Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign rally in Atlanta on July 30, 2024. Photo / Nicole Craine, The New York Times
Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign rally in Atlanta on July 30, 2024. Photo / Nicole Craine, The New York Times
Kamala Harris’ long political resume is well-known and expansive: before becoming vice president, she was a US senator. Before that, she was the California attorney general and the district attorney in San Francisco. Here are some things you might not know about the Democratic Party’s nominee for president.
Her nametranslates to ‘lotus flower’ in Sanskrit
It’s a near-mythical symbol in Indian culture, representing beauty, prosperity and fertility.
She has broken the most ties in US Senate history
As Vice President, she has often been called upon to cast a deciding vote when the Senate is deadlocked. Last year, she cast her 32nd tiebreaker, beating the previous record of 31 set by John C. Calhoun, who was Vice President from 1825 to 1832.
Kamala Harris with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at the US Capitol on December 5, 2023. Photo / Al Drago, The New York Times
She’s short (compared to presidents past)
Five-foot-four, to be exact. If elected, she would be one of the two shortest presidents in American history (the other is James Madison). But her height checks in at just about average for an American woman.
She knows how to deliver fries with that
Harris worked at McDonald’s between her first and second years in college. She fried the fries, worked the ice cream machine and staffed the cash register.
Her best friend set her up with her future husband, Doug Emhoff
Their first “date” was an hour-long phone call, and they made plans to get dinner that weekend in Los Angeles, where he was based. “I could hardly wait to fly down,” Harris wrote.
Harris with husband Doug Emhoff at her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, on July 22, 2024. Photo / Erin Schaff, The New York Times
She loves Doritos
In her memoir, she described the night in 2016 that Donald Trump won the presidency (which was the same night she got elected to the US Senate). “No one really knew what to say or do,” she wrote. “I sat down on the couch with Doug and ate an entire family-size bag of Classic Doritos. Didn’t share a single chip.”
She attended both a Black Baptist church and a Hindu temple as a child
“My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters,” she wrote in her memoir. “And she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud Black women.”
Her prosecutorial style left some in Washington flummoxed
When Harris served in the Senate, she drew attention for her sharp questioning of witnesses. In 2017, as she was grilling then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions about his role as campaign surrogate for Trump and contact with Russian officials, a visibly flustered Sessions objected. “I’m not able to be rushed this fast,” he complained at one point. “It makes me nervous.”
Then-Senator Kamala Harris questions Judge Brett Kavanaugh during confirmation hearings for his nomination to the Supreme Court in September 2018. Photo / T.J. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times
She spent her high school years in Montreal
“It was a difficult transition,” she wrote, “since the only French I knew was from my ballet classes.”
She failed the California bar exam on her first try
“I couldn’t get my head around it,” she wrote. She soon realised her preparation amounted to “the most half-assed performance of my life”. She passed on her second attempt.
She tangled with Jamie Dimon
Harris got into a heated disagreement with Dimon, J.P. Morgan’s CEO, when she was the attorney general of California. It happened during the financial crisis, when she was pursuing relief from big banks for homeowners who had faced foreclosure. “We were like dogs in a fight,” Harris recalled in her memoir.
But their most recent encounter was calmer
She eventually secured more than US$20 billion in relief from the banks, and despite their history, Harris and Dimon had lunch at the White House in March.
She likes to cook
Harris loves food. She has ribbed her running mate, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, about his “white guy tacos”, shared her turkey cooking tips and said that she liked to read recipes to unwind. In 2019, Harris posted a series of cooking videos to YouTube, including one with actor Mindy Kaling that has been watched more than 6 million times. “Senator Harris, I say this with respect, you’re kind of a showoff,” Kaling quipped. “Right?” Harris replied.
She goes way back with Barack Obama
She hosted a San Francisco fundraiser for his 2004 Senate run, then was the first major office holder in California to endorse his 2008 presidential bid, even as most Democratic heavyweights threw their support behind Hillary Clinton. The endorsement, seen by some as a political risk, paid off. Obama endorsed her bid for California attorney general in 2010, and on Tuesday (Wednesday NZT) he praised her as a uniter on a mission to “build a country that is more secure and more just, more equal and more free”.
Harris leads members of the Senate through Statuary Hall toward the House chamber before President Joe Biden's State of the Union address at the US Capitol on February 7, 2023. Photo / T.J. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times
But she once turned down a job offer in his administration
It was 2014, and Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney general, called her and said he was planning to step down. He asked if she was interested in succeeding him. She considered the offer but ultimately declined.
The former president called Harris “by far the best-looking attorney general in the country” — and later apologised. The remark came at a fundraiser in 2013, right after he also complimented her on her smarts and dedication to the law.
Her grandfather was a diplomat
Harris’ maternal grandfather, P.V. Gopalan, was a civil servant in India. When she was a child, Gopalan served as a diplomat in Zambia. She has said he was among her “favourite people” and “subconsciously influenced” how she thinks.
She was a political activist in college
During her freshman year at Howard University in Washington DC, she spent many weekends on the National Mall protesting apartheid in South Africa.
She remains close with her line sisters in Alpha Kappa Alpha
At Howard, where she competed on the debate team and graduated in 1986, Harris joined the Black sorority. In July, she said that she kept a signed copy of a book by one of its founders, Norma Boyd, in her West Wing office “as a testament to our enduring legacy”.
She also belongs to a prominent, invite-only nonprofit for Black women
Harris joined The Links Incorporated in 2018. It’s one of the oldest groups of its kind in America — a service organisation focused on Black Americans and other people of African ancestry. Members have included Rosa Parks, Betty Shabazz and civil rights lawyer Constance Baker Motley.
Her footwear is distinct
Harris has a large collection of Chuck Taylors: a black pair, a white pair, Chucks with and without laces, Chucks for hot and cold weather, and “the platform kind for when I’m wearing a pantsuit”.
Her love of dancing has persisted from her childhood to the West Wing
While she was in Montreal, she started a dance group called Midnight Magic. More recently, videos of her dancing in public — to Q-Tip at a celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, down an escalator, with a marching band of children — have gone viral on social media.
Today will be doubly important for Harris
She is set to formally accept the Democratic nomination on her and Emhoff’s 10th wedding anniversary.
