Kamala Harris, the prosecutor who breaks glass ceilings

After three and a half years of living in the shadow of Joe Biden as Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris has had four months to explain her story, since the President withdrew her candidacy. With the impromptu campaign, one week was enough to convince the Democratic Party that she was a better candidate and she achieved records for fundraising for a campaign in the country’s history.

But this remains a mystery: in his effort to attract votes from broad sectors of the population, left and right, his speeches have focused on the lack of definition and threats posed by his opponent. This is not the first time she has presented herself: She did so five years ago, too, when she competed in the Democratic primaries and withdrew when she saw Biden’s victory clear, which ultimately made her the country’s vice president. Made, from which she became. The first woman of black and Asian origin to hold this position. At 60, she wants to break another glass ceiling as the first female president in history.

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Washington

The daughter of immigrants, an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, she was born in a middle-class family in Oakland (California). Her parents came to the country to continue her studies and divorced soon after when she was five years old. His mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was responsible for raising him and his younger sister. “She was tough, brave and a leader in the fight for women’s health,” Harris recalled during the Democratic convention in August. “He taught us not to complain about injustice, but to do something about it.”

His stay at Howard University in Washington, where important black figures have been trained – and where he will continue on election night – was, according to him, one of the most formative experiences of his life. From early on, she engaged in activism and was a regular participant in debate clubs, where she became renowned for her debating ability. He then studied law at the University of California.

He built his career in that state, first as a prosecutor in Alameda County and from 2004 to 2011 in the city of San Francisco. Her next promotion was to become Attorney General of California, becoming the first woman and first black person to do so. In these positions, Harris usually claims a strong hand, as he confronted “transnational criminal organizations for trafficking in arms, drugs, and human beings”, but at the same time, a focus on fine-tuning the causes of the progressive vision of law. Concentrated. More than crime punitiveness.

After showing a discreet profile as Vice President, he had four months to sell his story to the country

As district attorney, he opposed the death penalty, but abandoned that belief when he ran for Attorney General four years later. This changing legal vision also took him into politics, leading his critics to define him as a “chameleon”. He took advantage of the incentive that the post of Attorney General gave him to run as senator from California in 2016, a position in which he demonstrated his toughness with his questions in several investigative commissions.

When, after losing the primaries, she accepted Biden’s job as vice president, she kept a low profile: She became the administration’s spokesperson for abortion rights and was tasked with addressing the root causes of immigration. Although her rivals accused her of being a “border queen”, her charge had nothing to do with border policy.

From the beginning, he made some controversial statements: first he told Guatemalans not to go to the United States; Then, under pressure from Republicans to go to the border, she responded during an NBC interview to a question about why she had not gone to that area, saying, “I haven’t even gone to Europe.” His popularity fell and he lost protection. Since then he has tried to avoid interviews and stick to teleprompter scripts, as he did during his presidential campaign.

Since he presented his candidacy in 2020, in 2024 he has moved to the center on aspects such as immigration and the climate emergency. He has sold himself as a continuation of Biden’s policies, but also as the voice of a new generation, and beyond a package of economic measures aimed at “reducing costs for families,” his The proposals have not been further developed. It includes eliminating health debt for millions of Americans, banning predatory food prices, new limits on prescription drug costs and a $25,000 subsidy for first-time homebuyers.

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