Biden picks Indian descent Harris for vice president

WASHINGTON: White House hopeful Joe Biden on Tuesday named Kamala Harris, a black US senator from California, as his choice for vice president, capping a months-long search for a Democratic partner to challenge President Donald Trump in November.

"I have the great honor to announce that I’ve picked @KamalaHarris -- a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants -- as my running mate," Biden, 77, said on Twitter. His team stated that the two Democrats will deliver remarks on Wednesday in Wilmington, Delaware as they kick off their campaign to defeat the Republican Trump. Harris was the first black attorney general of California, the first woman to hold the post, and the first woman of South Asian heritage to be elected to the US Senate. And with the 77-year-Biden expected to serve only a single term if elected, Harris would be favored to win the Democratic presidential nomination four years from now. That could give her a shot at more history-making -- as the first female president of the United States. "Senator Harris is a tenacious and trailblazing leader who will make a great partner on the campaign trail," said Susan Rice, who served as national security advisor under president Barack Obama and was also under consideration to be Biden´s running mate.

Since ending her White House run and endorsing Biden, Harris has stepped up her criticism of President Donald Trump on a host of issues -- from his handling of the COVID-19 outbreak to race to immigration. "Trump´s repeated racist rhetoric tries to place blame for his coronavirus failures on anyone but himself," she tweeted recently. "It´s dangerous and it´s wrong -- and has real life consequences for Asian Americans and Asian immigrants."

Harris´s own parents were immigrants to the United States -- her father from Jamaica, her mother from India -- and their lives and her own have in some ways embodied the American dream. Harris was born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California. Her father, Donald Harris, was an economics professor and her mother Shyamala Gopalan, was a breast cancer researcher. Her parents separated when Harris was about five years old and she and her sister Maya were raised by her mother, who died in 2009. She earned her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of Law, became a prosecutor and served two terms as a district attorney in San Francisco.

She was elected attorney general of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014, the same year she married Douglas Emhoff, a lawyer with two children from a previous marriage. Harris launched her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination on Martin Luther King Jr´s birthday in January 2019 at an event attended by 20,000 people in Oakland. She clashed with Biden during the first Democratic debate, chiding the former senator over his opposition to 1970s busing programs that forced integration of segregated schools.