She is the first African American woman to run for vice president.
Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden selected Kamala Harris as his running mate, becoming the first African American woman to run for this position. «I have the great honor to announce that I’ve picked Kamala Harris — a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants — as my running mate,» Biden said in a tweet on Tuesday night. I have the great honor to announce that I’ve picked @KamalaHarris — a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants — as my running mate.— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 11, 2020 Harris, a senator from California, is married to Douglas Emhoff, a lawyer at a Los Angeles Firm who is Jewish. «She’s been in the Senate a relatively brief time, so she doesn’t necessarily have the longest record in dealing with Israel, but she has been strongly pro-Israel throughout her career,” Mark Mellman, president and CEO of The Mellman Group, a polling and consulting firm in Washington, told The Jerusalem Post. «And certainly, in the statements, she’s made and the votes she’s cast so far.” US President Donald Trump quickly reacted to Harris’ selection in a statement, reminding the public that «not long ago, Kamala Harris called Joe Biden a racist and asked for an apology she never received. Clearly, Phony Kamala will abandon her own morals, as well as try to bury her record as a prosecutor, in order to appease the anti-police extremists controlling the Democrat Party.» His administration accused Biden of being an «empty shell being filled with the extreme agenda of the radicals on the left.» Upon the announcement of her selection, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who was considered for the role, tweeted that Harris is a «tenacious and trailblazing leader who will make a great partner on the campaign trail.» She said she would do everything possible to assist the Biden-Harris ticket and help them govern successfully. Reaction from Amb. Susan Rice. pic.twitter.com/Bhffr8TkDJ— Annie Linskey (@AnnieLinskey) August 11, 2020 Former US President Bill Clinton called Harris a «terrific choice» and said that she and Biden would make a strong team. Harris was born in 1964 in Oakland, California. She graduated from Howard University and earned her law degree from the University of California. She worked as city attorney and district attorney of San Francisco, before elected as California’s attorney-general in 2010, and again in 2014. “Look at my own life, where a daughter of a South Asian mother and a Jamaican father concluded her own interfaith wedding with her husband, breaking glass and everyone yelling mazal tov,” she said in her speech at AIPAC on 2017. The main challenge in trying to define her position on Israel is the fact that she had only served in the Senate for less than three years, and that she is not a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. This situation puts Harris in a unique position among the Democrats: while centrist Democrats are disappointed with her stance in favor of rejoining the Iran nuclear agreement, progressives look at her record and see someone who spoke at AIPAC conference three times in three years (publicly in 2017 and 2018, and privately with constituents in 2019), and who promoted a resolution that opposed former president Barack Obama’s Security Council condemnation during his last week in office.
