Who Is Kamala Harris?

1. Oakland, Howard and the law

Kamala Devi Harris was born on 20 October 1964 in Oakland, California, the elder daughter of Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer researcher who had emigrated from India, and Donald Harris, a Jamaican-born economist who taught at Stanford University. Her parents were active in the civil rights movement, and Harris has described being taken to protests in a stroller and growing up in a household where justice was a daily subject of conversation. Her parents divorced when she was seven, and she was raised largely by her mother, who died of cancer in 2009. Harris has described her mother as the person who shaped her values and her ambition, and she has often quoted her mother's advice: you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you are not the last.

Harris attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., one of the most prominent historically Black universities in the United States, where she studied political science and economics and joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She has described Howard as the place where she found her identity and her community, and she has returned to the university often, including as vice president. After Howard she studied law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, earning her Juris Doctor in 1989, and she was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1990. She began her career as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, prosecuting cases including robbery, sexual assault and homicide.

The early career established the pattern of her public life: a prosecutor who presented herself as a reformer from inside the system. She became known for a programme called Back on Track, which offered first-time drug offenders education and employment instead of prison, and which she later described as an example of smart on crime — tough on serious offenders, but willing to give people a second chance. The programme became a model for her later politics: a belief that the criminal justice system could be both firm and fair, and that a prosecutor could be a force for change. It also became a source of criticism, as her later opponents would argue that her record as a prosecutor was harsher than she presented it.

2. District attorney and attorney general of California

In 2003 Harris was elected district attorney of San Francisco, defeating the incumbent, and she took office in 2004 as the first woman and the first Black person to hold the post. She served two terms, during which she created a unit for environmental crimes and expanded the office's work on domestic violence. She also took a position that drew national attention: she opposed the death penalty, and in 2004 she declined to seek it in the case of a police officer who had been killed, a decision that drew criticism from police organisations and from Senator Dianne Feinstein. Harris maintained her position, arguing that the death penalty was ineffective and irreversible, and the decision became a defining moment in her career.

In 2010 Harris was elected attorney general of California, the state's chief law enforcement officer, becoming the first woman and the first Black person to hold the office. She was re-elected in 2014. As attorney general she negotiated a large settlement with the banks over mortgage fraud after the financial crisis, created a unit to investigate mortgage fraud, and took action on truancy, arguing that children who missed school were more likely to become involved in crime. She also defended California's climate policies and its gun laws, and she declined to defend the state's ban on same-sex marriage, a decision that was praised by supporters of marriage equality.

Her record as attorney general has been debated ever since. Her supporters point to the mortgage settlement, the environmental work, and the reforms she introduced, and they argue that she used the office to protect consumers and the vulnerable. Her critics, including some on the left, point to her office's defence of the death penalty in court, its resistance to the release of prisoners, and its handling of cases of police misconduct, and they argue that her record was that of a conventional prosecutor rather than a reformer. The debate over her record became central to her later campaigns, and it illustrates the difficulty of her position: a prosecutor who wanted to be seen as a progressive, in a system that rewards toughness.

3. The Senate and the 2020 presidential campaign

In 2016 Harris was elected to the United States Senate from California, succeeding Barbara Boxer, and she took office in January 2017. In the Senate she served on the Judiciary Committee and the Intelligence Committee, and she became known for her questioning of witnesses, including the attorney general Jeff Sessions and the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Her questioning style — direct, prepared, and prosecutorial — made her a prominent figure in the Democratic Party, and she was widely discussed as a future presidential candidate. She also co-sponsored legislation on criminal justice reform, immigration and climate, and she took a leading role in the debate over the Supreme Court.

In January 2019 Harris announced her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, launching her campaign in Oakland before a large crowd. Her campaign began strongly, and a strong performance in the first debate, in which she challenged Joe Biden over his record on school busing, drew wide attention. But the campaign struggled to define itself: Harris was criticised for changing positions, for a lack of a clear message, and for internal disagreements among her staff. She withdrew from the race in December 2019, before the first primary votes were cast, a disappointing end to a campaign that had begun with high expectations.

The failure of the 2020 campaign is now understood as a lesson in the difficulty of running as a prosecutor in a Democratic primary that had moved to the left. Harris's record in California, which had been an asset in a general election, was a liability among primary voters who wanted a candidate with a clearer record on criminal justice reform. Her campaign also struggled to answer the question of who she was: a moderate or a progressive, a prosecutor or a reformer. The ambiguity that had served her in California, where she could appeal to different groups, became a weakness in a national campaign that demanded a clear identity.

