California Attorney General Kamala Harris Plans to be America’s Next Black Female Senator
By Donna M. Owens, ESSENCE.com – [California Attorney General Kamala] Harris leaped into the Senate race last year after political legend Barbara Boxer announced plans to retire in 2016 after 23 years in the chamber. The Democrat Harris became an early front-runner in a crowded field of potential candidates vying for the seat.
While there are currently 20 Black women in Congress, all in the House of Representatives, there hasn’t been an African-American female senator since Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois became the first more than two decades ago. She served one term, from 1993 to 1999, but lost a reelection bid.
Today, there are only two African-American men in the 100-member Senate: Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) and Cory Booker (D-New Jersey). Harris told me during our sit-down that the senator from the Garden State was among those who encouraged her to run. “Kamala is one of the most exciting leaders in the country right now,” Booker tells ESSENCE. “She brings an incredible combination of life experiences and skills that are sorely needed on issues like prison reform, empowering victims, addiction and violence. And she has actually run [and managed] something, and shown herself to be a creative problem solver.”
Harris’s Senate platform is extensive. If elected, she vows to work on legislation to create long-term growth and prosperity “that lifts families on every rung of the economic ladder.” She would seek ways to foster innovation, invest in job training, and help small businesses and start-ups. Harris also pledges to fight “to ensure our children have a fair shot in school and in life by passing universal prekindergarten legislation,” and to save young adults from crushing student loan debt. The A.G.’s goal is to create good-paying jobs and enact family leave and equal pay policies that benefit working families. “This issue is important to all, but for Black women, poor women, working women, it’s about economic empowerment,” she says. Read the full article at Essence.com.
