Kamala Harris, the Californian lawyer with immigrant parents, is now the Democratic Party's candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America. Harris is not a conventional politician; she is more of a legal professional who has always been clear about where she wanted to direct her political career, and luck, or fate, has accompanied her from the beginning. She has been in the right place at the right time.
As the first female Vice President in the history of our northern neighbor, she broke the glass ceiling and became a symbolic figure representing diversity, race, gender, and equality.
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Daughter of a breast cancer researcher, an Indian immigrant to the United States, and an economics professor born in Jamaica who came to study and stayed forever. Always close to books and the culture of “California dreaming,” in a multicultural and multi-ethnic state that today represents the strongest economy in the United States, just that state accounts for 13% of the national GDP, and if it were a country, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it would be the 5th largest economy in the world.
That California is the state Kamala hails from, the state of global migration that has surpassed New York. Kamala studied at Howard University, the historic African American college in Washington D.C., where the most important minds and leaders of that sector of the population have passed through. Then she returned to her native California—she was born in Oakland—to graduate as a lawyer from Hastings Law School at the University of California. Always a brilliant student, perhaps due to the family heritage that has always lived in the academic environment.
In 2003, she was elected District Attorney of San Francisco, where she remained until 2010, her springboard that served to cement her own story. Alternatives to imprisonment for non-violent offenders; a penitentiary system where she always emphasized rehabilitation over punishment; justice reform, especially in the work of prosecutors and the police; unprecedented support for crime victims; the application of the law with community solutions; and in other matters, consumer rights protection; sanctions on companies for environmental pollution; and absolute rights for the LGBTQ community, are the law enforcement policies Kamala promoted from that position.
In 2010, she took another step by being elected Attorney General of the State of California, becoming the first woman of Black descent to hold that position and the second woman to achieve it. Her path was already laid, and she repeated the San Francisco formula regarding progressive policies and soon grew her reputation as a forward-thinking politician in an increasingly liberal state.
In 2016, she was elected Senator for California, gaining fame for her incisive and clear questioning in the famous "hearings" of the U.S. Congressional Committees. Her technical expertise as a lawyer earned her notoriety in legislative reform in healthcare, climate change, and criminal justice reform, where she again applied what she had already started in California from the beginning of her career.
In 2020, to the surprise of many analysts, she once again made history when Joe Biden selected her to be the Vice-Presidential candidate. At a time when California was crucial as the state that provides the most electors (55) for the presidential election under their electoral system. Relatively new to Washington D.C., the political capital and seat of power in the United States, she surprised many with her nomination. Just at the moment of greatest diversity and inclusion after the leadership of President Obama and his wife Michelle, the Democrats needed someone with her profile to wrest the Presidency from Donald Trump, who was attempting to get re-elected.
It was not just in recognition of her achievements as a public official but also because she symbolizes a shift in politics by breaking the norms of traditional standards. If Obama had already done it, and his legacy was cut short by not continuing with his wife's leadership, Kamala became what Michelle did not want to be, either by her own choice or possibly for family reasons. Harris took up the baton and became a symbol seen as a representative of progress and inclusion.
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