Kamala Harris Tapped as Joe Biden’s Veep Pick
California senator joins ticket in bid to retire Donald Trump, Mike Pence on November 3
BY MATT TRACY
Former Vice President Joe
Biden ended the lingering
suspense on August 11
when he announced that
California Senator Kamala Harris
will be the Democratic nominee for
vice president, marking the fi rst
time a woman of color will be on a
major party presidential ticket.
“I have the great honor to announce
that I’ve picked @Kamala-
Harris — a fearless fi ghter for the
little guy, and one of the country’s
fi nest public servants — as my running
mate,” Biden wrote on Twitter.
“Back when Kamala was attorney
general, she worked closely with
Beau. I watched as they took on
the big banks, lifted up working
people, and protected women and
kids from abuse. I was proud then,
and I’m proud now to have her as
my partner in this campaign.”
Biden’s late son Beau served as
Delaware attorney general for eight
years up until a few months prior
to his death from cancer at age 46
in 2015, a tragedy widely viewed as
the reason his father did not seek
the presidency the following year.
Minutes after Biden’s announcement,
Harris tweeted, “@JoeBiden
can unify the American people because
he’s spent his life fi ghting for
us. And as president, he’ll build an
America that lives up to our ideals.
I’m honored to join him as our
party’s nominee for vice president,
and do what it takes to make him
our commander-in-chief.”
Should the Biden-Harris ticket
defeat President Donald Trump
and Vice President Mike Pence in
November, Harris would be the
fi rst woman to serve as vice president.
It marks the second straight
presidential election cycle that the
Democratic ticket features a woman,
after former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful bid
for the White House in 2016.
Harris, the second Black woman
to serve in the US Senate – and
the fi rst with an Indian-born parent
— ascended to the post of San
Francisco district attorney in 2003
before being elected attorney general
This year’s Democratic ticket will be Joe Biden and California Senator Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris greets supporters during the San Francisco Pride March in June of 2019.
of California in 2010. She was
elected to the US Senate in 2016.
Biden’s vice presidential revelation
came after he was recently
spotted holding talking points that
reminded him not to hold grudges
against Harris. During a debate
last summer, Harris, running for
the Democratic nomination for
president, launched a stinging attack
on the former vice president,
blasting him for working with Senate
segregationists in the past and
chiding him for opposing school
busing in the 1970s.
Harris, meanwhile, is entering
the general election saddled with
some years-old baggage of her own.
The California senator’s prosecutorial
background has sometimes
been a liability for her among progressives
who have increasingly
REUTERS/ MIKE BLAKE
REUTERS/ STEPHEN LAM
become resistant to overpolicing,
incarceration, and tough-on-crime
approaches to criminal justice. Her
record was litigated extensively
earlier in this election cycle, and
it directly intersected with her history
on LGBTQ issues.
In 2014, Harris, then California’s
state attorney general, resisted
the request of an incarcerated
transgender woman to undergo
gender-affi rming surgery. Michelle
Lael-Norsworthy, the transgender
woman seeking care, fi led a lawsuit
blaming the state for failing to
provide her with necessary healthcare.
After a federal judge ordered
the state’s correction department to
allow her to go ahead with surgery,
Harris argued against the order in
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,
saying that Lael-Norsworthy “has
POLITICS
been receiving hormone therapy
for her gender dysphoria sine 2000
and continues to receive hormone
therapy and other forms of treatment…
there is no evidence that
Norsworthy is in serious, immediate
physical or emotional danger.”
When Harris was confronted
about that case during an Iowa
LGBTQ forum last September, she
blamed the policies of California’s
Department of Correction at the
time before drifting off topic. She
maintains that she now supports
full access to gender-affi rming
care.
Harris has also signaled a willingness
to evolve on other issues
relevant to the LGBTQ community.
When asked last year during an interview
with The Root whether she
supported the decriminalization
of sex work, she said, “I think so.
I do… when you are talking about
consenting adults, I think that,
you know, yes, we should really
consider that we can’t criminalize
consensual behavior as long as no
one is being harmed.” It is not clear,
however, whether Harris favors full
sex work decriminalization or the
Nordic Model, which only aims to
decriminalize sex work for workers
rather than their clients — a halfstep
advocates argue continues to
keep such work underground and
therefore dangerous.
Nevertheless, the position represented
a shift from the policies of
her past. As San Francisco district
attorney in 2008, Harris was an
opponent of a measure to end sex
work arrests in the city, saying at
the time that “it’s completely ridiculous”
and alleging that the meassure
would “put a welcome mat out
for pimps and prostitutes to come
into San Francisco.”
When she became attorney general,
and again in the Senate, Harris
pushed the SESTA/ FOSTA legislation
that was viewed as hurtful
for sex workers because it forced
sites that housed sex worker listings
to shut down out of fear that
they would be held responsible for
what users agreed to through their
➤ KAMALA HARRIS, continued on p.13
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