New York, (Samajweekly) US Senator Kamala Harris will make her national debut on Wednesday night as the Democratic Party’s Vice-Presidential candidate and put her stamp on the party’s campaign.
Before her address to the virtual national convention, former President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak on the nation getting a “More Perfect Leadership” and segue into her nomination by her sister Maya Harris, niece Meena Harris and step-daughter Ella Emhoff, according to the convention.
Kate Bedingfield, the communications director for the Joe Biden campaign, told reporters that Harris, in her speech, will tell her own story of how growing up shaped her.
Hillary Clinton, who was defeated by President Donald Trump in 2016, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are also scheduled to speak on the rise of women in US politics from the time they received their right to vote 100 years ago this week.
Families play an important role in US campaigns to bring out the human element of the leaders and draw people into the family story.
The event will bring Harris’s relatives into the limelight showing an American multicultural amalgam of African-American, Indian-American and White, and Christian and Jewish.
Harris will present to the nation her vision for a “more inclusive nation”, Bedenfield said.
Maya Harris, a civil rights activist like her mother Shyamala and a lawyer, was the chairperson of her sister’s campaign for President, which was abandoned last year.
Her daughter, Meena Harris, is also a lawyer.
Ella Emhoff, the daughter of Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff from a previous marriage, calls Harris “Momala”. She is a singer and is now studying design.
Biden was officially nominated the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate on Tuesday night.
In keeping with the tradition of families playing a role in the political process, his wife Jill Biden spoke after his nomination, giving a picture of him as a husband and father who lived through the tragedies of losing his first wife and daughter in a car crash and later an adult son to a brain tumour.
She said that those experiences made him into a person with a lot of empathy and understanding, which will help heal a divided nation.
