Who is Kamala Harris?
Her campaign for president has been focused on working to benefit everyday Americans.
Since January 2021, Vice President Kamala Harris has been a trusted partner to President Joe Biden in their work to take on powerful interests and individuals.
They have stood up against extremists, defended reproductive freedom, brought down prescription drug costs, and capped the price of insulin at $35 a month for our seniors. Her campaign for president has been focused on working to benefit everyday Americans by elevating “we, the people” to primacy—above corporations, billionaires, special interests, and anyone who tries to limit our freedoms, whether foreign dictators, domestic autocrats, or religious fanatics.
Early Accomplishments
Harris is a graduate of Howard University, where she joined Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc., the first Black sorority in the United States. After earning her law degree at Hastings College of Law of the University of California, she became a prosecutor—first as the District Attorney for San Francisco County, then as the elected Attorney General of California. She won a US Senate seat in 2016 after long-time Sen. Barbara Boxer retired.
As Attorney General, Harris won $20 billion from banks to benefit homeowners facing foreclosure during the Great Recession. She challenged predatory for-profit colleges and reached a $1.1 billion settlement for students and veterans who got scammed. And, she prosecuted transnational gangs that exploited women and children and trafficked in guns, drugs, and human beings, and she fought to require for-profit insurers to cover contraception and other reproductive health services.
In the Senate, Harris served on the Judiciary Committee, where she fought for criminal justice reform and became famous for her tough questioning of Donald Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court: Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett. She also demanded honest answers from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he attempted to mislead Congress and the American people.
A Record as Vice President: Jobs, Healthcare, Gun Safety
During nearly four years as Joe Biden’s Vice President, she has worked closely with Biden and former Senate colleagues to shift the course of the United States from its rightward trajectory over the past 40 years—and especially since the four years of the Trump Administration. Since 2021, the nation has created nearly 16 million new jobs and invested over $1 trillion in infrastructure projects like repairing roads and bridges, removing every lead pipe in America, improving public transit, and expanding access to high-speed internet.
The administration has strengthened the Affordable Care Act and lowered health insurance premiums to save millions of Americans an average of $800 per year; expanded health care for veterans exposed to toxins; enacted the first meaningful gun safety reform in decades and brought violent crime to a near 50-year low. Working with a supportive Congress, they passed the largest-ever investment to tackle the climate crisis and appointed the first Black woman to the United States Supreme Court.
More than any other national leader, Harris is fully committed to stopping would-be authoritarians and dictators at home, leading the charge to protect fundamental American freedoms, including the right to an abortion and the right to vote.
The daughter of two immigrants—her father from Jamaica, her mother from India—Harris is the first woman, first Black American, and first South Asian American to serve as Vice President. She always remembers and acts on the words of her mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a renowned breast cancer researcher: “Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you are not the last.”
A Pragmatic Moderate
During the 116th Congress Harris was described by The New York Times as “a pragmatic moderate,” with policy positions that broadly mirror those of Biden. Like many moderates, she has been criticized by left-wing activists for her actions as a prosecutor, and by right-wingers for her progressive outlook.
Among numerous special-interest organizations that rate politicians based on their support for certain issues, Harris has received 100% ratings from the Alliance for Retired Americans, the AFL-CIO, Children’s Defense Fund, Common Cause, the Human Rights Campaign, the NAACP, NARAL, National Education Association, and Planned Parenthood. Her sympathy is with those least supported by the political ruling class of billionaires: children, the elderly, labor unions, the GLBTQ community, teachers, good government advocates, and, of course, women, especially in their fight for reproductive rights.
Her lowest ratings, on the other hand, come from conservative groups such as the Club for Growth, which advocates for lower, or no, taxes on corporations and billionaires; the National Rifle Association; and NumbersUSA, which wants to stop all immigration. And in the middle are organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which gives her a 93% rating; AFSCME, the government workers union (86%); the League of Conservation Voters, which rates her at 91% for environmental issues; and the National Association of Police Organizations, which rates her at 80%, in part for her work as a “tough-on-crime” prosecutor in California.
Taking the Lead on Abortion Rights
Likely the highest-profile role Harris has played during the past two years has been her fight for abortion rights and reproductive health, which is also central to her presidential campaign. The advocacy group “Reproductive Freedom for All” states, “There is nobody who has fought as hard for abortion rights and access,” while Emily’s List, which supports women running for office, describes her as “our most powerful advocate and messenger” on reproductive rights. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in its 2022 Boggs decision, Harris has spoken out, inspired activists, and helped move voters in seven states to pass either legislative or constitutional protections for women seeking abortions and other reproductive healthcare.
