Kamala Harris’s groundbreaking path to the White House

On Inauguration Day, Kamala Harris will be several firsts.

America’s first female vice president, first Black vice president, and first South Asian vice president.

She was raised to make history and a difference.

“You may be the first to do many things,” her mother used to tell her. “But make sure you’re not the last.”

How Harris got where she is, and where she’s likely headed, is the subject of Dan Morain’s “Kamala’s Way.” From the start, he explains, it’s been a complicated path, mixing principles and pragmatism, idealism and ambition.

“She has loyal supporters who have been part of her political organization from the start, and she has alienated people who were once as close as family,” he writes. “She has exhibited empathy and acts of kindness for people who could not help her, and some people who know her well see her as cold and calculating.”

If Harris can seem like several people at once, perhaps that’s because she’s the product of several influences – her Black father’s Caribbean culture, her Indian mother’s scientific curiosity, and California’s loud and proud protest movement.

Both parents were academics who regularly took to Berkeley’s streets, often bringing Kamala in her stroller. They separated in 1969 when Kamala was five. Since her mother had full custody, her father became less of a presence.

“My mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was a force of nature and the greatest inspiration on my life,” Harris said later. “She taught my sister Maya and me the importance of hard work and to believe in our power to right what is wrong.”

Though Harris was destined for great things, it wasn’t immediately evident.

She didn’t particularly stand out at Howard University. Harris enjoyed college life, going to protests and parties, where like most college students, she smoked dope. “Half my family’s from Jamaica,” she joked when an interviewer asked decades later. “Are you kidding me?”

Harris graduated from law school, without honors, and like so many, it took her two tries to pass the bar.

“There was nothing about her that would suggest that she would one day become district attorney, or attorney general, or senator, or vice president,” said a friend from law school.

Still, from the beginning, Harris knew her purpose. She was intent on what she wanted to accomplish in her life and the world. She wanted change and was ready to do the work required. Her strategy was clear-eyed. Work within the system; use each success to climb to the next challenge.

Harris launched her career in 1990 as an Alameda County prosecutor. She insisted it was the best way to help the underprivileged. “The people in our society who are most often targeted by predators are also most often the voiceless and vulnerable,” she said.

This job, as a woman of color, liberal on social issues but tough on crime, would make her a strong political candidate in the future.

Also helpful was a relationship with Willie Brown, then State Assembly Speaker, later San Francisco Mayor. Harris was 29 when they began their affair in 1994; Brown was 60 and married. He gave her a BMW and a couple of plum patronage jobs. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen described Harris as the “new first-lady-in-waiting.”

No one wants to wait forever. Brown showed no intention of divorcing his long-suffering wife, and Harris moved on. She’s rarely discussed the relationship since, although the rakish Brown seems to remember it fondly. “It was a real love affair,” he said in 2019. “I loved me, and she loved me.”

Voters sure loved Harris, though. She was elected District Attorney of San Francisco in 2004; after serving two terms, she was elected twice more as Attorney General of California.

Bold moves marked her career. Her refusal to ever seek the death penalty, even when prosecuting a cop killer, won her enemies among conservatives. Her tough campaign against truancy, which threatened to jail parents, brought howls from liberals.

Other accomplishments were more universally praised. Harris created units to investigate hate crimes and corporate polluters. Another program offered non-violent young offenders a chance to avoid jail by earning a GED and landing a job. Harris also took on consumer fraud and drug cartels.

The media started paying attention. In 2006, Ebony magazine ranked her No. 5 among the “Most Influential Black Americans.” A first-term senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, came in at No. 67.

Harris, as she’s proven, was hardly done. Only 72 hours into her second term as the state’s Attorney General when a Senate seat opened up, Harris seized the opportunity. She announced her candidacy five days later. And even that, insiders predicted, was just a stepping stone.

“Those in the know point to a run for the White House,” wrote the San Francisco Chronicle.

On Jan. 3, 2017, Vice President Joe Biden administered the oath of office and welcomed Harris to the Senate. Now 52 and married to attorney Doug Emhoff, Harris once again hit the ground running. She became a fierce vocal critic of the Trump administration. Her prosecutorial style left many old white men flustered.

“I’m not able to be rushed this fast,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions whined when Harris questioned him about the campaign’s connections to Russia. “It makes me nervous.”

Harris pressed on anyway. And later, when some colleagues complained she had been unnecessarily brusque, she had a ready answer, and maybe a new political slogan.

Courage – Not Courtesy.

Barely a year-and-a-half into her first Senate term, Harris started thinking about a presidential run in 2020. Advisors plotted the expected roadmap: Don’t embarrass yourself in Iowa and New Hampshire. Do well in Nevada. Win South Carolina. Then take California and, as the new frontrunner, sail to the convention.

It sounded logical.

Once the campaign began in earnest, though, all grew more complicated. Harris wasn’t the only woman in the race, nor the only person of color. She wasn’t easily pigeonholed as left-wing or right-wing. Her positions on some issues were unclear. She needed a way to stand out.

She found it at the candidates’ first debate when she attacked Biden on the subject of race and the busing he had once opposed. It reminded her of “a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate public schools, and she was bused to school every day,” she said. “And that little girl was me.”

Biden was obviously shocked; he had helped Harris on her Senate race. “I thought we were friends,” he said later, mildly. “I hope we still will be.”

Harris’ jab, though, was political, not personal. For a while, it paid off, too. The media took more interest. Her campaign sold “That little girl was me” T-shirts. But eventually, the moment faded. Polls showed her losing every upcoming primary – even, embarrassingly, California.

Harris pulled out. She would not be president – at least, not this year. She returned to Washington, while the other candidates continued on the campaign trail and one, eventually, pulled ahead.

Then, on Aug. 11, a call came in.

“You ready to go to work?” Biden asked.

“Oh, my God,” Kamala Harris answered. “I am so ready to go to work.”

She always has been.