Different generations, priorities and life stories

WASHINGTON — If Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is elected president in November, she is sure to cause a stir in the nation’s capital.

That doesn’t mean Harris would depart drastically from normal Democratic policy positions. Some of her former Senate colleagues told USA TODAY they expect to see her working in 2025 on many of the same areas where President Joe Biden has found success.

But it’s also unlikely that future President Harris — she would be 60 on Inauguration Day — would simply follow Biden’s lead. The two politicians come from different generations, have different life histories, are interested in different issues and bring different perspectives to the job.

“Quite frankly, we just had a race between two boring old men. And how is she any different? She’s not a boring old white old man,” Moe Vela, a former senior adviser to Biden, said in an interview.

As vice president, Harris’s job is to smooth over those differences and put Biden’s policies first. Winning the top job is a chance to put herself front and center, and that person is less Biden’s old Washington and more hip and credible, Vela said.

“I think we’re going to see a modernization of the presidency. With that generational change, I think we’re going to see less of that stiffness, if you will, or the formality of the Old Guard, and more of a relaxed style,” Vela said. “I love the fact that she has that roaring laugh. That she’s not trying to hold it back. She’s not trying to be who people want her to be. I think she actually has the beauty of being herself.”

The biggest difference between Harris and Biden may not be their policies or priorities but how they talk about them.

Abortion access was always going to be a central part of the Democratic 2024 campaign message. But “she’s talking about sex in a way that Joe Biden couldn’t,” said Susan Liebell, a political science professor at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Harris has held about 100 events since the U.S. Supreme Court settled Roe v. Wade in mid-2022. Biden has largely left that to his vice president, the first woman in U.S. history to hold the office, as a campaign issue.

“Harris uniquely highlights access to abortion and miscarriage care as freedom and portrays abortion bans as problematic government intervention that voters should reject,” Liebell said. “Unlike other Democrats, and especially Biden, Harris uses that language of freedom and government interference to defend access to reproductive health care. Unlike Biden, she connects freedom and abortion (without) hesitation.”

Jocelyn Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families Fund, said Harris’ personal experiences allow her to speak differently about improving economic opportunities for women.

“She’s a former prosecutor, but she’s also lived in this country as a woman of color, understanding both what that means in terms of being able to participate in the economy, what that means in terms of opportunity? And what that means in terms of the gaps that we’ve left unfilled for decades?” Frye said. “My expectation is to see her really try to do some unfinished business.”

Harris’ Short D.C. Career Compared to Biden

Harris spent four years in the U.S. Senate representing California before being sworn in as vice president in January 2021. She previously served as California’s attorney general and the district attorney for San Francisco. Biden has been in Washington for more than 50 years, after first winning a Senate seat from Delaware in the 1972 election.

“She doesn’t have the depth of policy that someone like Joe Biden has, but I think she surrounds herself with people who have that ability, that experience,” said Senator John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat who took office just weeks before Harris resigned her Senate seat to become vice president.

Hickenlooper added that Harris’ energy has an impact on those around her.

“She’s fast and she’s got a lot of spark, so I think we’ll see that. I think she’s got the energy and the spark that’s going to energize people,” he said.

Several former Harris aides said they keep in touch with them, often via text message, although that contact has waned somewhat since she became vice president.

“She’s very warm and charming and she remembers people and she really cares about them,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who has known Harris since she was district attorney in San Francisco.

Khanna recalled that Harris sent him a long, handwritten letter congratulating him on his wedding. When she made an unsuccessful run for the White House in 2019, she texted Khanna from the campaign trail, even though he had endorsed one of her primary opponents, Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont. Khanna said Harris tried to stay in touch with California’s congressional delegation, many of whom endorsed her in 2020.

He said that her charm and laugh make people underestimate her character.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who joined the Senate as a freshman in 2017 with Harris, said she would bring a “serious approach to the job” of the president while recognizing the importance of engaging with Congress and the public.

Harris is “extremely intelligent and capable” and a “good decision-maker” who will build the “best possible team” to implement her policy priorities, said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, who replaced Hillary Clinton in 2009 when her predecessor joined the Obama administration as secretary of state.

“I think she has a clear vision as president,” Gillibrand added, describing Harris’ plans to help middle-class families, implement universal pre-kindergarten and affordable child care, enact a national paid leave plan and grow the economy by helping small businesses and supporting innovation.

