What You Need to Know About Kamala Harris

The 2024 U.S. presidential election is set to be one of the closest races in history between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump. The U.S. has never had a woman as president, so Harris is attempting to break the glass ceiling that Hillary Clinton could not in 2016 against Trump.

But Harris’ candidacy is one of the most unique in history as she only became the candidate this summer after President Joe Biden made the tough decision to end his reelection bid weeks after a bad televised debate in June.

The Democrats have had to fast track Harris’ campaign, the selection of her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and to put out a policy and plan that will differentiate her as a new path forward rather than a continuation of the Biden administration.

With Election Day soon here on November 5 and early voting already underway in some states, here is everything you need to know about Kamala Harris, starting with the fact that she turns 60 years old on October 20.

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Kamala Harris: Political Experience

In her unique path to the White House, Harris is a California native with a background in criminal law. A Democrat, she is comfortable in referring to herself as a ‘prosecutor’ with the career experience to support it. In 2002, she was the first person of color to be elected as the District Attorney of San Francisco. She ran unopposed for a second term in 2007.

In 2010, Harris was elected as the Attorney General of California, the first woman and the first Black person to hold that position. She worked on criminal justice reform, consumer protection, and issues stemming from the Great Recession of 2008. She also worked on privacy rights with big tech companies and environmental factors.

A Senate seat opened in California, and Harris was a top favorite to fill it. She was elected as a California Senator in 2016, and her topics of focus included immigration, civil rights, and healthcare reform. She also earned a reputation for her prosecutor skills of questioning people during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, including the Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.

Presidential Campaign

In early 2019, Harris announced her desire to run for president. She joined a crowded group of Democrats, but she ended her campaign before the primaries in 2020. Joe Biden selected her to be his vice president, and the Biden-Harris ticket was victorious in the 2020 election, making her the first woman to ever be vice president.

Harris has served as vice president since January 20, 2021, and she only officially became the Democratic candidate for president in 2024 on August 5, or 3 months before Election Day.

In September, Harris took part in her only televised debate with former president Trump. The majority of viewers felt she won the debate that night with an impressive performance. But election odds and polls show she is in for a difficult path to the White House, and she is currently doing many interviews and appearances to get her message across before the election.

In the following sections, we will objectively state some of her policy stances and proposals with no analysis. It is up to the voter to decide who they want to support.

The Economy

The No. 1 issue for most voters is the economy. Inflation hit decade-highs during the Biden-Harris administration, and voters can feel it daily with their bank accounts as everything costs so much more now.

Harris wants to implement an “Opportunity Economy” that will strengthen the middle class by making life more affordable for everyday citizens. Here are some of the ways she plans to do so:

• Bring down costs on groceries and food by implementing the first federal price gouging ban on companies who do that with their food prices.
• She wants to improve our food supply chains to lower costs for consumers.
• She wants to provide first-time homebuyers with a $25,000 down payment on a new home.
• She wants to build 3 million more rental units and affordable homes.
• Parents of newborns will receive an additional $6,000 Child Tax Credit.
• She plans to keep Social Security funded by raising the taxes on billionaires and big corporations while lowering the taxes for families, working people, and anyone making under $400,000 per year.
• She supports a federal minimum wage of $15 per hour.
• She wants to lower the cost of energy by investing in clean US energy, which will create more jobs for Americans.
• Harris supported banning fracking in 2019, but as of 2024, she does not want to ban fracking.
• Harris wants to encourage small businesses and entrepreneurship by expanding the startup expense deduction from $5,000 to $50,000, giving new businesses the choice to use the deduction immediately or in the future.
• Harris wants education to be more affordable, including free community college for all students and higher pay for teachers.
• Trump proposed it first, but Harris has acknowledged looking into not taxing tips for service workers.

