Kamala Devi Harris, the running mate of US Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in 2020 elections, holds a lot of firsts to her name. She is the first woman of colour to be elected district attorney of San Francisco, the first South Asian American to become a US senator and if elected on November 3, she will be the first person of Indian descent to hold a major political office in the United States.
55-year-old Kamala began her career in the 1990s at the Alameda County District Attorney's Office in the city of Oakland and later became the first woman of colour in 2011 to serve as California's attorney general.
Harris rose to prominence in 2017 following her scathing questioning of Attorney General William Barr and then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in important Senate hearings.
A US-based policy tracker has said that Harris has been one of the busier senators when it comes to introducing congressional legislation. "Her 54 bills introduced in 2019 tied for 19th-most among all 100 senators, while her 52 bills introduced in 2017-18 put her in the top third among senators," the report by GovTrack said.
Harris is also a member of key Legislative Committees including the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Select Committee on Intelligence, the Committee on the Judiciary, and the Committee on the Budget.
Senator Kamala had started her US presidential run in 2019 with much fanfare and later quit the race in January this year. But thanks to Democratic nominee Joe Biden, she has returned as the vice presidential nominee.
On the policy front, some of Kamala's priorities are criminal justice reform and racial justice legislation. She supports the legalized same-sex-marriage and calls for a ban on assault weapons in the US.
She calls herself simply "an American", saying that her unique identity makes her suited to represent the people of the United States. Born to an Indian origin mother and Jamaican origin father, her candidature is of great significance to Indians in the US and abroad.
Sabrina Singh, Press Secretary to Senator Harris, in an interview with , said that if elected Biden-Harris administration plans to advance the relationship between India and the United States. Singh said that both Biden-Harris aim to resonate with the Indian-American community via his plans on higher education, reducing student loans and bringing back jobs to the US.
In the past, Harris had said that "Anyone who claims to be a leader must speak like a leader. That means speaking with integrity and truth." We will get to witness on November 3 if the "integrity and truth" has resonated with the American public or not.
( With inputs from ANI )
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