Photo: Senator Kamala Harris with paintings in her office by June Carol_E, from Senator Harris Twitter and Wikimedia Commons
Kamala Harris’s career trajectory has been interesting to research. Her ambitions have helped her serve people in need. Since she began her career as a prosecutor, she has championed the disenfranchised. Let’s take a look at her pre-White House career.
Harris became an Alameda County deputy district attorney in 1990. Then, she was appointed to California’s Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board by her then-boyfriend Speaker of the California Assembly Willie Brown in 1994. Later, she was appointed to the California Medical Assistance Commission. Terence Hallinan, who was San Francisco’s district attorney, recruited Harris. She became an assistant district attorney in February 1998.
She went on to become the chief of the Career Criminal Division. While in this position, she supervised five other attorneys and prosecuted homicide, burglary, robbery, and sexual assault cases. Harris began working for city attorney Louise Renne at San Franciso’s City Hall in August2000. While in this role, she represented child abuse and neglect cases and ran the Family and Children’s Services Division.
Two years later, Harris threw her hat in the ring, hoping to become San Francisco’s district attorney. Harris would go on to win this election by 56%. This win made her the first person of color elected to this office. In 2007, she ran again. This time, she ran unopposed. During her campaign, she pledged to never seek the death penalty. While in office, she created a Hate Crimes Unit, which focused on hate crimes against LGBT adolescents in school. And she supported A.B. 1160, the Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act. She also created the San Francisco Reentry Division in 2004. Over six years, 200 people graduated from the program and had a recidivism rate of less than 10% (Wikipedia). In 2005, she created an environmental crimes unit.
Harris led a citywide effort to combat San Francisco’s high truancy in 2006. By April 2009, 1,330 elementary school students were habitual or chronic truants. This was down 23% from 1,730 in 2008 and from 2,517 in 2007and 2,856 in 2006 (Wikipedia). Harris defeated Republican Los Angeles County district attorney Steve Cooley. When she was sworn in on January 3, 2011, she became the first woman, African America, and South Asian American to hold the office. And in 2014, she was reelected.
Harris received a Doctor of Laws from the University of Southern California. She also received a Doctor of Human Letters from her alma mater, Howard University, where she delivered the commencement address.
When Senator Barbara Boxer announced that she would not be seeking reelection after more than 20 years in the position on January 13,2015, Harris announced that she would be running for Boxer’s position that next week. However, after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, Harris vowed to protect immigrants from his administration’s policies; therefore, she remained the attorney general until the end of 2016. Harris would go on to become the second Black woman and the first South Asian American senator.
In January 2018, she was appointed to the Senate Judiciary Committee after Al Franken resigned.
Just one year later, on January 27, 2019, Harris announced that she was seeking the Democratic nomination for president. By December 2019,Harris suspended her campaign. She stated that a shortage of funds was the reason. In March of 2020, she endorsed Joe Biden for president. On August 11,2020, Biden announced that he had chosen Harris to be his vice president.
