Kamala Devi Harris is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president in 2024, following the decision by President Joe Biden not to seek a second term. Harris was elected Vice President in the 2020 election, helping Biden defeat the Republican ticket of Donald Trump and Mike Pence. In that election, Harris bested Pence in a vice presidential debate, memorable for a black fly that landed on the Republican’s white hair. Harris had run for president in the crowded 2020 Democratic primary. She scored impressive debate performances, including hitting hard against Biden’s record on desegregation and bussing. But her campaign, said to be poorly managed, lost momentum and Harris withdrew before any votes were cast.

Harris was a U.S. Senator serving California for four years from 2017 to 2021. Before entering national politics, she served as the Attorney General of California, where she took on big banks and shut down scammy private colleges. She was earlier District Attorney of San Francisco, where she practiced a tough-on-crime approach that has led some progressives to tag her with the epithet: “Kamala is a cop.” Harris was born in 1964 in Oakland, California, to immigrant parents; her mother is from India and her father is Jamaican. 

Harris attended the historically Black Howard University and received a law degree from the University of California Hastings Law School in San Francisco. Harris made history as the first woman elected to the vice presidency. She is married to Doug Emhoff, the nation’s first Second Gentleman. — Tim Dickinson