A Nations barrier-breaking vice president
Kamala, the daughter of a Jamaican-born father and India-born mother who met in the 60s Bay Area political activism. In her 2020 Democratic National Convention acceptance speech as Joe Biden’s running mate, she proudly recalled having “ a stroller’s eye view of people getting into what the great John Lewis called “ good trouble”.
Her maternal grandfather served as a prominent senior government official in postcolonial India.
All her life, Harris has made a habit of exceeding expectations and might even excel as America’s first woman, first Indian, and second black president.
The Los Angeles Times, reporter Dan Morain, charts how the daughter of two immigrants born in segregated California became one of America’s most effective power players and recounts stories like these in “Kamala’s way” and his insider’s view provides a revealing portrait of the people and events surrounding Harris’ rise to political stardom. Bay Area Democratic politics where potential billionaire funders and sitting on the right boards were essential to climbing the rungs.
As the Alameda County Deputy district attorney, Harris spent years as a courtroom prosecutor before she was recruited to a supervisory position with the San Francisco district attorney’s office and then the city attorney’s office. She was elected San Francisco district attorney in 2003, and attorney general of California in 2010, a position she held until she was elected senator in 2016.
In her run for San Francisco district attorney in 2003, Harris called for improving conviction rates and prosecuting serious drug cases to clean up the street, which prompted one newspaper The San Francisco Chronicle to endorse her candidacy under the headline “Harris, for Law and Order”. But once elected, she took positions that cost her police support and came out strongly in favour of criminal justice reform. Her 2009 book “ Smart On Crime” called for education, drug treatment, and rehabilitation. She instituted first-in-the-nation programs to bolster police accountability. Her championing of victims of sexual abuse, child trafficking, and domestic violence, led to admiration for Harris’s “skill and charisma, her intelligence and grit and her willingness to fight hard” and made her both “innovative and cautious” sometimes acting as a trailblazer and other times holding her fire according to Morain’s view.
Harris is a pragmatic and ambitious politician who took positions when she needed to and when this stand might help her politically. She was adept at not taking stands when doing so was not politically necessary.
Morain analyses her failure as a presidential candidate and the behind-the-scenes campaign waged to land the Vice President spot revealing her priorities, as well as the missteps, risks, and bold moves she’s made on her way to the top.
Harris, 56, had her sights set on becoming the first woman US President when she competed against Mr. Biden and others for their party’s 2020 nomination. She dropped out of the race in December 2019 after a campaign hurt by her wavering views on healthcare and indecision about embracing her past as a prosecutor.
Mr. Biden said in “60 minutes” in October whey given Mr. Biden’s age, he beliEved Ms. Harris would be ready to step into the presidency if something happened to him, the President rapidly fired off five reasons. “ Number one, her values, Number two, she is smart as a devil, and number three she has a backbone like a ramrod, Number four she is really principled, Number five she has significant experience in the largest state in the Unions in running the justice department that’s only second in size to the United States Justice Department.”.
On Twitter and Facebook, a flurry of users chronicles every minute Indian link including her grandparents’ home in the Besant Nagar neighbourhood, from where her mother Shyamala Gopalan set off as a teenager to pursue a doctoral degree at the University of California, Berkley.
The Hindu BusinessLine newspaper carried the headline “ Kamala Devi Harris and the destiny-changing coconuts from Chennai”. The story described Harris’s aunt praying for her victory in the California Senate election nine years ago by breaking 108 coconuts, a popular religious ritual, at the local Hindu temple. The paper quoted Harris phoning her aunt to say “ Chichi ( aunt), please pray for me and break coconuts at the temple.”
Twitter users highlighted “ Kamala Harris love idlis and Sambhar – fluffy rice cakes and spicy lentil stew often eaten for breakfast in South India. The other rising Chennai-connected personalities such as actor Mindy Kaling and Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai.
Kamala’s Way – An American Life by Dan Morain, Simon & Schuster $28, 272 pages