Kamala Harrisborn in Oakland, in CaliforniaOctober 20th 1964 (she is therefore 59 years old), she is known to the general public above all for having been chosen by Joe Biden as vice president in his 4 years in office as President of the United States and to be the current candidate of the Democratic Party for the presidential elections of the November 5, 2024 (after Biden’s withdrawal and against the Republican Party candidate Donald Trump). She comes from a wealthy immigrant family, studied law and worked in the legal field for many years: in 2003 she was elected district attorney of San Francisco and seven years later attorney general of California. In her legal career she sided in favor of civil rights and it was attentive to environmental issues. In 2016 it was elected to the Senatebefore being selected by Biden as vice president. Harris will challenge Donald Trump in a TV debate on the American broadcaster ABC News at 9pm (local time) on September 10, 2024. In Italy you will be able to see the comparison live at 3am September 11th on Rai, Canale 5, La7, Nove, SkyTg24, commented by experts and translated into Italian.
Family and early years
Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California on October 20, 1964. She is the daughter of upper-middle-class immigrants: her father Donald Harris is a university professor of economics, who emigrated to the United States from Jamaica; his mother Shyamala Gopalánwho died in 2009, was an oncologist who came to California from Chennai, India. Her mother wanted to give her daughter a name related to the Hindu religion. Kamala, which means “lotus” in Sanskrit language, it is in fact one of the epithets of the goddess Laksmi.
As a child Kamala lived in BerkeleyIn 1971 the parents divorced and five years later the little girl moved to Montrealin Canada, where his mother had taken up a university teaching position. He returned to the United States for university, which he attended first in Washington and then in San Francisco, graduating in law.
Harris’s Legal Career
We summarize below the main steps of Harris’ professional career in the legal field.
The Role of the Attorney in the United States
In 1990, Harris passed the bar exam and began working in the prosecutor’s office. To understand his legal career, it is necessary to briefly explain the functions of the prosecutor in the United States, a figure partly political and partly legal, that in the legal systems of common lawlike the Anglo-Saxon countries, is very different from the countries of civil lawlike Italy and other states of continental Europe. In the common lawthe attorney is the government representative (local or national depending on the case). Therefore, he supports the public prosecution in trials (personally or through delegates) and acts as an advisor on legal issues. In many cases, the prosecutor is appointed by the political authority, but in some American states it is elected by the peopleThe attorney’s skills vary depending on the assignment: there are district attorneyswith expertise in limited territories, Attorneys General of the individual States and, finally, the United States Attorney General (appointed by the president), who performs functions similar to those of our attorney general. In California, both the district attorneys and the state attorney general are elected by the citizens.
Kamala Harris’ Work as a Prosecutor
Harris began her career as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California, and quickly gained recognition for her qualities. In 1998, she became an assistant to the San Francisco District AttorneyTerence Hallinan, but in 2003 she ran against him to take his place. She managed to prevail in the runoff, obtaining 56% of the vote, and became prosecutor.
In the 2010 decided to run for a more prestigious position, that of Attorney General of California. In the election she challenged Steve Cooley, an independent candidate supported by the Republicans, and managed to defeat him. She thus became the first woman and the first black person to assume the office of Attorney General of California. In 2014 she was elected for the second term.
Kamala Harris’s Political Positions
In her career as a prosecutor, Harris has always shown toughness against criminals and has achieved a high conviction rate for the violent crime defendants he has sent to trial. However, he has declared against the death penaltybelieving that life imprisonment without parole is a more appropriate punishment for the most serious crimes. As a prosecutor, she has also been active on environmental issues and has made companies that have caused ecological damage pay huge compensation. It has also dealt with the protection of LGBT peopletaking a stand against a California law that recognized the only form of marriage between a man and a woman. The law, also thanks to the protests of the attorney general, was repealed in 2013. Harris has also followed many other issues: online privacy, school dropouts, judicial police, etc., and has prosecuted large international criminal groups.
Kamala Harris’s Personal Life and Marriage
Harris is married from the 2014 with Dough Emhoffa Californian lawyer of Jewish origins. The couple he has no childrenbut Harris has become adoptive mother of the two children she had with Emhoff from a previous marriage, to whom she is very close.
In the 1990s, Harris had a relationship with Willie Brown, the speaker of the California Assembly and future mayor of San Francisco. She also dated television personality Montel Williams for a time. She has a younger sisterMaya, who works as a lawyer and political analyst.
The election to the Senate
In 2016 Harris decided to run for office Senate. In the elections, held in November 2016 at the same time as the presidential elections, challenged another Democratic candidateLoretta Sanchez (there were no Republican candidates), and was elected.
Her term as senator coincided with the Donald Trump presidencywhich Harris was immediately opposed to. As soon as she was elected, she declared that she would fight against the president’s anti-immigration policies and took a stand against the “Muslim Ban”, Trump’s executive order banning citizens of some Islamic countries from entering the country. Harris, however, expressed unconditional support for Israel, appearing close to the Republicans’ position on this issue.
As a senator, she covered numerous issues, including online privacy, repeatedly questioning Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and in 2020 voted to impeach Trump.
The 2020 Primary Candidacy and the Vice Presidency of the United States
In 2019, Harris ran for the Democratic Party primaries for the presidency of the United States, scheduled for 2020, but after a few months she decided to withdraw her candidacy and support Joe Biden. The latter, having obtained the nomination, chose her as his vice-presidential candidate. In November 2020, Harris became the first female Vice President of the United Statesas well as the first African-American and Asian-American person to hold the office. During his term, he assumed, as required by law, the presidency of the Senate and supported all of Biden’s choices.
The candidacy for president of the United States
On July 21, 2024, when Biden decided to withdraw from the race for re-election to the presidency, Harris immediately announced her candidacy, being able to take advantage of the support of the outgoing president and important members of the Democratic Party. The nomination was made official in early August. Harris chose as her vice-presidential candidate Tim Walzgovernor of Minnesota and, if she wins, she would be the first woman to become president of the United States.