Healthcare

Healthcare is always an important issue for voters. Harris has several stances there that would continue the work she has done as vice president:

• She believes health care is a right, not a privilege.
• She wants to continue negotiating lower prescription drug prices such as $35 insulin caps.
• She wants to have Medicare involved in negotiating lower prices, and she is willing to take on Big Pharma.
• She wants to help fund Medicare by increasing taxes on the rich and big corporations who would have to pay their “fair share.”
• She supports the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and would like to see even more Americans covered by it.
• She wants to provide a family caregiver with short-term help when taking care of a loved one, and she’ll look to improve the hospital discharge process.
• She wants to look into removing medical debt from a person’s credit score.
• She wants to invest in making child card more affordable as well as improving paid family leave.

Very much in the subject of healthcare are abortion rights, access to birth control, and the ability to use IVF fertility treatments. Harris is strongly supportive of that being part of healthcare. She wants to bring abortion back to how it was in the 50-year period of Roe v. Wade before it was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022, which would again make it legal in all 50 states for women to have the right to choose to have an abortion.

Harris has said that eliminating the filibuster in the Senate would be a way to restore Roe, bypassing the usual threshold of needing 60 Senate votes to pass something.

Foreign Policy

During her vice presidency, Harris has been privy to the international crises going on between Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Palestine. While there are other issues with Iran and China to come, those two conflicts will be of special interest to the next President of the United States.

In the case of Ukraine-Russia, Harris supports continued aid to Ukraine as they fight off the invasion of Vladimir Putin’s forces. In February 2024, Harris said the following to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy: “President Biden and I will continue to work to secure the resources and weapons you need to succeed. We will be with you for as long as it takes.”

With Israel, Harris has largely followed Biden’s lead on that decades-long conflict. She wants a ceasefire, she wants the remaining hostages from last October 7th to be set free, and she is still a strong supporter of being an ally to Israel.

However, she was wavered a bit more than Biden when it comes to showing disdain for the civilian casualties suffered in Gaza during this war.

Immigration

Vice President Harris has been attacked for her perceived inaction at the southern border as record numbers of immigrants keep entering the country during her administration.

She does not support any mass deportation, nor does she believe in separating children from their parents. Harris wants to reform what she has called a broken immigration system.

Harris believes there should be a pathway to earned citizenship, which would change the status of undocumented immigrants to documented citizens. She supports stronger border security to make this work.

At the heart of Harris’ stance on immigration is a bipartisan border bill that failed to pass after Donald Trump told fellow Republicans to kill the bill. This has been verified by multiple sources.

That’s why Harris says she will sign the bipartisan border bill if she becomes president, and this bill would have deployed more security to detect fentanyl and other drugs while adding 1,500 border security agents to better protect the border.

Harris believes that by slowing down the entry of drugs into the country, that would have a positive impact on America’s problem with drug overdoses.

Climate

Harris believes in climate change as a serious problem that needs a global solution, and the United States would be a leader in that under her administration. She has supported the Green New Deal in the past.

Harris believes the Inflation Reduction Act that was passed during the Biden administration is lowering energy costs, creating many clean energy jobs, and wants to continue building a clean energy economy.

Crime

Harris is not a “Defund the Police” Democrat, but as a prosecutor, she has been in favor of police reform, including the banning of chokeholds and improved training of police.

Harris has supported gun control in the form of banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, implementing universal background checks, and supporting red-flag laws. She herself is a gun owner, and while she has supported a buy-back program for weapons, she is not looking to confiscate guns as people are protected by their 2nd Amendment rights.

Harris is generally opposed to the death penalty for capital punishment, but she has also been on record as saying it can vary by case.

Harris believes no one is above the law, including the idea that no president should be immune from crimes committed while in office. She also believes Supreme Court justices should follow ethics rules and will look into enforcing term limits instead of lifetime appointments in the highest court.

Other Issues

Finally, here are some other campaign promises or policy interests from the Harris-Walz campaign.

Harris would like to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, which would both make it easier for people to vote in elections and protect minority voters from discrimination.

Harris wants to pass the Equality Act to protect LGBTQ+ Americans from discrimination. This would be an update to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, adding gender identity and sexual orientation to the list of things the law prevents discrimination from. Things like race, religion, and sex are already protected.

While not providing any real details, Harris has said she would like to implement a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency. This happens at the state level in some places, but this would be a federal decision.

While opposed to it in the past, Harris said she would pass a federal legalization of recreational marijuana.