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- By Levi Rickert
Native Vote 2024. The torch has been passed to a new generation within Democratic National Party as Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, secured the Democratic presidential nomination on Friday. The leadership change came as the result of President Joe Biden, 81, withdrawing his name from consideration on Sunday, July 21, 2024.
The announcement was made by Democratic National Committee Chair Jaimie Harris on Friday afternoon on virtual call after a virtual vote was taken before the party’s convention later this month in Chicago.
Vice President Harris joined the call and said she “will officially accept your nomination next week, once the virtual campaign is closed. But already, I’m happy to know that we have enough delegates to secure the nomination.”
Harris added the Democratic Party is united and it she will celebrate the historic moment with the party’s delegates in Chicago.
According to party rules, a candidate needs the support of more than 1,976 delegates to earn the nomination. Harris received unanimous support from California, her home state.
“As a daughter of California, I am proud that my home state’s delegation helped put our campaign over the top,” Harris said.
Born in Oakland, California to an Asian Indian mother and a Black Jamaican father. Her parents met when they were civil rights activists. Harris said they would take her to civil rights rallies in a stroller when she was a toddler.
Harris was elected in 2004 as the district attorney of San Francisco She also established the office’s environmental justice unit and created a ground-breaking program to provide first-time drug offenders with the opportunity to earn a high school degree and find employment, which the U.S. Department of Justice designated as a national model of innovation for law enforcement. And years earlier, in 1990, she joined the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office where she specialized in prosecuting child sexual assault cases.
Harris previously served as California’s Attorney General from 2011 to 2017, and as U.S. Senator from 2017 to 2021. Pundits named several former state attorneys general, now governors of key swing states, as potential running mate choices.
Harris, a former prosecutor, will face the Republican Party’s nominee former President Donald J. Trump, who was convicted of 34 criminal charges in New York in June.
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