“I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” Harris said in an official statement after President Joe Biden stepped aside and endorsed her on Sunday.
Some say she was often overshadowed by President Biden—good and bad—but Kamala Harris according to many in the political sphere, “can hold her own.”
A slew of Democratic officials and donors have rallied behind Harris and more have gone on the record as the news of President Biden’s decision took hold yesterday including the Congressional Black Caucus PAC, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Democratic Senate candidates including Andy Kim of New Jersey, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.
Harris is the daughter of Berkeley political activists and immigrants from India and Jamaica.
She earned a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of Law and became the deputy district attorney for Alameda County.
She was elected district attorney for San Francisco in 2003 and in 2009 was elected as California’s attorney general—the first woman and first Black person and the first Asian American to hold that position.
She also became the first Black woman to ever serve in the U.S. Senate after her bid to succeed Sen. Barbara Boxer in 2016.
Harris was known in the senate as a tough prosecutorial adversary and hammered tough questions during hearings with Trump administration officials and nominees.
Three years later, in January 2019, she entered the Democratic presidential primary.
She announced her bid for president on the federal holiday marking Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and from the historically Black college, Howard University, where she graduated in 1986.
Even as Democrats waited for Biden to make his decision, Harris supporters were working behind the scenes in the past week to secure support from delegates -– not to push Biden out, but to be prepared in case he left the race.
In a Sunday report, key Black female Democratic allies say they have been organizing to ensure that Harris would be well positioned to lead the ticket should the President step aside.
“The bottom line is, we are ready to go,” said Brown of Black Voters Matter. “We are grateful for President Biden’s service and that’s why we fought for him until the end. We are ecstatic that he has put his endorsement behind Vice President Kamala Harris. We expect the full Democratic apparatus to do the same and if they don’t, they will lose this election.”
“My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee,” Biden said in his official statement.
Recent polling has shown Harris performing better against former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, than Biden and other potential Democratic contenders.
