How Kamala Harris' political trajectory was launched in her native California
Vice President Kamala Harris is on the threshold of a possible presidential nomination following President Joe Biden's decision to not seek re-election, the latest of many firsts in her political career, which began in the San Francisco Bay Area.
What are Kamala Harris' roots in California?
Harris was born in Oakland in 1964 to immigrants from India and Jamaica. After moving to the Midwest, she returned with her sister and mother to the East Bay, living in Berkeley on and off until she was about 12 years old, according to a city historian.
Harris was bused from her home in the West Berkeley flatlands to a school in a more affluent neighborhood in North Berkeley as part of the city's comprehensive desegregation program.
"I only learned later that we were part of a national experiment in desegregation with working-class black children from the flatlands being bused in one direction and wealthier white children from the Berkeley hills bused in the other," Harris recounted in her memoir, "The Truths We Hold: An American Journey."
She would reference the experience when she famously sparred with then-former Vice President Joe Biden over desegregation during a 2019 Democratic presidential debate.
After graduating from high school in Montreal, Canada, where her mother was working as a breast cancer researcher, she attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., the nation's oldest historically Black university. She graduated in 1986 with a degree in political science and economics.
Harris returned again to the Bay Area where she obtained a law degree at UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco in 1989. She was admitted to the California Bar in 1989.
Harris begins her career as a Bay Area prosecutor
In 1990, Harris was hired as a deputy district attorney for Alameda County, where she worked for several years and also served on two state boards. The appointments were made by then-California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, with whom she had a brief relationship. During that time, she made many connections that would later help propel her political career.
In 1998, Harris became assistant district attorney in San Francisco, prosecuting homicide, sexual assault, burglary and robbery cases. Two years later, Harris began working for then-City Attorney Louise Renne, handling child abuse and neglect cases.
Renne endorsed Harris' bid to become San Francisco district attorney in 2002, a race in which she was the least-known among three candidates who included the incumbent, her former boss, Terence Hallinan. Harris would win in a 2003 runoff, becoming the first person of color elected as district attorney of San Francisco. She was re-elected to a second term in 2007 after running unopposed.
As San Francisco's top prosecutor, Harris established the city's first environmental crimes unit, targeting polluters and offenses that disproportionately affected low-income communities. Harris also created a Hate Crimes Unit that focused on crimes against LGBTQ+ children and teens in schools. She also officiated one of the first same-sex weddings in the city in 2004.
Harris also led an anti-truancy effort for public safety, noting that prison inmates and homicide victims were often habitual truants. The program also targeted parents who willfully allowed truancy, and in 2008 Harris issued citations against six parents, the first time San Francisco had prosecuted adults for their chronically truant children.
Another program led by Harris provided first-time drug offenders with the opportunity to earn their high school degree and find employment, which was later adopted by the U.S. Department of Justice as a national model of innovation for law enforcement.
California's first female, Black and South Asian attorney general
Before the end of her tenure as San Francisco District Attorney, Harris announced she would run for California attorney general in 2010.
With her victory, she became the first woman, first African American and first South Asian American elected as attorney general in the state's history.
A term as the U.S. senator from California
Her political ascendancy continued with a single term as the U.S. Senator from California from 2017 to 2021. In that race, she roundly defeated then-Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Orange County to succeed Sen. Barbara Boxer, who decided not to run for a fifth term in office.
America's first female, Black and Asian American vice president
After a brief run for president in 2020, she was selected by eventual Democratic Party nominee Biden to be his running mate. His election that year meant Harris became the first woman to be second in line to the presidency, as well as the first Black and Asian American vice president. She is the highest-ranking female government official in U.S. history.
The Bay Area native is now less than four months away from learning whether voters will propel her to break through another glass ceiling and become the first woman to be elected president of the United States.
