'A daughter of California': How a Kamala Harris presidency could shake things up
WASHINGTON - If elected president in November, presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is bound to shake things up in the nation's capital.
That's not to say Harris would stray dramatically from normal Democratic policy stances. Some of her former Senate colleagues told USA TODAY that they'd expect come 2025 that they'd be working in many of the same areas where President Joe Biden was successful.
But there's also little chance a future President Harris - she'd be 60-years-old on Inauguration Day - would simply follow Biden's lead. The two politicians are from different generations, have different life stories, care about different issues and bring different perspectives to the job.
"Honestly, we just had a race between two stodgy old men. And so how is she going to be different? She's not a stodgy old white man," Moe Vela, a former senior advisor to Biden, said in an interview.
As vice president, Harris' job is to soften those differences and put Biden's policies first. Winning the top job is a chance to put herself out front and center, and that person is less Biden's Old Washington and more hip and relatable, Vela said.
"I think what we're going to see is a modernization of the presidency. With this generational change, I think we're going to see less of that rigidity, if you will, or that formal Old Guard, and more of a relaxed style," Vela said. "I love the fact that she lets out that bellowed laugh. That she's not trying to hold it back. She's not trying to be what people want her to be. I think she's actually has the beauty of being herself."
The biggest difference between Harris and Biden might not be policy or priorities but instead how they talk about them.
Abortion access was always expected to be a central part of the Democrats' 2024 campaign message. But "she talks about sex in a way Joe Biden could not," said Susan Liebell, a political science professor at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Harris has hosted about 100 events since the U.S. Supreme Court in mid-2022 ended Roe v. Wade. Biden has largely left it to his VP, the first woman in U.S. history to hold the job, as a campaign issue.
"Harris uniquely emphasizes access to abortion and miscarriage care as freedom and frames abortion bans as problematic government intervention that voters should reject," Liebell said. "Unlike other Democrats and especially Biden, Harris uses this language of liberty and government interference to defend access to reproductive health care. Unlike Biden, she links freedom and abortion [without] any hesitation."
Jocelyn Frye, President of the National Partnership for Women & Families Fund, said Harris' personal experiences also allow her to speak differently about improving economic opportunities for women.
"She is a former prosecutor, but also, she's lived in this country, as a woman of color, understanding both what that means in terms of the ability to participate in the economy, what does that mean in terms of opportunity? And what does that mean, in terms of what gaps that we have left unfilled for decades?" Frye said. "My expectation is that I would see her really trying to do some unfinished business."
Harris' short D.C. career compared to Biden
Harris spent four years in the U.S. Senate representing California before being sworn in as vice president in January 2021. She previously served as California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney. Biden has been in Washington for more than 50 years after first winning his Senate seat from Delaware in the 1972 elections.
"She doesn’t have the depth of policy that someone like Joe Biden does, but I think she surrounds herself with people who have that capacity, that experience,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat who took office just a couple of weeks before Harris' resigned her Senate seat to become vice president.
Hickenlooper added that Harris' energy affects those around her.
“She’s quick and she’s got a lot of spark to her, so I think we’ll see that. I think she’s got an energy and a spark that’s going to energize people," he said.
Several of Harris' former colleagues said she stays in touch, often through text messages, though that has dropped off a bit since she's been vice president.
"She's very warm and she's very charming and she remembers people and she really cares about people," said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who has known Harris since she was San Francisco district attorney.
Khanna recalled Harris sending a lengthy handwritten letter congratulating him on getting married. While she was making her own ultimately unsuccessful run for the White House in 2019, she texted Khanna from the campaign trail even though he supported one of her primary opponents, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Khanna said Harris has taken pains to stay in touch with the California congressional delegation, many of whom endorsed her in 2020.
He said her charm and laughter makes people underestimate her grit.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who joined the Senate as a freshman in 2017 alongside Harris, said she would bring "a seriousness to the job" of president while recognizing the importance of engagement with Congress and the public.
Harris is "extremely smart and capable" and "a good decision-maker" who will build "the best team possible" to implement her policy priorities, said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who replaced Hillary Clinton in 2009 when her predecessor joined the Obama administration as secretary of state.
