Kamala Devi Harris (born October 20, 1964) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 49th vice president of the United States from 2021 to 2025 under President Joe Biden.She is the first female, first African American, and first Asian American vice president, and the highest-ranking female and Asian public official in U.S. history. She previously served as a United States senator from California (2017-2021), attorney general of California (2011-2017), and district attorney of San Francisco (2004-2011). She was the Democratic Party's nominee in the 2024 presidential election, which she lost to Republican nominee Donald Trump. Harris's career and public statements have generated extensive debate from multiple political perspectives, detailed in linked pages below.

Harris was born in Oakland, California. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was a biomedical researcher who emigrated from India to attend graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. Her father, Donald J. Harris, emigrated from Jamaica and earned a doctorate in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, later becoming a professor of economics at Stanford University. Harris graduated from Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and began her legal career in the Alameda County district attorney's office before moving to the San Francisco district attorney's office and the office of the city attorney of San Francisco.

A fuller account of her early life, legal career, and rise in California politics is available at kamala-harris-history.

In 2003, Harris became district attorney of San Francisco, and in 2010 was elected California attorney general, becoming the first woman and first African-American to hold that office. She represented California in the U.S. Senate from 2017 to 2021, where she served on the Judiciary, Intelligence, Homeland Security, and Budget committees.

Harris sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 but withdrew before the primaries began. She was selected as Joe Biden's running mate in August 2020 and took office as vice president on January 20, 2021. As vice president, she presided over an evenly divided Senate and cast 33 tie-breaking votes, more than any other vice president, including votes on the American Rescue Plan Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. The administration assigned her responsibility for addressing the root causes of migration from Central America and for advocating on abortion rights following the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision.

After Biden withdrew from the 2024 race in July 2024, Harris launched her own presidential campaign with his endorsement and selected Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate; they lost the general election to Trump and running mate JD Vance.

In July 2025, Harris announced she would not run for governor of California in the 2026 election, a decision widely interpreted as preserving the option of a third presidential campaign in 2028. Reports indicated she planned to remain publicly engaged through writing, a nonprofit organization, and campaigning for Democratic candidates ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. As of mid-2026, she has not announced a decision regarding a future presidential bid.

A detailed account of her tenure as vice president, her 2024 campaign, and the aftermath is available at kamala-harris-history.

No claim in this section reflects a matter of broad, independently-arrived-at scientific or scholarly consensus; assessments of Harris's record and prospects are matters of ongoing political debate and analysis rather than consensus findings.

Public assessments of Harris span a range of perspectives, including:

• Supportive/progressive viewpoint - holds that Harris's career represents meaningful, historic progress in the representation of women and racial and ethnic minorities in American government, and that her record as a prosecutor, senator, and vice president reflects substantive achievement on issues such as healthcare costs, infrastructure, and reproductive rights. See kamala-harris-supportive-viewpoint.
• Critical/progressive-left viewpoint - holds that Harris's record as a prosecutor was too punitive and inconsistent with progressive criminal-justice reform priorities, and that her vice presidency and 2024 campaign did not adequately distinguish her positions from those of the Biden administration. See kamala-harris-progressive-critical-viewpoint.
• Conservative/Republican viewpoint - holds that Harris was an ineffective vice president, particularly on border security, and that her 2024 candidacy and policy positions were too closely aligned with what this viewpoint characterizes as failed Biden-administration policies. See kamala-harris-conservative-viewpoint.
• Moderate/centrist Democratic viewpoint - holds that Harris's 2024 loss reflected broader dissatisfaction with incumbent parties globally and structural factors of a compressed campaign timeline rather than a referendum on her specific record, while also questioning her viability as a future national candidate. See kamala-harris-centrist-democratic-viewpoint.

• Disputes over the characterization and effectiveness of Harris's assignment to address migration from Central America. See kamala-harris-border-czar-controversy.
• Disagreement over the causes of her 2024 election loss, including the compressed campaign timeline following Biden's withdrawal and disputes over messaging strategy. See kamala-harris-2024-election-loss-controversy.
• Controversy surrounding Trump campaign advertising regarding her past statements on gender-affirming care for incarcerated transgender individuals. See kamala-harris-transgender-policy-advertising-controversy.

• kamala-harris-history
• kamala-harris-debate-2024-presidential-campaign-debate
• kamala-harris-debate-prosecutorial-record-debate
• Joe Biden
• 2024 United States Presidential Election
• united-states-vice-presidency

1. “Kamala Harris,” Wikipedia, last modified June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris.
2. “Vice presidency of Kamala Harris,” Wikipedia, last modified June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_presidency_of_Kamala_Harris.
3. “Kamala Harris,” Britannica, accessed June 28, 2026, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kamala-Harris.
4. Sara Burnett, “Former Vice President Harris will not run for California governor in 2026,” PBS NewsHour, July 30, 2025, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/former-vice-president-harris-will-not-run-for-california-governor-in-2026.
5. “Kamala Harris will not run for California governor in 2026,” CNN, July 30, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/30/politics/kamala-harris-will-not-run-for-california-governor.
6. “Kamala Harris says she won't run for California governor,” CBS News, July 30, 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-wont-run-california-governor/.
7. “Vice President Kamala Harris: Truth and Service to America,” The Dig at Howard University, accessed June 28, 2026, https://thedig.howard.edu/all-stories/vice-president-kamala-harris-truth-and-service-america.
8. “Kamala Harris,” Miller Center, University of Virginia, accessed June 28, 2026, https://millercenter.org/president/biden/essays/harris-2021-vicepresident.