Senator Kamala Harris Announces Her Run For President In 2020

The California senator announced her bid on Martin Luther King Jr. Day with the campaign theme “For the people

Data News Weekly Staff Edited Report

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) announced Monday that she will be running for president in 2020.

The theme of Harris’ campaign will be “For the people,” and she is expected to formally announce her candidacy in a speech on Jan. 27 in Oakland, California.

The senator previewed her announcement in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday, and her campaign released a short introductory video.

“I love my country,” Harris told ABC. “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.”

She added: “My entire career has been focused on keeping people safe. It is probably one of the things that motivates me more than anything else. And when I look at this moment in time, I know that the American people deserve to have someone who is going to fight for them.”

Harris recently published a memoir, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, that dove into many of the messages she is expected to focus on during her campaign. In the book, she describes her upbringing in Oakland as a daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, and her personal history going from prosecutor to district attorney to senator.

According to a Harris aide, her priorities in the campaign will be addressing the cost of living, pushing for a more just society, expanding access to better quality of life and restoring dignity and responsibility to public office. Issues like immigration, education and criminal justice reform are expected to feature prominently in her agenda.

Elected to the Senate in 2016, Harris made history as the first Indian-American to serve in the body, as well as just the second black woman. As attorney general of California for six years, she was the first woman, African-American and Indian-American in that role.

Harris announced her presidential bid on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and her campaign’s logo and color scheme draw inspiration from the 1972 presidential bid of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to run for the presidency from one of the major parties.

“My parents were very active in the civil rights movement, and that’s the language that I grew up hearing,” Harris told ABC on Monday. “It was about a belief that we are a country that was founded on noble ideals and we are the best of who we are when we fight to achieve those ideals.”

“The thing about Dr. King that always inspires me is he was aspirational,” she continued. “He was aspirational like our country is aspirational. We know that we have not yet reached those ideals, but our strength is that we fight to reach those ideals.”

Harris is expected to make her first campaign stop in one of the early states on Friday, in Columbia, South Carolina. She is slated to speak at the Pink Ice Gala, a major event held by the local chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Harris was a member of the sorority during her time at Howard University.

Recommended For You.

Stacy M. Brown NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent President Joe Biden delivered a resounding State of the Union Address, resonating with
About LA Data News 1947 Articles
Lighting The Road To The Future

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*