4. Vice president, 2021-2025

In August 2020 Joe Biden chose Harris as his running mate, and in November they defeated Donald Trump. Harris was inaugurated as vice president on 20 January 2021, becoming the first woman, the first Black person and the first South Asian American to hold the office. The symbolism of the moment was widely noted: a daughter of immigrants, raised by a single mother, had reached the second-highest office in the country. Her swearing-in was a moment of celebration for many Americans, and for the Democratic Party's diverse coalition in particular.

As vice president, Harris was assigned a difficult portfolio. Biden asked her to lead the diplomatic effort to address the root causes of migration from Central America, a task that involved engaging with the governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The assignment was politically risky, because immigration was a central issue for the administration's critics, and Harris's statement in an interview that migrants should not come to the United States was criticised by some on the left and seized on by her opponents. She also cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate, which was evenly divided, and she became a prominent voice for abortion rights after the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in 2022 overturned the constitutional right to abortion.

Harris's vice presidency was also marked by the question of her visibility. Vice presidents are often overshadowed by the president, and Harris's approval ratings were low for much of her term. Her supporters argued that she was given the hardest assignments and that the coverage of her was unfair, and they pointed to the scrutiny faced by women of colour in public life. Her critics argued that she had not distinguished herself in office and that her low ratings reflected her performance. The debate over her vice presidency would become central to the 2024 campaign, when she suddenly became the nominee.

5. The 2024 campaign: 107 days

On 21 July 2024, after a poor debate performance and pressure from within his own party, President Biden withdrew from the presidential race and endorsed Harris. Within days she had secured the support of the party's delegates, and she became the Democratic nominee without a primary contest. She chose the Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate, and her campaign raised large sums of money and drew large crowds. The campaign's energy was real: Harris presented herself as a prosecutor running against a convicted felon, and she emphasised abortion rights, democracy and the future, in contrast to Trump's focus on the past.

The campaign had only 107 days, and it faced structural disadvantages. Harris had to introduce herself to the country, define her positions, and distance herself from an unpopular administration, all at once. She was criticised for avoiding interviews early in the campaign and for giving vague answers on policy, and her opponents argued that she was the candidate of continuity with a government that voters had rejected. The economy, particularly the price of food and housing, was the central issue for many voters, and Harris struggled to convince them that she would handle it better than Trump. She also faced the difficulty of running as the incumbent party's candidate in an election in which most voters said the country was on the wrong track.

On 5 November 2024 Harris lost the election to Donald Trump, who won 312 electoral votes to 226, sweeping all seven swing states and winning the popular vote. Harris conceded the next day, delivering a speech at Howard University in which she said that the outcome was not what they wanted but that the fight for democracy continued. The loss was a disappointment for the Democratic Party, and it prompted a debate about the party's direction, its message on the economy, and its ability to reach working-class voters. Harris's own role in the defeat has been debated: some argue that no candidate could have won in the circumstances, while others argue that her campaign's caution and its late start were decisive.

6. What Harris represents: identity, law and the Democratic Party

Harris's career is significant for what it represents about American politics. She is the product of two traditions: the civil rights movement, in which her parents were active, and the Black church and the historically Black university, which shaped her identity. She is also the product of the law, a profession that gave her a way into public life and a language for talking about justice. Her career shows how a woman of colour could rise through the institutions of American politics — the prosecutor's office, the Senate, the vice presidency — and reach the threshold of the presidency. It also shows the limits of that rise: she was the first woman to be a major party's nominee since Hillary Clinton, and like Clinton, she lost to Donald Trump.

Her politics are those of the mainstream Democratic Party: support for abortion rights, for gun control, for climate action, for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and for a strong social safety net. She is more cautious than the party's left wing on economic policy, and more liberal than its centre on social issues. Her supporters describe her as a pragmatic progressive, willing to work within the system to achieve change; her critics describe her as a politician who follows the prevailing winds, and who has changed positions when it suited her. Both descriptions capture something about her career, which has been marked by a willingness to adapt to the politics of the moment.

Harris's relationship with the law is the most distinctive part of her story. She entered politics as a prosecutor, and she has always presented the law as a tool for justice. Her campaign slogan in 2024, that she was a prosecutor running against a felon, was an attempt to turn her background into an advantage. But the same background was a liability in the Democratic primary of 2020, when the party's left wing distrusted prosecutors, and it was a liability in the general election of 2024, when voters were more concerned about the economy than about Trump's legal troubles. The tension between her identity as a prosecutor and her identity as a progressive is the central tension of her career.

7. After 2024: legacy and the future

After the 2024 election Harris returned to California, and the question of her future remains open. She has written about her career and her campaign, and she has remained a prominent figure in the Democratic Party, but she has not announced her next step. Some observers expect her to run for governor of California or to seek the presidency again in 2028; others expect her to move into a different kind of public life. Her future will depend on how the Democratic Party understands its defeat, and on whether it sees her as part of the solution or as part of the problem.

