Nearly a month after Election Day, Democrat Kamala Harris has been declared the victor in Caliornia’s attorney general race, nosing out Republican Steve Cooley. The 46-year-old San Franciscan of African-American and Indian-American descent has grabbed lots of comparisons to Obama (that multi-ethnic background, the sparkling academic credentials, a “greyhound physique,” hugely ambitious), and reportedly, the California Democratic Party sees a gubernatorial or Senate bid in her future. She ran her campaign as a sort of anti-Mama Grizzly, taking great pains to come across as tough-tough, not lady-tough, and downplaying her femininity almost to a fault . But not her feminism: She told Dayo Olopade of the Daily Beast, “I was raised to be an independent woman, not the victim of anything.” And that unwillingness to dwell overly on identity politics seems to be her M.O. According to the L.A. Times , “asked to reflect on the meaning of her historic win - as the first woman, African American and Indian American elected to the post - Harris smiled brightly and said, ‘We’ll see!’ ”
A politician who refuses a soft-served opportunity for entirely positive self-promotion? It gets even more groundbreaking.
Photograph of Kamala Harris by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.
