US President Joe Biden (81), in a stunning decision, on Sunday announced that he was withdrawing from the race to be the next president in 2024 and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party's new nominee. Biden's decision to nominate Harris (59), who has been serving as the US' first female, first Black and first South Asian vice president since 2021, follows weeks of intense pressure from fellow Democrats after his disastrous presidential debate performance against his Republican rival and former US president Donald Trump last month.
Though Biden's endorsement almost seals Harris' position as the presidential nominee of her party, she still needs to get elected by the party's delegates during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago
next month.
Harris immediately secured the endorsement of former president Bill Clinton, thus making it a bit easier for her to win the delegate battle during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago beginning August 19.
Kamala Harris was born in California to Shyama Gopalan, a Tamil biologist and Jamaican-American father, Donald J Harris, who was a professor. Shyamala Gopalan had gone to the US in the 1960s from India's Tamil Nadu. As a child Kamala had visited Chennai, then Madras many times and she had remained in touch with her maternal side.
Kamala Harris married Douglas Emhoff on August 22, 2014 in Santa Barbara, California. Douglas is an entertainment lawyer working with the multinational firm, DLA Piper, since 2017. He provides legal advice on entertainment, publicity, privacy and copyright issues in the media sector. This is Douglas's second marriage.
