Kamala Harris: ' I am Shyamala Gopalan Harris’s daughter'

Sen. Kamala Harris with her mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris, center, and sister Maya Harris. 

JUST DAYS before the end of 2018, Sen. Kamala Harris wrote a touching oped for the New York Times entitled: "Everybody Gets Sick, And We Deserve Better' that included a touching tribute to her mother, an immigrant from India.

The Dec. 29 opinion piece was adapted from Harris' forthcoming book The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. It reveals a rare peek at the California senator's personal life as we await her decision whether or not she will run for President of the U.S.  in 2020. Last month she declared that she would put off any announcement until after the holidays after discussing the pros and cons with her family.

UPDATE Jan. 21: Kamala Harris is running for president

Although she's been a U.S. senator for only two years, she has been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump from the night he was elected on Nov. 6, 2016, the same evening that she won her seat in the Senate. One of bills she has proposed is "Medicare for All," to ensure the continuance and improvement of President Obama's Affordable Care Act, which the Republicans absolutely hate and have been trying to dismantle, hinder and eliminate since it passed in Obama's first term.

Part of Harris' oped reads:

[My mom] ended up in the hospital not long after that. That was when I started to see another change. For as long as I could remember, my mother loved to watch the news and read the newspaper. When Maya and I were kids, she’d insist we sit down in front of Walter Cronkite each night before dinner. But suddenly, she had no interest. Her mighty brain decided it had had enough.

She still had room for us, though. I remember that I had just entered the race for California attorney general and she asked me how it was going.

“Mommy, these guys are saying they’re going to kick my ass,” I told her. 

She rolled over and looked at me and unveiled the biggest smile. She knew who she’d raised. She knew her fighting spirit was alive and well inside me. 

My mother died on Feb. 11, 2009, two months after her 70th birthday. One of the last questions she asked the hospice nurse was, “Are my daughters going to be O.K.?” She was focused on being our mother until the very end. 

And though I miss her every day, I carry her with me wherever I go. I think of the battles she fought, the values she taught me, her commitment to improve health care for us all. There is no title or honor on earth I’ll treasure more than to say I am Shyamala Gopalan Harris’s daughter.

As I continue the battle for a better health care system, I do so in her name.

-- Kamala Harris: Everyone Gets Sick. And We Deserve Better,”
New York Times, Dec. 29, 2018

Although Harris has not been hesitant to discuss her mixed heritage (Indian and Jamaican) and she's been thrust onto the national stage as a possible presidential candidate, and the Indian American and the Indian American media has been writing about her since she was a District Attorney for San Francisco, the senator is still relatively unknown to the majority of Asian America, according to a survey by APIA Data.

If Harris decides to run in 2020, she'll have to wade through a crowded field of Democrats. Up to two dozen Democrats -- either through their actions or words -- have hinted at an interest in campaigning for President. Thus far, only Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has opened an official exploratory committee and Rep. Julian Castro of Arizona has said he will announce his intentions this Saturday (Dec. 6).

Although his name is never brought up when mainstream media talks about 2020 candidates, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, a Democrat, was the earliest person to declare his candidacy last year. One of his planks was a Universal Basic Income for all, seemed rather radical when he first proposed it, but since then, it has been adopted by other potential candidates, including Harris.

Ever since it became known that Harris will be a guest on The Late Show hosted by Stephen Colbert, whose opening monologues regularly jabs at Trump, speculation has been rampant that she could possibly announce her decision whether or not to run for President on the highest rated late night show next Wednesday night (Jan. 10) on CBS affiliates.

Will she, or won't she?
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