when did kamala harris become attorney general

by Prof. Furman Zemlak II 8 min read

She was elected Attorney General of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. Harris served as the junior United States senator from California from 2017 to 2021.

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Overview

Attorney General of California (2011–2017)

Nearly two years before the 2010 election, Harris announced she planned to run. She also stated she would run only if then-Attorney General Jerry Brown did not seek re-election for that position. Brown instead chose to run for governor and Harris consolidated support from prominent California Democrats. Both of California's senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, House Speaker Nanc…

Early life, family and education (1964–1990)

Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California, on October 20, 1964. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a Tamil Indian biologist, whose work on the progesterone receptor gene stimulated advances in breast cancer research, had arrived in the United States from India in 1958 as a 19-year-old graduate student in nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley; Gopalan r…

Early career (1990–2004)

In 1990, Harris was hired as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California, where she was described as "an able prosecutor on the way up". In 1994, Speaker of the California Assembly Willie Brown, who was then dating Harris, appointed her to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and later to the California Medical Assistance Commission. Harris took a six-month leave of absence in 1994 from her duties, then afterward resumed as prosecutor during the years she sa…

District Attorney of San Francisco (2004–2011)

In 2002, Harris prepared to run for District Attorney of San Francisco against Hallinan (the incumbent) and Bill Fazio. Harris was the least-known of the three candidates but persuaded the Central Committee to withhold its endorsement from Hallinan. Harris and Hallinan advanced to the general election runoff with 33 and 37 percent of the vote, respectively.

U.S. Senate (2017–2021)

After more than 20 years as a U.S. Senator from California, Senator Barbara Boxer announced in January 2015 that she would not run for reelection in 2016. Harris announced her candidacy for the Senate seat the following week. Harris was a top contender from the beginning of her campaign.
The 2016 California Senate election used California's new top-two primary for…

2020 presidential election (2019–2020)

Harris had been considered a top contender and potential frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president. In June 2018, she was quoted as "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 United St…

Vice presidency (2021–present)

Following the election of Joe Biden as U.S. president in the 2020 election, Harris assumed office as vice president of the United States on January 20, 2021. She is the United States' first female vice president, the highest-ranking female elected official in U.S. history, and the first African-American and first Asian-American vice president. She is also the second person of color to hold the post…