Her legacy, whatever she does next, is already significant. She was the first woman, the first Black person and the first South Asian American to serve as vice president, and the second woman to be a major party's nominee for president. She showed that the Democratic Party's coalition — women, Black voters, Asian American voters, young voters — could produce a candidate who looked like the country it sought to represent. She also showed the limits of that coalition: in 2024 it was not enough to win, and the party's failure to reach working-class voters, including many Latino and Black men, was a central fact of the election.

The most useful way to understand Harris is to compare her with the other figures in her story: Joe Biden, whose decision to run for re-election and then to withdraw shaped her campaign; Donald Trump, who defeated her and whose legal troubles she tried to make the central issue; and Barack Obama, the first Black president, whose election in 2008 opened the door that Harris walked through. The biography on this site gives the verified facts of her life; the articles linked below place her among the other leaders who have shaped American politics, and show how her career fits into the longer story of the country's democracy.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica — Kamala Harris
• Wikipedia — Kamala Harris
• The White House archives — Vice President Kamala Harris
• Encyclopaedia Britannica — Donald Trump (2024 election)

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• Who Was Charles Darwin? — Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species in 1859, became the foundation of modern biology.
• Who Was Charles Dickens? — Charles Dickens was the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, whose serialised novels mixed comedy, social criticism and unforgettable characters.
• Who Was Charlie Chaplin? — Charlie Chaplin created the Little Tramp, the most famous screen character of the silent era, and directed classics City Lights and The Great Dictator.
• Who Was Cleopatra? — Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a multilingual stateswoman who kept her kingdom independent for 21 years before Rome annexed it.
• Who Was Diego Maradona? — Diego Maradona was an Argentine footballer who captained Argentina to the 1986 World Cup and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history.
• Who Was Don Bradman? — Don Bradman was an Australian cricketer who averaged 99.94 in Test cricket, a record so far ahead of any other batsman that it remains famous in sport.
• Who Was Elvis Presley? — Elvis Presley took gospel, country and rhythm and blues and turned them into rock and roll, becoming the most famous singer of his century.
• Who Was Emily Dickinson? — Emily Dickinson was an American poet who wrote nearly 1,800 poems in private in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was barely published in her lifetime.
• Who Was Faiz Ahmed Faiz? — Faiz Ahmed Faiz was Pakistan's most celebrated modern Urdu poet, whose verse joined romantic lyricism with resistance to injustice.
• Who Was Franz Beckenbauer? — Franz Beckenbauer was a German footballer known as Der Kaiser, who won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and as manager in 1990.
• Who Was Freddie Mercury? — Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen, a four-octave voice and fearless showman who wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions.
• Who Was Frida Kahlo? — Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for uncompromising, brilliantly coloured self-portraits exploring identity, the body and death.
• Who Was Galileo Galilei? — Galileo Galilei reshaped astronomy with his telescopic discoveries of 1610, defended a Sun-centred universe, and was tried by the Inquisition in 1633.
• Who Was Genghis Khan? — Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history, a conqueror and lawgiver whose legacy is still argued over.
• Who Was George Washington? — George Washington won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and as first president defined the office — then walked away.
• Who Was Guglielmo Marconi? — Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor who built the first practical wireless telegraph and sent the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901.
• Who Was Henry Ford? — Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company, built the Model T and perfected the moving assembly line.
• Who Was Isaac Newton? — Isaac Newton wrote the laws of motion and universal gravitation, invented calculus and transformed optics, leaving a lasting legacy in science.
• Who Was James Watt? — James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but his separate condenser of 1765 made it efficient enough to power the Industrial Revolution.
• Who Was Jane Austen? — Jane Austen published six novels in her lifetime, anonymously, and died at 41. This explains her life, her novels, her irony and her growing reputation.
• Who Was Jesus Christ? — Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. This explains his life in the Gospels, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Johan Cruyff? — Johan Cruyff was the star of Total Football, won three Ballon d'Or awards, and as a manager built the Barcelona team that shaped modern football.
• Who Was Johannes Gutenberg? — Johannes Gutenberg built the first mechanised printing press in Europe and printed the Gutenberg Bible around 1455, changing how the world shared ideas.
• Who Was John Keats? — John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at 25, having written his six great odes in a single year. This explains his short life, his poetry and his fame.
• Who Was Joseph Stalin? — Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1953, industrialised the country and led it through the Second World War, ruling through terror.
• Who Was Julius Caesar? — Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and remade Rome's calendar and government, and was murdered by senators who feared he would be king.
• Who Was Kobe Bryant? — Kobe Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and became known for the Mamba Mentality, on and off the court.
• Who Was Leo Tolstoy? — Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then abandoned literary fame for a radical moral philosophy that influenced Gandhi and the world.
• Who Was Leonardo da Vinci? — Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and filled notebooks with anatomy and engineering, becoming the symbol of the Renaissance.
• Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven? — Ludwig van Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas and the Missa Solemnis, much of it while deaf. This explains his life and legacy.
• Who Was Mahatma Gandhi? — Mahatma Gandhi led India to independence through nonviolent resistance, and his ideas shaped civil-rights movements worldwide.
• Who Was Mao Zedong? — Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China in 1949 and led it until 1976, bringing unification and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
• Who Was Margaret Thatcher? — Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to serve as British prime minister, leading the UK from 1979 to 1990 through reform, the Falklands War and division.
• Who Was Marie Curie? — Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, a pioneer of radioactivity research.
• Who Was Marilyn Monroe? — Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star of the 1950s, the blonde bombshell of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, who fought the studio system.
• Who Was Mark Twain? — Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and became America's most famous humorist.
• Who Was Maya Angelou? — Maya Angelou was a poet, memoirist and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made her widely read.
• Who Was Michael Jackson? — Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, made Thriller, the best-selling album in history, and changed music video, dance and pop stardom.
• Who Was Mirza Ghalib? — Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is the pre-eminent Urdu and Persian poet of the last Mughal era, whose ghazals on love, loss and doubt are still recited.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali Jinnah? — Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the barrister and statesman who led the All-India Muslim League and became Pakistan's first Governor-General in 1947.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali? — Muhammad Ali was the three-time heavyweight champion who called himself The Greatest, and the most famous athlete of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Napoleon Bonaparte? — Napoleon Bonaparte rose from Corsica to Emperor of the French, redrew the map of Europe, and left a legal code that still shapes law across the world.
• Who Was Nelson Mandela? — Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison under apartheid, then became South Africa's first democratically elected president and a Nobel Peace laureate.
• Who Was Nikola Tesla? — Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current power system, the induction motor and the Tesla coil, making long-distance electric power practical.
• Who Was Osama bin Laden? — Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988 and organised the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
• Who Was Pablo Neruda? — Pablo Neruda was Chile's great poet, a Nobel laureate, a communist senator and a diplomat. This explains his poetry, his politics and his death.
• Who Was Pablo Picasso? — Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism, painted Guernica, and spent 75 years breaking the rules of art — the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Pelé? — Pele is the only footballer to win three World Cups, the youngest winner, and the game's first global icon. This is his life, his goals and his legacy.
• Who Was Pope Francis? The People's Pope — Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pope, led the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025 with an emphasis on mercy and the poor.
• Who Was Prophet Muhammad? — The Prophet Muhammad is the founder of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. This explains his life, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Queen Elizabeth II? — Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, from 1952 to 2022 — the longest reign in British history. This explains her life, her reign and her legacy.
• Who Was Rabindranath Tagore? — Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the author of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
• Who Was Rosa Parks? — Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress who acted on impulse. She was a trained activist and NAACP secretary whose bus refusal was a deliberate act.
• Who Was Rosalind Franklin? — Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image, Photograph 51, gave Watson and Crick the key evidence for the double helix. This is her life and the credit debate.
• Who Was Rumi? — Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet of Konya, wrote the Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams, and became the most widely read poet in the world.
• Who Was Shane Warne? — Shane Warne took 708 Test wickets, bowled the Ball of the Century in 1993 and won the 1999 World Cup with Australia. This explains his career.
• Who Was Stephen Hawking? — Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist who showed that black holes emit radiation and wrote A Brief History of Time. He died in 2018, aged 76.
• Who Was Steve Jobs? — Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, built Pixar, and returned to launch the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He died in 2011, aged 56.
• Who Was Thomas Edison? — Thomas Edison held 1,093 US patents, invented the phonograph and the practical incandescent lamp, and built the first commercial electric power system.
• Who Was Vincent van Gogh? — Vincent van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks in a single decade, including The Starry Night and Sunflowers, and became famous only after his death at 37.
• Who Was William Shakespeare? — William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in history, yet almost nothing is reliably known about his private life.
• Who Was William Wordsworth? — William Wordsworth launched English Romanticism with Lyrical Ballads and wrote The Prelude, the great autobiographical poem. This explains his life.
• Who Was Winston Churchill? — Winston Churchill led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his record on empire is still debated.
• Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who composed more than 600 works before his death at 35, defining the Classical era.
• Why Van Gogh Became Famous After Death — Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 almost unknown, and within a few decades his paintings were among the most loved in the world.