For three and a half years, she remained in the shadow of Joe Biden, more than twenty years her senior. A loyal and discreet vice president, she was notably tasked by the Democratic president with the perilous issue of immigration, at the heart of American political divisions. The repeal by the Supreme Court, in 2022, of the federal right to abortion, earned her a new mission – the defense of abortion – and increased visibility. At 59, the former attorney general and senator of California was nominated as the Democratic Party candidate this summer, after Joe Biden withdrew.
His origins and his family
Born in 1964 in Oakland, California, to two immigrant parents – a Jamaican economist and an Indian scientist – Kamala Harris was raised primarily by her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher and civil rights activist. “She was tough, courageous, a pioneer in the fight for women’s health,” the candidate said about her mother at the Democratic convention. Kamala Harris proudly claims to be the product of a multicultural America, raised in black culture.
“My mother knew that her adopted country would see Maya [sa sœur] and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure we became confident and proud black women», she says in her autobiography. Before entering law school in California, Kamala Harris studied political science and economics at Howard University in Washington, nicknamed the “Black Harvard”. In 2014, as California Attorney General, she married lawyer Douglas Emhoff, father of two children from a first marriage, Cole and Ella, to whom she became the stepmother and who nicknamed her “Momala”. At the Democratic high mass in Chicago, they celebrated their “large and beautiful blended family”.
His political career
Throughout her career, which began in the courts of California, where she built a reputation as a relentless prosecutor, Kamala Harris has often been a pioneer. The first female prosecutor of San Francisco in 2003, the first female attorney general of California in 2017, the first black woman elected senator of the most populous state in the country in 2017. A novice in Congress, she quickly gained notoriety, notably by grilling the first justices appointed by Donald Trump to the Supreme Court, including Brett Kavanaugh, accused of sexual assault.
In 2019, she entered the race for the Democratic primaries for the 2020 presidential election. Despite favorable initial polls and a first debate in which she attacked Joe Biden, she was forced to throw in the towel before the first election, due to lack of funding. The election of Joe Biden, who chose her as his running mate, made her the first female vice-president of the United States. “I won’t be the last: every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a land of possibilities,” she said on the evening of the victory, dressed in an ivory white suit, the colour of the suffragette movement.
At the White House, Joe Biden entrusted her with the perilous issue of immigration. An angle of attack for the Republicans while the United States has experienced record illegal migration flows in recent years. More recently, Kamala Harris led a national tour on the defense of reproductive rights and the right to abortion, restricted by the Supreme Court and in the sights of the Republican Party.
His running mate
She hesitated to choose Josh Shapiro, the adored governor of Pennsylvania, a “swing state” essential to victory. But Kamala Harris’ choice finally fell on Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota since 2018 after having represented one of the most conservative districts in this Midwestern state in Congress for twelve years. Before entering politics, Tim Walz was a member of the National Guard, a geography teacher and an American football coach, adored for having led his high school team to the first place in the state. A sixty-year-old with bushy white eyebrows and a receding hairline, Tim Walz offers Kamala Harris, the target of racist attacks and accused of being a West Coast “elitist”, the guarantee of rural common sense and a direct line to the white electorate in the interior of the country.
His promises
It was not until Sunday evening, the day before the debate, that a first list of concrete measures appeared, in extremis, on the official Harris campaign website. Before that, her speeches, her (rare) interviews and the thematic roadmaps sent by her team had outlined her priorities. The emphasis, unsurprisingly, is on the economy, social issues and the daily lives of Americans, poisoned during the Biden mandate by record inflation. Among the most striking proposals of candidate Harris, we find in particular the erasure of medical debt for millions of Americans, the desire to control abusive food prices, the capping of drug costs as well as aid for households for home ownership and a tax credit for families with children. “Donald Trump fights for billionaires and big business. I will fight to give money back to middle and working class families,” she promised in mid-August in North Carolina. With her usual nuance, her Republican rival denounced a program “Communist” which will cause “famine, scarcity and poverty” in the United States.
What she says about Donald Trump
With Joe Biden’s withdrawal, it’s not just the name that has changed on the Democratic “ticket,” but an entire political communication strategy. On social media, in her press releases or campaign clips, the Democrat’s campaign has become much more incisive, even aggressive, ironic and mocking. Where Biden solemnly insisted on Trump’s threat to democracy, Kamala Harris emphasizes the personality, age and excesses of the former Republican president. With a ready-made angle of attack that sounds like a movie title: the “prosecutor” against the “criminal.” “I’ve taken on all sorts of abusers: predators who abuse women. Fraudsters who defraud consumers. Cheaters who break the rules for their own gain. So trust me when I say I see the kind of guy Donald Trump is,” she hammered at the end of July.
