Kamala Harris becomes first prominent black American to enter 2020 race as Democratic senator uses Martin Luther King Jr. Day to join Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand in female-heavy field
- Harris was the first-ever female district attorney in San Francisco and the first black DA in all of California
- Six Democrats with national name-recognition are now officially in the field, including four women
- Harris claims she was unaware of sexual harassment allegations against one of her top aides who resigned in December over a 2016 lawsuit
- 2020 race will be a smash-mouth contest with Donald Trump, who may have to tread lightly around Harris to avoid being tagged as a racist campaigner
- Harris has said she will reject corporate PAC money
- Parents are from Jamaica and India; she identifies as African-American; her name, pronounced 'comma-la' means 'lotus flower' in Sanskrit
First-term Democratic Senator Kamala Harris of California, a rising party star and outspoken critic of President Donald Trump's immigration policies, launched her 2020 campaign for the White House on Monday.
'I love my country,' she said on ABC's 'Good Morning America' program.
'This is a moment in time that I feel a sense of responsibility to stand up and fight for the best of who we are.'
Harris, 54, enters the race with the potential advantage of being the Democratic candidate who looks most like the party's increasingly diverse base of young, female and minority voters.
'Let´s do this, together. Let´s claim our future. For ourselves, for our children, and for our country,' Harris said in a campaign video that was released to coincide with her television appearance. She is the first black candidate with any national name recognition to enter the race.
Kamala Harris of California launched her 2020 campaign for the White House on Monday in an appearance on ABC's Good Morning America
Harris was photographed getting a breakfast sandwich – an egg and cheese – at New York's Penn Station after announcing her run for president
The senator was the first-ever female district attorney in San Francisco and the first black DA in all of California
Other women already in the 2020 Democratic field (L to R): Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts
Her announcement falls on the U.S. Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader, she selected that day as a reminder of his fight.
'The thing about Dr. King that always inspires me is that he was aspirational. He was aspirational like our country is aspirational,' Harris said on GMA. 'We know that we've not yet reached those ideals. But our strength is that we fight to reach those ideals.'
'So today, the day we celebrate Dr. King, is a very special day for all of us as Americans and I'm honored to be able to make my announcement on the day we commemorate him.'
Harris' parents are immigrants from Jamaica and India; she identifies as African-American. Her first name, pronounced 'comma-la,' is from the Sanskrit word for 'lotus flower.'
The former California state attorney general has become popular with liberal activists for her tough questioning of Trump administration appointees and officials, including Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, during Senate hearings.
Sen. Harris is pictured Monday morning as she left the 'Good Morning America' studio in New York after making her presidential campaign announcement
Fundraising time: 24.99 tote bage and $29.99 hats and t-shirts went on sale Monday morning on a Kamala Harris website
Harris announced her candidacy on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday; her parents are immigrants from Jamaica and India. She's pictured with fellow California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 2017
She also has pulled no punches against Donald Trump as the month-old partial government shutdown continues,prolonged by a standoff over congressional funding for a border wall the president has promised for four years.
'The president at this point is holding the American people hostage over his vanity project,' she said last week during a 'Morning Joe' interview on MSNBC. 'That's what's happening. And this is a crisis of his own making.'
Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Ahrens said in a statement that Harris 'is arguably the least vetted Democrat running for president, but it’s already clear how unqualified and out-of-touch she is.'
'Her hometown paper says she was a bad manager as attorney general, and all she has to show for her brief time in the Senate is a radically liberal voting record.'
Her campaign will focus on reducing the high cost of living with a middle-class tax credit, pursuing immigration and criminal justice changes and a Medicare-for-all healthcare system. She has said she will reject corporate political action committee money.
Harris' campaign will be based in Baltimore, with a second office in Oakland, California. Her slogan will be 'For the People,' in a nod to Harris' roots as a prosecutor, aides said.
She will hold a launch rally in Oakland on Sunday, and also plans to travel to Columbia, S.C., on Friday to speak to the local chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, which she joined at Howard University.
Harris' campaign launch video is long on traditional political pleas including a pledge to work in the White House 'for our children'
The senator will hold a campaign rally in Oakland, California to launch her White House bid next Sunday
Harris will officially launch her White House bid at a rally in Oakland, California on January 27; a protester held a photo of her at the Women's March in Los Angeles on Saturday
As one of the earliest congressional critics of President Donald Trump's immigration policies, Harris has pushed hard for a deal to protect from deportation those immigrants who came to the country illegally as children, a group known as Dreamers.
Harris is the sixth Democrat to enter what is shaping up to be a crowded battle for the nomination to challenge Trump, the likely Republican candidate.
Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro, Maryland Rep. John Delaney, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, New York Sen. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachussets are already campaigning.
She and other Democrats will have to navigate the party's debate about whether an establishment figure who can appeal to centrist voters or a fresh face who can energize its increasingly diverse and progressive base offers the best chance to beat Trump in 2020.
Harris, who made history in 2016 as the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate from California, has embraced the party's diversity ahead of a Democratic nominating campaign where minority voters and liberal activists are expected to have an outsized voice.
Harris' slogan will be 'For the People,' in a nod to Harris' roots as a prosecutor, aides said
She has pushed back against critics of 'identity politics,' who she says are using the term as a pejorative to marginalize issues of race, gender and sexual orientation.
'It is used to try and shut us up,' Harris told a conference of liberal activists last summer.
The former San Francisco prosecutor drew notice when her rapid-fire grilling of Sessions during a 2017 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing caused him to complain.
'It makes me nervous,' Sessions said.
In September, she was among a handful of Democrats who aggressively questioned Kavanaugh at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing about his views on abortion and on the special counsel probe into potential Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
In the Senate, she has introduced a bill to give lower-income families cash payments and tax credits to help battle wage stagnation and rising housing costs, and has been a strong advocate of criminal justice reforms.
Harris launched a book tour in early January to promote a memoir, making a series of media appearances that helped bolster her visibility ahead of her campaign announcement.
Her campaign could be aided by the schedule for the state-by-state party nominating process that is scheduled to begin in February 2020.
The kickoff state of Iowa, which launched Barack Obama's presidential bid in 2008, has a strong base of liberal activists, and the race will then quickly move to more diverse states such as Nevada and South Carolina. Her home state of California also has moved up its primary to increase its influence.
But political foes will pore over her record in California, where she has come under scrutiny for declining as attorney general to prosecute OneWest, the bank once headed by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, for alleged foreclosure violations.
Harris, who voted against Mnuchin's confirmation as head of the Treasury, has said she 'followed the facts' in declining to prosecute.
She also has been criticized for saying she was not aware of sexual harassment allegations against one of her top aides, Larry Wallace, who resigned in December after a California newspaper asked him about a 2016 harassment lawsuit.
Xavier Becerra, who replaced Harris as California attorney general, settled the lawsuit in May 2017 for $400,000.
Among the allegations in the lawsuit was a claim that Wallace put an office printer under his desk and forced a female assistant to change the paper in it every day, sometimes making her crawl in dresses or skirts while other men watched.
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