigrant family that was multi-racial/multi-ethnic, and multi-religious. If elected president, Harris would be the 2nd African-American POTUS, the first Asian-American POTUS, the first woman POTUS, the first POTUS Afro-Carribbean POTUS and the Indian-American POTUS. That’s a ton of firsts for a nation that likes to do “one breakthrough at a time,” but it is possible that this generation is beyond that—something that this election cycle will test.
Donald Harris is Baptist and Shyamala Gopolan Harris is Hindu and the Harris’ daughters grew up attending both black Baptist churches (singing in the choir) and Hindu temple. I have not yet been able to confirm definitely which faith Kamala Harris claims as her own (if either or any). Many sites list her as a Baptist, but some list her as Hindu. I cannot find anything about whether or where she worships currently. Now, the Constitution forbids any religious test for public office, but nothing stops voters from imposing their own tests in this regard. I do think the experience of growing up in a multi-faith household could probably make Harris a strong defender of religious liberty and church-state separation.
Education:
When Kamala was seven (7) years old (1971), her parents divorced. Her mother obtained custody of both daughters and moved them to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. There, her mother continued doing breast cancer research at Jewish General Hospital (Official name: Hôpital général juif Sir Mortimer B. Davis) while teaching at the affiliated Faculty of Medicine of McGill University. The transition from sunny Oakland, CA to Montreal (covered in 12” of snow, Harris recalls in her recent book) in February, was not an easy transition. She struggled as a student at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, a primary school for native French speakers (which Kamala was not). She was mostly adjusted by the time she graduated from Westmount High School, the first and only Montreal public school to offer AP courses, which Kamala took. Both of her parents showed up for her graduation even though they were divorced and Donald Harris still lived in California.
She had a well-traveled childhood, going every two years to visit her mother’s family in India, visiting her father’s family in Jamaica and also having trips to the United Kingdom and to Africa. This global experience is rare in a U. S. politician, but could prove very useful.
So, if elected, Harris would be a president who spent a large section of her childhood outside the United States, though both geographically and culturally closer than Indonesia, where Pres. Obama spent his early years. Such experience could well help to inform Harris’ approach to foreign policy, since it probably fosters a global awareness in a way that those who have never lived outside the U.S. do not have. (This would be reinforced by her travels as a child.) I would expect Harris to know intuitively the importance of international alliances and friendships in a way that it is clear the Orange Usurper does not—and which may also distinguish her from the pack of Democratic POTUS hopefuls.
Harris returned to the United States to go to college at Howard University, in Washington, DC. Howard University is a Historic Black University (HBCU), founded in 1867. It appears to me that the multi-cultural Harris’ decision to enroll at Howard was a deliberate identification with the African-American experience. This view is buttressed by the fact that Harris joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, nicknamed “AKA,” the oldest African-American sorority in the nation, founded at Howard in 1907 (a fact brought to national attention when a reporter showed ignorance of the AKAs and their traditions, neither doing research nor asking the members before she tweeted).
At Howard, Harris double-majored in Economics and Political Science, earning her B.A. in 1986. As a first year student, she started her political life by being elected as fresher representative to the liberal arts student council. She was also a member of the debate team.
Since childhood, Harris has wanted to be an attorney. So, she returned to California and eared her Juris Doctor (J. D.) at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law. I was unable to find anything about Harris’ experience at law school. Did she make law review? Did she earn the Order of the Coif? Did she participate in legal aid seminars for poor people? I have no idea, but I would like to know.
Readers of this series know that I especially like candidates whose education goes outside the usual Ivy League “cookie cutter political pipeline” because of the tendency to “group think” in elites. In going to Howard and Hastings, Harris has done that. She has received an excellent education while doing so from perspectives not often found in presidential candidates.
Pre-Senate Career:
Kamala Harris was admitted to the State Bar of CA in 1990. She sought a career in law enforcement because “that’s where the decisions are made.” She was deputy district attorney in Alameda County from 1990 to 1998. In 2000, she was recruited by San Francisco City Attorney Louise Renne to her office where she was Chief of the Community and Neighborhood division, overseeing civil code enforcement. There is controversy over this period of Harris’ career. She contends that she pushed for reform and social justice, but others contend that she was “not a progressive prosecutor.”
In 2003, Harris defeated a 2 term incumbent to become District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco. The next year, 2004, a police officer in her jurisdiction was shot and killed. Harris, true to her anti-death penalty convictions, refused to seek the death penalty for his accused murderer, angering many. As an opponent of capital punishment since my teens in the 1970s, this is one of the most positive parts of Harris’ background and convictions to me, but I recognize that it will be very controversial for others. Harris created a program as D.A. that succeeded in reducing recidivism and aiding reentry for parolees and those who had finished prison terms. She was reelected unopposed in 2007.
In 2009, she published Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer which tried to change the debate from “tough on crime” vs. “rehabilitation” to ways that reduced crime and created safer communities without a mass incarceration “throw away the key” approach that was popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, but which was devastating poor communities, especially communities of color. As District Attorney, Harris also created a Hate Crimes Unit and fought against the “gay-trans-panic” defense of violence against LGBTQ persons. She was an early supporter of marriage equality and opposed both Proposition 22 and Proposition 8 (the referenda which banned marriage equality in CA until overturned by Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015).
In 2010, Harris narrowly won election as Attorney General of California and was re-elected by a wide margin in 2014. In 2016, when Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) retired, Harris ran and won the open Senate seat, and, because of CA’s “jungle primary” the general election was a race against fellow Democrat Rep. Loretta Sanchez.
I leave it to other diaries to discuss her platform in detail. Here, I say that this background brings much to a campaign and possible presidency. Since at least 2008, Harris’ name regularly has surfaced in conversations about “what Democratic woman could win the U.S. presidency.” The next two years will put that to the test.
Personal:
Kamala’s sister, Maya Harris, is also an attorney and political consultant. She was a policy advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Maya will now chair Kamala’s campaign.
She is married to Douglas Emhoff, an attorney, and he has two children from a previous marriage. If Harris is successful, he will become the first “First Husband” in U.S. history. Emhoff is Jewish and the couple had a courthouse wedding, but chose to honor Jewish tradition by breaking a glass underfoot at the conclusion.
Kamala Harris is the author of a children’s book, Superheroes are Everywhere (Philomel Books, 2019) which pushes children to see the heroic actions of ordinary people and to try to emulate them in their own lives. She is also the author of a memoir and campaign book, We Hold These Truths: An American Journey (Penguin Press, 2019). As mentioned above, she has also written, Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer (Chronicle Press, 2010).