Kamala Harris, the woman on the cusp of breaking the highest glass ceiling in America

Kamala Harris has spent most part of her life maintaining law and order in California and now she aims to become the first female vice president of the United States. After a brief success of her Presidential campaign, which came to a halt, she was chosen by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden as his running mate.

Having added many firsts to her name, Harris is searing forward in the race. Before the campaigning at every battleground state in the US culminates into the big November 3 Presidential election, let’s have a sneak-peek into who Kamala Harris is.

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Who is Kamala Harris – one to achieve a long list of many firsts.

Kamala Harris was born to a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, who were both immigrants. Harris is the first Black woman to be elected district attorney in California history. She is also the first woman to be California’s attorney general, first Indian American senator. And now, 55-year-old Harris is the first Black woman and first Asian-American to be picked as a vice presidential running mate on a major-party ticket.

Her father Donald Harris is from Jamaica, and her mother Shyamala Gopalan is from Chennai. She describes mother as her single biggest influence who “taught her the importance of hard work and to believe in our power to right what is wrong.”

Senator Harris was also stationed in Canada briefly when her mother took a teaching job at McGill University. Both Kamala and her younger sister Maya attended school in Montreal for five years before attending college in the States.

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She spent four years at Howard University, one of the nation’s preeminent historically black colleges and universities, which she described as among the most formative experiences of her life.

Harris, in her statements, has said that she is comfortable with her identity and describes herself as “an American”.

Married for five years to Dough Emhoff, who owns a law firm, Kamala Harris is Momala to his two children from a previous marriage. He is reported to have taken a leave of absence from DLA Piper, the law firm he joined as a partner in 2017 to be around Harris during the campaign.

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Climbing through the ranks.

After serving two terms as district attorney for San Francisco from 2004-2011, Kamala Harris was twice elected as the California attorney general. After four years at Howard, Harris got her law degree at the University of California, Hastings, and began her career in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.

Harris had the distinction of being both the first woman and the first African American to serve as the top law enforcement official of the most populous US state.

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Some of her decisions as the attorney general raised heckles even among some on the Democratic left. She launched a ‘back on track’ programme to reduce recidivism. The programme encouraged first-time offenders to get a job, enroll in school and be able to lead a normal life.

Fighting crime and taking her state forward.

Harris, despite leftward leanings on issues like gay marriage and the death penalty, she faced backlash for not being progressive enough. Under Harris, California became the first statewide agency to mandate body cameras.

Harris also introduced a training program for law enforcement officers called “Principled Policing: Procedural Justice and Implicit Bias”.

Penned at the start of Ms Harris’ campaign, Ms Bazelon wrote that Ms Harris has largely dodged progressive fights involving issues like police reform, drug reform and wrongful convictions.

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The self-described “progressive prosecutor” tried to emphasise more left-leaning parts of her legacy – requiring body cameras for some special agents at the California Department of Justice, the first state agency to adopt them, and launching a database that provided public access to crime statistics – but she still failed to gain traction.

According to a report in BCC, ‘Kamala is a cop’ became a common refrain on the campaign trail that spoiled her chances to win over the more liberal Democratic base during the primaries.

She has also been at the forefront, calling for the arrest of the police offers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor. Harris, who sits on the cusp of breaking the highest glass ceilings in American life, speaks frequently about the need to dismantle systemic racism.

Harris’ one of the 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.

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As California AG, Harris declined to support two ballot initiatives that would’ve banned the death penalty.

As AG, she created Open Justice, which is an online platform to make justice data available to the public. This, in turn, helped improve ‘police accountability by collecting information on the number of deaths and injuries of those in police custody’, reported Politico.

Race to becoming VEEP.

A California Democrat with a law enforcement resume, Harris endorsed

After ending her presidential campaign in December, before the first Democratic contest in Iowa, Kamala Harris endorsed Joe Biden, saying she would do ‘everything in my power to help elect him the next President of the United States’.

She also performed superlatively against Mike Pence in the vice-presidential debate that was held in October.

“Mr Vice-President, I’m speaking” was one of the highlights of the debate.