From SF DA to the White House: KQED's Coverage of Kamala Harris

On Sunday, President Joe Biden announced that he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race — and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.

While the next steps in this process aren’t exactly clear, one thing’s for certain: The Oakland-born, Berkeley-raised Harris’ new role in the presidential race means that the Bay Area — and California — is now even more in the spotlight.

But at KQED News, we’ve covered Harris’ long career in Bay Area and state politics for years. Keep reading to browse a selection of our archive coverage of her accomplishments — and controversies — from her time before the White House.

And if you want to first catch up on the events that led to Biden dropping out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsing Harris, you can:

• Listen to our two-hour KQED Forum special: Part 1: The Bay Area view and Part 2: The California view.
• Hear KQED’s Marisa Lagos, Scott Shafer and Guy Marzorati — who have covered Harris’ career for years — discuss events in this special episode of our Political Breakdown podcast.
• Read about what happens next and what you might expect at the Democratic National Convention now that Biden has stepped down from the nomination.

Kamala Harris’ Bay Area background and California record

Harris was San Francisco district attorney from 2004–10, California attorney general from 2011–17 and United States senator for California from 2017–21. In this explainer for KQED, CalMatters’ Ben Christopher gives an in-depth overview of Harris’ “California story” that led her to the White House.

On an even more local level, in 2020, KQED’s The Bay podcast explored Harris’ time in San Francisco specifically and looked at how this period of her career — and her relationship with the justice system — will always, to some degree, define her, for better or worse. (In 2019, this story explored Harris’ “complicated record in criminal justice” as San Francisco DA.)

In January 2017, Harris — who had just won Barbara Boxer’s Senate seat — spoke to KQED Newsroom on camera about the new Trump administration and the issues she intended to pursue on Capitol Hill.

In 2019, KQED followed Harris, Nancy Pelosi and Amy Klobuchar to the California Democratic Party Convention in San Francisco, where Harris told the assembled Women’s Caucus that the Republican attack on women’s rights was driven by “people who are supposed to be leaders who do not understand the value of women’s brains and women’s agency and women’s strength and women’s ability to make their own decisions about their own bodies.” Earlier that year, Harris had also spoken out in favor of decriminalizing sex work between consenting adults.

In 2020, California politicians told KQED about their reactions to Harris being made Biden’s vice president pick, and KQED Forum explored what Harris’ vice presidency would mean for California and the U.S. as a whole.

Harris’ cultural resonance and all the ways she’s been ‘first’

In 2020, Kamala Harris became the first woman, the first Black woman and the first South Asian woman to be elected to vice president.

In the leadup to the election, KQED’s Lakshmi Sarah examined Harris’ “auntie status — as an elder female authority figure worthy of respect” and explored how a design depicting Harris as auntie made its way onto a sweatshirt as part of an effort targeting South Asian voters. Adhiti Bandlamudi also reported on how Harris’ identity posed an often-complex discussion for Indian Americans in the Bay Area, where some felt that as Biden’s running mate, Harris was more reticent to talk about her South Asian heritage.

In 2021, KQED’s California Report Magazine spoke to 6-year-old San Franciscan Sumaya Kaur Sidibe about how Harris’ mixed heritage made her feel seen as she watched the Biden-Harris inauguration: “It felt great to have another Black and Asian person. I’m mixed, and I’m proud of it.” The show also spoke to Sumaya’s parents about the complexities of representation, especially around Harris’ law enforcement legacy and anti-Black racism.

Later in 2021, Harris — a daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica and the first vice president of Asian descent — publicly recognized the pain felt by Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the wake of racist attacks during the COVID pandemic, saying that “as a member of this community, I share in that outrage and that grief.” In the same speech, she urged the AAPI community to “turn that pain into action.”

How Harris’ election as vice president was greeted in the Bay

On Nov. 7, 2020, after days of nailbiting vote tallies, the Bay Area greeted the news that Biden had been elected the 46th president of the United States with celebrations in the streets (and outside Harris’ childhood home on Bancroft Avenue in Berkeley.)

Communities in India, Jamaica and Canada told KQED about their reactions, and California politicians — including London Breed, herself the first Black female mayor in San Francisco’s history — offered their thoughts. On KQED Forum, Rep. Barbara Lee also spoke about Harris’ historic win.

In 2021, on official business, Harris visited her birthplace, Oakland, for the first time since she became vice president. “It is great to be in Oakland and to be home,” she told the crowd.

Harris’ 2019 presidential bid

In 2019, California’s junior senator Harris launched a bid for the 2020 presidency, kicking off her campaign in Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of an estimated 20,000 and casting herself in stark opposition to the ongoing Trump administration, which she characterized to the crowd as “not our America.”

In this interview with NPR, Harris spoke of her focus on criminal justice and inequality: “I was born realizing the flaws in the criminal justice system.” Harris’ performance in the Democratic candidates’ debate that summer drew attention, especially for her sharp criticism of then-fellow candidate Joe Biden about working with segregationists.

In December of that year, Harris dropped out of the presidential race after — as KQED’s Marisa Lagos wrote — “struggling for months to break out of the crowded Democratic field and define herself to a national audience.” In a statement, Harris called her exit “one of the hardest decisions of my life.”