Democratic US Senator Kamala Harris, standing outside of Oakland City Hall in California, on Sunday formally launched a campaign for the White House by presenting herself as the leader who can best unite a US that is at an “inflection point” and facing a critical question.
“We are here because the American Dream and our American democracy are under attack and on the line like never before,” Harris said. “And we are here at this moment in time because we must answer a fundamental question: Who are we? Who are we as Americans?”
“So, let’s answer that question to the world and each other right here and right now,” she said. “America, we are better than this.”
Photo: Reuters
Harris, a first-term US senator who announced her candidacy on Monday last week, rallied thousands of supporters at Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, where she served as a prosecutor before becoming California’s attorney general.
Harris invoked the speech that late US senator Robert F. Kennedy gave in 1968, when he announced that he would challenge then-US president Lyndon B. Johnson.
She quoted Kennedy as saying that “at stake is not simply the leadership of our party and even our country, it is our right to moral leadership of this planet.”
“So today I say to you, my friends: These are not ordinary times, and this will not be an ordinary election, but this is our America,” she said.
If Harris ultimately wins the White House, she would be the first African-American woman and first person of Asian descent to be president.
The daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, Harris said that as she and her sister, Maya Harris, grew up in the East Bay, they were “raised by a community with a deep belief in the promise of our country, and a deep understanding of the parts of that promise that still remain unfulfilled.”
She has attributed her decision to become a lawyer and a prosecutor to her upbringing, and said that she and her sister were “raised to believe that public service is a noble cause and the fight for justice is everyone’s responsibility.”
Harris’ launch has drawn heavily on symbolism. She officially entered the race on Martin Luther King Jr Day.
Campaign aides said that she has drawn inspiration from former US congresswoman Shirley Chisholm from New York, who in 1972 became the first black woman from a major party to run for president.
Michael Ahrens, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said it was “fitting” that Harris chose “the most liberal district in deep-blue California to launch her campaign.”
Harris’ campaign is expected to highlight her career as a prosecutor as part of her rationale for seeking the presidency. Harris was the first black woman elected district attorney in California, as well as the first woman, first African-American and first Asian-American to hold that job.
She said that she has long known the criminal justice system to be “deeply flawed,” but that she also knew the “profound impact law enforcement has on people’s lives and its responsibility to give them safety and dignity.”
Harris is among the first major Democrats to jump into what is expected to be a crowded presidential contest next year.
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