Kamala D. Harris

Kamala Harris, 60, is running for president after serving as vice president under President Joe Biden, who withdrew from the presidential race in July over concerns about his age.

Harris has said on the campaign trail that she offers “a new generation of leadership.”

Besides being a former first-term senator from California, she also served as the state’s attorney general and as San Francisco’s district attorney. In 2019, Harris staged an unsuccessful run in the Democratic presidential primary, but was ultimately tapped by the winner, Biden, to serve as his running mate.

Harris is the first female vice president, and first person of Black or South Asian descent, to hold the position. Her late mother hailed from India and her father is from Jamaica. She was born in Oakland, California.

Harris has touted her middle-class upbringing on the campaign trail, often noting she worked at McDonald’s during college. She has proposed a $6,000 tax credit for families of newborns and pitched a plan to provide first-time homebuyers with $25,000 in downpayment assistance. She has also called for the creation of 3 million new housing units over the next four years.

Harris has been a vocal critic of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide, and has said she would support Democrat-led legislation aimed at codifying Roe v. Wade into federal law.

Harris, who got her start as a local prosecutor in California, said she would address the nation’s immigration challenges as outlined in a bipartisan immigration deal brokered earlier this year in the Senate that called for increased spending on border security and overhauling the asylum seeking process to expedite decisions earlier in the process.

She has come under criticism from former President Donald Trump and Republicans who argue she did not do enough to address the influx of migrants earlier in the Biden administration when she was tapped by the president to lead the efforts between the United States, Mexico and Central American nations to stem the flow of migrants. The Harris campaign has noted her priority was addressing the root causes of migration such as poverty, and she focused her time on boosting private investment in the so-called Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.