“I also think this is someone who will have a very thoughtful approach to national security,” Gillibrand said.

More: Harris compares herself to Obama as young voters get a chance to participate in historic first

On Capitol Hill, Harris served on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, earning a reputation as a sharp questioner who got to the heart of the issues at hand.

One particular moment caught national attention when Harris tried to press Brett Kavanaugh, then-Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, for his opinions on Roe v. Wade. After Kavanaugh repeatedly evaded the question, she pressed: “Can you think of any laws that give the government the authority to make decisions about a man’s body?”

John Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College, said it doesn’t matter that Harris doesn’t have decades of experience in Washington, especially during a presidential campaign against Trump.

“Even though she’s not a nerd, I think most people would bet money that her political knowledge far exceeds his,” Pitney said.

Republican Senator: Voters Say Harris ‘Not a Serious Person’

Republicans are already trying to pin the policies and failures of Biden’s term on Harris, calling her essentially a continuation of Biden or claiming that Harris will move even further left.

“Joe Biden assured us yesterday that the name at the top of the ticket has changed, but the mission has not changed at all,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday. “We know, Joe. Your bad policies are Kamala’s bad policies.”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who also joined the Senate the same year as Harris, said he thinks voters think Harris is “not a serious person.” He declined to say what he personally thinks of her.

“They rightly or wrongly believe that the vice president is a jerk. Rightly or wrongly believe that if you gave the vice president a dime for her thoughts, you would get change. Rightly or wrongly believe that she is a member of the Loon wing of the Democratic Party,” he said. “That is the cold, hard, political truth. And she has about 100 days to change the image that the American people have of her.”

More: Trump calls Harris ‘crazy’ at first rally since Biden left office

Vela disagreed. He said only “heavy old white men” and “MAGA” members didn’t take her seriously.

“You don’t get to be the attorney general of the largest state in the country if you’re not incredibly intelligent, fierce, articulate, intelligent, pragmatic. So, you know, I warn people who don’t take her seriously, they do so at their own peril,” added Vela, a former assistant to Vice President Biden in the Obama administration. “She can laugh a roaring laugh. But this woman is as tough as nails.”

“The Liberal from San Francisco”

At the Republican National Convention, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., called Harris a “full-blown leftist” and a “California liberal.”

“If you pull out of your pocket a list of the craziest radical leftists on the inside, the left-wing ideas of the Democratic Party, the Green New Deal, single-payer, everyone on the same government-run health insurance, and she’s for all of them,” said Rubio, a 53-year-old senator who lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential primary and was among the finalists to be his vice presidential running mate in 2024. “She’s not just for them rhetorically. She helped sponsor them, she voted for them.”

A well-known critic of the Republican Party, the “San Francisco liberal” will most likely follow Harris to the White House.

“Of course she’s a liberal, but you know, by San Francisco standards … it’s not like she was very left of the mainstream,” said Dan Morain, author of the biography “Kamala’s Way, An American Life.”

More: Is America ready for a Kamala Harris president as President Joe Biden steps down?

It’s a legacy Harris hasn’t tried to escape. She wore Sketchers with business suits in the Senate. She still roots for her hometown Golden State Warriors and has the endorsement of the team’s star, Stephen Curry. A California flag hung from the ceiling of Biden’s former campaign headquarters when she spoke there Monday after Biden withdrew.

Like Biden, who will always be linked to Scranton, Pennsylvania, Morain said “she is a daughter of California” and that she will bring that to the White House.

Harris’ parents, Shyamala Gopalan of India and Donald J. Harris of Jamaica, met as students at UC Berkeley. She tells stories of her parents pushing her in a stroller during the civil rights protests of the 1960s. Harris’ mother became a prominent cancer researcher, and her father a professor of economics at Stanford University.

“Yes, she’s a liberal from San Francisco, but it seems to me like a story that could only happen in California,” Morain said.

Pitney said that if elected president, he expects Harris to address criminal justice and civil rights issues because of her personal past.

“As someone who is both black and Asian, for her, the attacks on black people, the attacks on Asian Americans, it’s personal,” he said. “I’m not saying Biden doesn’t care about these things, because he does, but I think Harris would bring a lot more passion to it.”