Kamala Harris Enters 2020 Presidential Race On MLK Day While Appearing On ‘Good Morning America’
Senator Kamala Harris, (D., California) said she is running for president during an appearance on Good Morning America on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, hoping to break barriers as the nation’s first woman to win the White House and the second black commander in chief.
She also announced her intentions on Twitter.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Ms. Harris, who served as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general before being elected to the Senate in 2016, stated her intent during a sit-down with show hosts Robin Roberts and George Stephanopoulos.
“I am running for president of the United States and I’m very excited about it,” Ms. Harris said on Good Morning America. “I love my country and this is a moment in time where I feel a sense of responsibility to fight for who we are.”
Her campaign slogan will be “For the People.”
Harris joins other Democratic presidential hopefuls which include two of her Senate colleagues, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, along with former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, reported the Wall Street Journal.
I'm running for president. Let's do this together. Join us: https://t.co/9KwgFlgZHA pic.twitter.com/otf2ez7t1p
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) January 21, 2019
There is also the potential for the declaration of intent from Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Cory Booker of New Jersey, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, former Vice President Joe Biden, noted WSJ.
Harris will speak at a press conference Monday afternoon at Washington’s Howard University, where she received an undergraduate degree.
Harris is a former prosecutor and remarked during her GMA interview that she would aim to “keep people safe.” She is also projecting to change “systemic racism” in the nation’s law enforcement and criminal justice systems.
“It is a false choice to suggest that communities don’t want law enforcement,” Harris said on GMA. “Most communities do. They don’t want excessive force, they don’t want racial profiling, but nobody should.”
Harris is hopeful that as a candidate looking to become the first black woman president, she will be able to rally African-American voters to swing in her direction.
WSJ reported that African-American voters helped boost both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to their Democratic party candidate nominations.
The outlet also reported that Harris’ aides noted her campaign’s colors—red and yellow—are borrowed from the 1972 campaign of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to seek the presidency.
WSJ reported that Harris has been carefully crafting her announcement since she arrived in Washington two years ago.
She hired top staffers from the Hillary Clinton campaign to work in her Senate office and became one of the party’s most active figures on social media.
Harris came to the public’s consciousness after her interrogations of Brett Kavanaugh as part of the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing to become a Supreme Court justice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywdPLm8Efss
The appeared on The View on January 8, and at that point in time, had not formally announced she was looking to represent her party as a presidential candidate.
