Paper Sample on Exploring Kamala Harris: Background, Policies, and Impact on California

Introduction

The various representatives in the State of California are Dianne Feinstein, who has been the Senior Senator for California since Nov 10, 1992. Kamala Harris is the Junior Senator for California and has been in the office since Jan 3, 2017. Lastly, there is Scott Peters, who has been the Representative for California's 52nd congressional district since Jan 3, 2013. The representatives represent their districts for a two-year term, and some of their primary roles include serving on committees, offering amendments, and introducing bills and resolutions. This report will discuss Kamala Harris and various aspects of his background, including education, family, and political aspirations.

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Family

Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California on Oct 20, 1964. Harris comes from a small family and has a younger sister, Maya Harris. Her father, Donald Harris, taught at Stamford and was from Jamaica while her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, is of Indian descent and was previously a cancer researcher. Both her parents have been active participants in the Civil Rights Movement (BBC, 2020). Her mother emigrated to the United States in 1960 for her education in UC, Berkeley and later pursued a doctorate in endocrinology. Kamila Harris's father emigrated to the United States in 1961 to attend the same university as her mother. Harris is married to Douglas Emhoff who is an entertainment lawyer by profession. Harris has no biological children of her own but is a stepmother to two children.

Education

Growing up, Kamila Harris went to West Mount High School and attended Howard University in Washington, D.C, which is historically regarded as a black university. She was an intern for the then California Senator Cranston Alan, was an Alpha Kappa Alpha member, and led the economic society while still at Howard. She graduated with a political science and economics degree in 1986. She returned to school and earned a law degree from Hastings College in 1986.

Political Experience

Subsequently, Harris worked as a deputy district attorney in Oakland between 1990-1998. Here she earned a reputation as she was dealing with cases of sexual abuse, drug trafficking, and gang violence. In 2004, Harris was already a district attorney and was elected as California's attorney general after winning the election with a less than 1 percent margin. She became the first person of African-American descent and the first female to hold this post. She raised her national profile in 2012 by delivering a Democratic National Convention address and was recruited to run for Senate two years later (Relman, 2020). Harris declared her candidacy in early 2015 and while campaigning advocated for women's reproductive rights protection, minimum wage increase, and criminal justice and immigration reforms. She won the 2026 election by a landslide.

Among other assignments, Harris served the Judiciary Committee and Select Committee on Intelligence while in office. She is known for questioning other members during proceedings. For instance, she drew significant attention after asking Jeff Sessions, the U.S. Attorney General, who was answering regarding allegations of the 2016 presidential elections where it was purported that Russian Intelligence was involved. After that, in 2020, Kamala Harris announced that she would seek the presidential nomination using the Democratic party (Relman, 2020). She was seen as the leading contender from the onset and got much attention during the primary debate. He, however, dropped from the race in December 2019, but maintained a high profile and led advocates following the death of George Floyd. This effort helped in silencing some critics who thought that she was silent about police misconduct as the attorney general. The most publicized and significant aspect of her career was when she was chosen by Joe Biden to be his running mate in the presidential elections becoming the first black woman to have such an appearance.

Occupations and Income

Some of the previous occupations that Kamala Harris has held include being Alameda County Deputy district attorney between 1990-1998. She was the district attorney of San Francisco (2004 – 2011), and between 2011 – 2016 she was California's, Attorney General. Lastly, she became the U.S. Senator of California in 2017, a post she has held to date (Harris, 2019). As the senator, Kamala Harris gets an annual salary of $174,000. She also has an author and a prosecutor. As such, Harris gets proceeds from book sales and in her legal practice.

Vote Margin

During the highly competitive 2016 U.S. Senator elections, Kamala Harris defeated Loretta Sanchez. He became the first South Asian American and second African-American lady to serve in the Senate of the United States. In this election, she won Harris garnered 7,542,753 votes which makes up 61.6 percent while Sanchez got 4,701,417 votes making up 38.4 percent of the total 12,244,170 votes that were cast.

Policies and How They Are Reflected in Ideologies

There are different policies that Kamala Harris has always advocated for. They include healthcare, education, immigration, climate change, campaign finance, abortion, paid leave, LGBTQ rights, guns, criminal justice reform, trade, foreign policy, taxes, and housing. Regardless, the most outstanding policy issues that Harris has been vocal on are healthcare and immigration, which are discussed herein.

Healthcare

Initially, Harris mentioned supporting the "Medicare for All" bill by Sen. Bernie Sanders but later reported that she was no longer comfortable with it in August. She drummed her support for a public option which she thought would be better than a single-payer system. She also led to the introduction of legislation that prevents maternal mortality and racial disparities and expands mental health care (Govtrack.com, 2020). First in July 2019, the Sen. of California presented a proposal in which the federal government should be permitted to set specific prescription medication prices meant to control and reduce American patients' costs of drugs. Harris also laid out a plan with a 10-year phase-in period that is similar to Medicare for All.

Immigration

The policy has, in different ways, been the representative's ideologies. Kamala Harris has reported that she would like to overhaul and 'reexamine' Immigration and Customs Enforcement potentially. She also supports the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program from Obama's tenure meant for the protection of young people who emigrated to the United States while they were still children. Harris does not support Trump's border wall as she terms it a "medieval Vanity project." She co-sponsored the Reunite Act for unifying migrant families separated and introduced a bill for limiting the ability of ICE to act in ways that can harm the migrant children who are unaccompanied (Govtrack.com, 2020). Another way that Harris ensured that the policy had been reflected in her ideologies is when she pushed to introduce legislation that would stop the construction of immigrant detention centers and increase oversight on how they operate. As such, it is evident that Harris has had many contributions to the American House of Representatives and in, more than one way, impacted the lives of the people, especially from the State of California.

References

BBC. (2020). Get to know Kamala Harris' family. Cbsnews.com. Retrieved Sept 10, 2020, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-family-parents-husband-children/.

Govtrack.com. (2020). California’s 52nd Congressional District - CA-52 Representatives & District Map - GovTrack.us. GovTrack.us. Retrieved 10 September 2020, from https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/CA/52#q=1480%20broadway%20san%20diego%20ca%2092101&marker_lng=-117.151102&marker_lat=32.716082.

Harris, K. (2019). The truths we hold. SAGE.

Relman, E. (2020). Kamala Harris is Joe Biden's vice-presidential running mate. Here's what the former presidential candidate ran on. Business Insider Africa. Retrieved Sept 10 2020, from https://africa.businessinsider.com/news/kamala-harris-is-joe-bidens-vice-presidential-running-mate-heres-what-the-former/6j1bhtg.