Kamala Harris served as the 49th vice president of the United States during the presidency of Joe Biden from January 20, 2021, to January 20, 2025. Harris, a member of the Democratic Party who previously served as the junior U.S. senator representing California from 2017 to 2021, was selected as former vice president Biden's running mate and took office following their victory in the 2020 presidential election over Republican incumbent president Donald Trump and vice president Mike Pence. In her role as President of the United States Senate, she cast more tie-breaking votes than any other vice president. Harris was the first woman vice president, Black American vice president, and Asian American vice president.
The Biden-Harris transition was marked by Pence's refusal to obey Trump's orders to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election during the January 6, 2021 United States Capitol attack. Alongside Harris' vice presidency, the Democratic Party also held their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate during the 117th U.S. Congress following the 2020 elections, attained an overall federal government trifecta. Presiding over an evenly split U.S. Senate upon entering office, Harris cast a record 33 tie-breaking votes to confirm presidential appointments and pass the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
In July 2024, after Biden ultimately withdrew his candidacy for re-election, Harris immediately launched her own presidential campaign with his endorsement. She later became the nominee and selected Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate. They lost the 2024 election to the Republican ticket of former president Trump and his running mate, junior Ohio senator JD Vance. As vice president in her capacity as the president of the Senate, Harris oversaw the certification of Trump and Vance as the winners of the election on January 6, 2025. Biden and Harris were succeeded in office by Trump and Vance on January 20, 2025.
2020 presidential election Presidential campaign
Harris had been considered a top contender and potential front-runner for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president. In June 2018, she said she was "not ruling it out". In July 2018, it was announced that she would publish a memoir, a sign of a possible run. On January 21, 2019, Harris officially announced her candidacy for president of the United States in the 2020 presidential election. In the first 24hours after her announcement, she tied a record set by Bernie Sanders in 2016 for the most donations raised in the day after an announcement. More than 20,000 people attended her campaign launch event in her hometown of Oakland, California, on January 27, according to a police estimate.
During the first Democratic presidential debate in June 2019, Harris scolded former vice president Joe Biden for "hurtful" remarks he made, speaking fondly of senators who opposed integration efforts in the 1970s and working with them to oppose mandatory school bussing. Harris's support rose by between six and nine points in polls after that debate. In the second debate in August, Biden and Representative Tulsi Gabbard confronted Harris over her record as attorney general. The San Jose Mercury News assessed that some of Gabbard's and Biden's accusations were on point, such as blocking the DNA testing of a death row inmate, while others did not withstand scrutiny. In the immediate aftermath of the debate, Harris fell in the polls. Over the next few months her poll numbers fell to the low single digits. Harris faced criticism from reformers for tough-on-crime policies she pursued while she was California's attorney general. In 2014, she defended California's death penalty in court.
Before and during her presidential campaign, an online informal organization using the hashtag #KHive formed to support Harris's candidacy and defend her from racist and sexist attacks. According to the Daily Dot, Joy Reid first used the term in an August 2017 tweet saying "@DrJasonJohnson @ZerlinaMaxwell and I had a meeting and decided it's called the K-Hive."
On December 3, 2019, Harris withdrew from the 2020 presidential election, citing a shortage of funds. In March 2020, she endorsed Joe Biden for president.
Vice presidential campaign
In May 2019, senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus endorsed the idea of a Biden–Harris ticket. In late February 2020, Biden won a landslide victory in the 2020 South Carolina Democratic primary with the endorsement of House whip Jim Clyburn, with more victories on Super Tuesday. In early March, Clyburn suggested Biden choose a black woman as a running mate, saying, "African American women needed to be rewarded for their loyalty". In March, Biden committed to choosing a woman for his running mate.
On April 17, 2020, Harris responded to media speculation and said she "would be honored" to be Biden's running mate. In late May, in relation to the murder of George Floyd and ensuing protests and demonstrations, Biden faced renewed calls to select a black woman as his running mate, highlighting the law enforcement credentials of Harris and Val Demings.
On June 12, The New York Times reported that Harris was emerging as the front-runner to be Biden's running mate, as she was the only African American woman with the political experience typical of vice presidents. On June 26, CNN reported that more than a dozen people close to the Biden search process considered Harris one of Biden's top four contenders, along with Elizabeth Warren, Val Demings, and Keisha Lance Bottoms.
On August 11, 2020, Biden announced he had chosen Harris. She was the first African American, the first Indian American, and the third woman after Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin to be the vice-presidential nominee on a major-party ticket. Harris is also the first resident of the Western United States to appear on the Democratic Party's national ticket.
Harris became the vice president–elect after Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
Vice presidency (2021–2025)
Harris was sworn in as vice president on 11:40 a.m. on January 20, 2021, by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She is the United States' first woman vice president, first African-American vice president, and first Asian-American vice president. Harris is the third person with acknowledged non-European ancestry to become president or vice president.
Her first act as vice president was to swear in three new senators: Alex Padilla (her successor in the Senate) and Georgia senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
On November 19, 2021, Harris served as acting president from 10:10 to 11:35 am EST while Biden underwent a colonoscopy. She was the first woman, and the third person overall, to assume the powers and duties of the presidency as acting president of the United States.
Senate presidency As early as December 2021, Harris was identified as playing a pivotal role in the Biden administration owing to her tie-breaking vote in the evenly divided Senate as well as her being the presumed front-runner in 2024 if Biden did not seek reelection.
When Harris took office, the 117th Congress's Senate was divided 50–50 between Republicans and Democrats; this meant that she was often called upon to exercise her power to cast tie-breaking votes as president of the Senate.
List of tie-breaking votes cast by Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris cast a record 33 tie-breaking votes during her vice presidency. Harris cast her first two tie-breaking votes on February 5. In February and March, Harris's tie-breaking votes were required to pass the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 stimulus package Biden proposed, since no Senate Republicans voted for it. On July 20, Harris broke Mike Pence's record for tie-breaking votes in the first year of a vice presidency when she cast the seventh tie-breaking vote in her first six months. She cast 13 tie-breaking votes during her first year in office, the most tie-breaking votes in a single year in U.S. history, surpassing John Adams, who cast 12 in 1790. On December 5, 2023, Harris broke the record for the most tie-breaking votes cast by a vice president, casting her 32nd vote, exceeding John C. Calhoun, who cast 31 votes during his nearly eight years in office. She would break her own record for the most tie-breaking votes cast by a vice president when she voted to confirm Loren AliKhan to a judgeship. This was the 33rd and final tie-breaking vote Harris cast.