Her mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan Harris, saved for years to buy a home for her family, finally achieving that dream when Kamala was a teenager. Her mother also taught her the value of hard work, bringing Kamala to her breast cancer research lab and showing her how to clean test tubes as a child. Kamala worked a summer job at a McDonald’s while attending Howard University for her undergraduate degree. At a young age, Kamala decided she wanted to pursue a career fighting for vulnerable people after a close friend confided in her that she was experiencing abuse at home.
Kamala became a prosecutor, specializing in cases of child sexual abuse. After winning election as district attorney, she took on issues like domestic violence and gun violence, increased the conviction rate to put rapists and murderers behind bars, and created innovative programs to make sure low-level, non-violent offenders did not commit crime again and were able to get their lives back on track.
As attorney general of a border state and chief law enforcement officer of the largest state in the nation, Kamala cracked down on transnational criminal organizations trafficking drugs and vulnerable migrants across the border. She took on the big banks and held them accountable for preying on homeowners, winning $20 billion for Americans about to lose their homes during the Great Recession. And she went after predatory for-profit colleges, winning a $1.1 billion settlement for students and veterans who got scammed. She made corporate polluters pay over $1 billion to clean up illegally contaminated communities and secured more than $230 million for the people from Big Pharma for their deceptive and dangerous practices.
As a United States Senator, Kamala championed legislation to raise wages and bring down costs for families — on health care, housing, child care, college, and more. She created a new program that invested billions of dollars to expand access to capital for small businesses and entrepreneurs in underserved communities. She fought for the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water, the freedom to vote, and common sense policies to keep our communities safe. She led the push to invest in our nation’s infrastructure, introducing legislation on clean water, lead pipes, and drought and wildfire resilience — all later passed into law as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Kamala served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, working across the aisle to protect our national security. And she grilled Donald Trump nominees like Jeff Sessions and Brett Kavanaugh to get answers for the American people.
As Vice President, Kamala is leading the fight to bring down health care costs. She cast the deciding vote to lower drug prices and cap insulin prices for our seniors and is working to expand that policy for all Americans. She oversees the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, working tirelessly to address the epidemic of gun violence, and she advances Americaʼs interests on the world stage, taking on authoritarians and dictators abroad while strengthening NATO.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Kamala has led the fight to restore reproductive freedom, crisscrossing the country to stand up for women’s access to health care, supporting health care providers, and shining a light on the crisis. She is the first sitting Vice President to visit a reproductive health care clinic.
In 2013, her best friend set her up on a blind date with Douglas Emhoff. As Doug often says, it was love at first sight. The next year, they married. Their large blended family includes their children, Ella and Cole. On Sundays, they can all be found in the kitchen together making family dinner (Doug picks the music).
Kamala Harris believes in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead. She knows that prices are still too high — and as president, her top economic priority will be to continue lowering costs. She will go after greedy health insurance companies, make Big Pharma reduce their drug prices, take on corporate landlords to cap unfair rents, and hold corporations accountable for price gouging that jacks up prices for American families. She’ll provide first-time homebuyers with $25,000 to help with the down payment on a new home, so that like her mom, more Americans can finally achieve the dream of owning a home for their families.
Sheʼll strengthen Social Security and Medicare so that people can get the benefits they’ve earned, ensuring that people who have worked their whole lives can retire with dignity. She’ll also lower taxes for middle-class families while making the rich pay their fair share, so that no family earning less than $400,000 per year has to pay a penny more in taxes.
Kamala believes that health care decisions belong to women and their doctors, not politicians or the government. As president, she’ll continue to lead the fight to restore reproductive freedom and protect women’s access to health care, with a new law that guarantees the right to an abortion nationwide.
Kamala will work across the aisle to bring real solutions to the table to both protect our national security and uphold our values as a nation of immigrants. And she’ll revive and pass the kind of strong, bipartisan border enforcement bill that Donald Trump blocked.
