For Kamala Harris, an influential voice and a decisive vote

Hours after she is sworn in as America’s forty ninth vp, changing into the primary girl and first girl of shade within the job, Kamala Harris will return to the US Capitol for what’s prone to be her first official act: the swearing-in of three newly elected Democratic senators.
Harris will probably be performing in her constitutional function as president of the Senate when she offers the oath of workplace to 2 Democrats elected in a Georgia particular election this month and to her personal successor to the California seat she resigned Monday. But the ceremony can even illustrate how essential the Senate will probably be to the beginning of her tenure as vp within the Biden administration.
With the Senate divided 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, and President-elect Joe Biden hoping to go bold laws on the coronavirus, the financial system, local weather change and different coverage issues, Harris — who as vp will break any tiebreaking votes — could discover herself returning typically to the Capitol.
“There’s definitely going to be a demand, I think, in a 50-50 Senate, like I’ve never seen in the Senate before,” stated Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.
“For the Biden-Harris agenda, she will be in Congress very, very often or reaching out to senators very often to try to push that agenda through,” Booker stated.
An aide to Harris stated that she had already begun reaching out to different senators about White House nominations, together with that of retired Gen. Lloyd Austin III to be secretary of protection.
But Harris, 56, is bound to be way over a 51st Democratic senator to Biden. She will carry to her history-making function on the White House an array of expertise that Biden will draw on, together with the prosecutorial chops that she displayed in Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, her private power that balances Biden’s low-key strategy and the voice she’s going to provide to ladies and folks of shade.
“She’ll bring a justice lens, a racial justice lens, racial equity, to everything and every policy and every decision that’s going to be made,” stated Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., a longtime ally of Harris. “That’s so important, to have a Black woman, a South Asian woman’s perspective, on the big issues that this administration has to tackle.”
Current and former aides to each Biden and Harris say that whereas coping with the Senate will probably be essential to her job, she has not been assigned a particular difficulty portfolio, at the very least on the outset, and can as an alternative function a governing associate to Biden on all of his prime priorities. If fulfilled, that mandate might make her among the many most influential vice presidents in historical past.
In one signal of how a lot she could also be concerned in legislative campaigns, Harris has been in contact with mayors across the nation to preview Biden’s coronavirus reduction bundle, the Biden aide stated.
From the second that Harris was chosen as Biden’s operating mate, Republicans sought to color her as a radical who would co-opt the extra centrist Biden agenda and push any administration far to the left, typically counting on sexist private assaults within the course of. Yet whereas Harris and Biden had sharp disagreements on numerous points through the main, as his operating mate she made a degree at each flip to show that she not solely embraced his agenda but in addition had studied his proposals intimately and was absolutely on board as his associate.
She could face inherent challenges, nevertheless, together with discovering her place in a West Wing stocked with veterans of the Obama White House who’ve recognized and labored with each other for years and advising a president with deeply mounted concepts of how Washington operates. And given hypothesis that the 78-year-old Biden could not search a second time period in workplace, Harris, who mounted her personal unsuccessful 2020 White House bid, is bound to face scrutiny about her electoral future a lot sooner than did her predecessors.
One issue that will work in Harris’ favor is Biden’s personal expertise as vp, particularly in the beginning, when he joined an Obama White House workforce that at instances had a clubby high quality. Harris’ allies hope and count on that Biden — and lots of the aides who labored with him, just like the incoming chief of employees, Ron Klain — will bear in mind what it was prefer to be “on the other side” and be certain that Harris and her workforce are included and empowered.
“So many people in the Biden orbit are sympathetic to what it’s like to sit on the OVP side,” stated Liz Allen, a former aide to the Biden-Harris marketing campaign, utilizing the official abbreviation for the Office of the Vice President. “I think people are going to be jumping through hoops to make sure she can break through.”
Harris and Biden carry starkly totally different political profiles to the brand new administration. When Biden walks into the White House on Wednesday, he will probably be returning to a constructing he is aware of intimately from eight years as vp and numerous visits throughout a 36-year Senate profession. Harris, who was within the Senate for lower than one time period, has had far much less publicity to the inside workings of a presidential administration.
Their variations in some ways flip the dynamic that existed between Biden and former President Barack Obama. Back then, Obama was a younger, relative newcomer to the capital looking for expertise and credibility with working-class white America. Biden, a Beltway veteran, was his West Wing associate.
In this case, Harris will play the function of relative Washington newcomer and provide Biden, the consummate insider, a starkly totally different perspective on the world and a bridge to a various nation.
Sometimes she may provide him a decisive vote. Although the Senate filibuster implies that a lot laws requires 60 votes to go, Biden and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who will change into the Senate majority chief, could flip to the parliamentary tactic of funds reconciliation, which prohibits the filibuster and permits for 51-vote approvals.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., stated he hoped that Harris would wind up “less as the tiebreaking vote but more as a consensus-builder” to assist Biden win bipartisan majorities for his agenda. But bipartisanship has been briefly provide, and Democrats count on Biden to function on slender legislative margins.
“If not, she will indeed have to be a regular presence in the Senate,” Coons allowed.
As vp, Biden himself forged no tiebreaking votes. But Vice President Mike Pence was required to interrupt deadlocks 13 instances over the previous 4 years.
More broadly, Biden will more than likely really feel that he wants little steerage within the workings of an establishment the place he served for therefore lengthy and the place Harris spent simply 4 years. But Harris has relationships with newer members of the Senate with whom Biden didn’t overlap.
One early activity for Harris will probably be ramping up her nationwide safety experience. Aides say that she’s going to assist Biden’s broader agenda of reengaging with allies, coping with the challenges China presents and combating local weather change. But she is prone to pay explicit curiosity to sure points, together with international well being and democracy, and human rights. Harris additionally has a powerful curiosity in cybersecurity, knowledgeable by her service on the Senate’s Intelligence and Homeland Security Committees.
Biden has urged that he sees himself as a “bridge” to the subsequent technology of leaders — and lots of Democrats count on that Harris could be part of that subsequent technology. If Biden doesn’t run once more, Harris would virtually definitely be thought-about the early Democratic front-runner for 2024.
Robert Shrum, who served as a prime political strategist to former Vice President Al Gore, whose presidential aspirations throughout President Bill Clinton’s second time period have been broadly understood, stated that Harris ought to focus solely on serving Biden, not pursuing an unbiased political profile.
“I think she will be very careful to do her job as vice president, and unless and until he tells her and tells the country that he’s not ready to run again, she’s not going to focus on that at all,” Shrum stated.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that she’s going to be a full partner and an integral one. Why? There’s way too much work to do,” stated Michael Feldman, a longtime White House aide to Gore. “This is not a situation where the president-elect and vice president-elect have the luxury of writing down and divvying up policy portfolios and assignments.”