Criminal Justice
In December 2018, Harris voted for the First Step Act, legislation aimed at reducing recidivism rates among federal prisoners through expanding job training and other programs, in addition to forming an expansion of early release programs and modifications on sentencing laws. She publicly advocated for donations to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a bail fund assisting those arrested in the George Floyd protests, though she did not donate to the fund herself.
Earlier that year she demanded that Attorney General Jeff Sessions provide scientifically based evidence for the Trump administration’s opposition to legalization; she then co-sponsored Senator Cory Booker’s Marijuana Justice Act to legalize cannabis at the federal level by removing it from the Controlled Substance Act. The bill would have also required federal courts to automatically expunge earlier federal marijuana convictions related to use or possession and would penalize states that enforce cannabis laws in a disproportionate manner against minority or low-income individuals—a step taken by President Biden after he and Harris won the 2020 election.
Education
A strong believer in parental responsibility, Harris has argued for treating “habitual and chronic truancy” among children in elementary school as a crime committed by the parents of truant children, arguing that there is a direct connection between habitual truancy in elementary school and crime later in life. She supports a return to busing to desegregate public schools, saying that “the schools of America are as segregated, if not more segregated, today than when I was in elementary school.”
She also supports the creation of a federal program to pay tuition and fees for students attending public colleges and universities if their parents have income of $125,000 or less. The program would be funded by a fee on Wall Street firms of half a percent per stock trade.
Guns and Domestic Violence
Harris has consistently supported gun control and has been graded with an “F” rating by the pro-gun NRA. She co-sponsored the Military Domestic Violence Reporting Enhancement Act, which would have established a charge of Domestic Violence under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), in order to close a loophole which allowed convicted abusers to purchase guns.
Immigration
Harris strongly supports immigration reform, including the DREAM ACT, renewal and expansion of DACA, and allowing undocumented parents, siblings, and spouses of US citizens or lawful permanent residents to seek deportation relief.
Human Rights
As California Attorney General, Harris refused to defend the anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 in federal court, and after the law was struck down, she ordered the Los Angeles County Clerk’s office to “start the marriages immediately.” She later officiated at the wedding of the plaintiffs in the case, Kris Perry & Sandy Stier at San Francisco City Hall. As a member of the US Senate, she co-sponsored the Equality Act.
Voting Rights
Harris believes in uniform national standards so all registered voters can use mail-in absentee voting, and a minimum early in-person voting period of 20 days. As a 2020 presidential candidate, Harris relied on individual donors, disavowing most corporate donations and rejecting money from corporate political action committees.
Consumer Protection
She sponsored the Price Gouging Prevention Act, which would empower the Federal Trade Commission to enforce a ban on excessive price increases of consumer goods amid national emergencies and specifically consider any price increase above 10% to be price gouging during such a declaration.
Expanded Healthcare Access
As a senator, Harris introduced the 2020 CARE Act, designed to reduce racial disparities in maternal mortality and morbidity. The risk of death from pregnancy-related causes for Black women in the US is three to four times higher than for white women, and Black women are twice as likely to suffer from life-threatening pregnancy complications.
Jobs and Worker Rights
Senator Harris sponsored a bill requiring the establishment of a union when a majority of workers sign valid authorization cards, and preventing employers from exploiting workers. She also was lead sponsor of a bill amending the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to include a mandate forcing farmers to pay workers time and a half for each hour worked past the standard 40-hour work week. In addition, Harris and Representative Pramila Jayapal introduced the Domestic Worker’s Bill of Rights in Congress. requiring meal breaks, a minimum wage, and overtime pay for domestic workers.
Harris also advocated for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to initiate a full investigation into a complaint filed on May 20 by a group of Chicago-area employees of McDonald’s. Harris had worked at a McDonald’s restaurant as a teenager, and the complaint—ignored by the Trump Administration OSHA—detailed violence such as customers throwing hot coffee on the workers and threatening employees with firearms.
Taxes
Harris opposed Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and has called for a repeal of the bill’s tax cuts for wealthy Americans. In 2018, she proposed a tax cut for the majority of working- and middle-class Americans. An analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that the bill would reduce federal revenue by $2.8 trillion over a decade. She proposed to pay for the tax cuts by repealing tax cuts for wealthy Americans and by increasing taxes on corporations.
Overall, Harris has established a solid reputation as a progressive, forward-looking prosecutor, legislator, and executive who is unafraid to ruffle feathers and whose bottom line is to make the American government work for “we, the people.” All the people.
And, as she says at the end of her campaign appearances and rallies, “When we fight, we win.”
Editor’s Note: This report drew from VP Harris’s Wikipedia page, her campaign, and numerous news reports from various sources for this compilation.