"I think she has a strong vision as president," added Gillibrand in describing Harris' plans to help middle class families, to implement universal preschool and affordable daycare, to pass a national paid leave plan, and to grow the economy by helping small businesses and supporting innovation.
"I also think she's somebody who is going to have a very thoughtful approach towards national security," Gillibrand said.
More:Harris drawing parallels to Obama as young voters eye chance to be part of historic first
On Capitol Hill, Harris served on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee. She earned a reputation as a shrewd questioner who got to the root of issues at hand.
One particular moment drew national attention when Harris tried to pin down Brett Kavanaugh, then a Donald Trump Supreme Court justice nominee, over his opinions of Roe v. Wade. After Kavanaugh dodged repeatedly, she pressed, "Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?”
John Pitney, a Claremont McKenna College politics professor said it doesn't matter that Harris doesn't have decades of experience in Washington, especially during a presidential campaign against Trump.
"Even though she's not a wonk, I think most people would bet money that her policy knowledge greatly exceeds his," Pitney said.
GOP senator: Voters think Harris is 'not a serious person'
Republicans are already working to paste Harris with the policies and failures of Biden's term, essentially calling her a continuation of Biden or that Harris would go even further to the left.
"Joe Biden reassured us yesterday that the name is changed on the top of the ticket, but the mission hasn’t changed at all,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said on X, formerly Twitter, Tuesday. "We know, Joe. Your bad policies are Kamala’s bad policies."
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who also joined the Senate the same year as Harris, said he thinks voters believe that Harris is "not a serious person." He declined to say what he personally thinks of her.
"They think fairly or unfairly that the vice president is a ding dong. They think fairly or unfairly that if you gave the vice president a penny for her thoughts you'd get back change. They think fairly or unfairly that she is a member of the loon wing of the Democratic Party," he said. "That is the cold, hard, political truth. And she's got about 100 days to turn that image that the American people have formed of her around."
More:Trump calls Harris a 'lunatic' in first rally since Biden's exit
Vela disagreed. He said only "stodgy old white men" and "MAGA" members aren't taking her seriously.
"You're not the attorney general of the largest state of this nation without being wicked smart, fierce, articulate, intelligent, pragmatic. So you know, I caution people who don't take her seriously, do it at your own peril," added Vela, a former Biden vice presidential aide during the Obama administration. "She may laugh with a bellow laugh. But this woman's tough as nails."
A 'San Francisco liberal'
At the Republican National Convention, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla, called Harris a "full blown left winger" and a "California liberal."
"If you pull out a list from your pocket of like the craziest radicalist left of center, leftist ideas of the Democratic Party, green New Deal, single payer, everybody on the same health insurance run by the government, and she's for all of them," said Rubio, the 53-year-old senator who lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential primaries and was among the finalists to be his VP pick in 2024. "She's not just for them rhetorically. She's helped sponsor them, she's voted for them."
The well-tread GOP criticism "San Francisco liberal" would likely follow Harris to the White House.
"Of course, she's a liberal, but, you know, by San Francisco standards... it's not as if she was way to the left of the mainstream," said Dan Morain, author of biography "Kamala's Way, An American Life."
More:As President Joe Biden steps aside, is America ready for President Kamala Harris?
It's a legacy Harris has made no effort to run from. She wore Sketchers with business suits in the Senate. She still cheers on her homestate Golden State Warriors and has the endorsement of the team's star player, Stephen Curry. A California flag hung from the ceiling of the former Biden campaign headquarters when she spoke there Monday after Biden dropped out.
Like Biden, who will always be tied to Scranton, Penn., Morain said, "she's a daughter of California," and she'll bring that to the White House.
Harris’ parents, Shyamala Gopalan from India and Donald J. Harris from Jamaica, met as students at UC Berkeley. She tells stories of her parents pushing her in a stroller during the Civil Rights protests in the 1960s. Harris' mother became a prominent cancer researcher, her father an economics professor at Stanford University.
"So, yeah, she's a San Francisco liberal, but it seems to me, it's a story that really only could have happened in California," Morain said.
If she's elected president, Pitney said he expects Harris will lean into criminal justice and civil right issues because of that personal history.
"As someone who's both Black and Asian, for her the assaults on black people, assaults on Asian Americans, are personal," he said. "Not to say that Biden doesn't care about those things, he does, but I think Harris would bring a lot more passion to that."