Vice Presidential Nomination

Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the latest coronavirus emergency aid package, but before I do, as a matter of personal privilege, I want to offer some comments in praise of a colleague.

Just as we gather together, regardless of party, to mourn when a colleague dies or be together with a colleague who is undergoing a challenge, I think it is good to gather together and acknowledge when something positive happens to a colleague, regardless of our political affiliation.

This is the first opportunity on the Senate floor to offer a word about Senator Kamala Harris, one of our colleagues, who, in a historic move, was asked by another former Senate colleague, Vice President Joe Biden, to join him as his preferred nominee to be Vice President of the United States.

I have come to know Senator Harris in her 4 years in the Senate, as many of us have, through her service on especially the Judiciary Committee and the Intelligence Committee.

Her public service track record is a significant one worthy of praise, from her work as a district attorney, first a line prosecutor, and then the elected district attorney in San Francisco, where she focused on trying to keep her community safe, to serving as California's attorney general, broadening the portfolio to include environmental justice and consumer protection, and now her work in the Senate since 2016.

What I find so compelling about Senator Harris, in addition to her track record of public service during a very long career, is her personal story. Raised as the child of two immigrants, a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, as so many in this country raised as children of immigrants, she developed a passion to serve and a patriotic love of country.

She is the first African-American woman nominee ever to be on a ticket. She is the first person of South Asian descent ever to be on a ticket. And in the year 2020, when we are commemorating the 100th anniversary of the amendment that guaranteed women the right to vote, I can think of no greater way to celebrate a centennial than for one of our colleagues who is a woman to have a chance to break a glass ceiling that still has existed, whereby no woman in this country has ever been a Vice President or President.

We are so good at so much in this country. In fact, we are so good at many things with regard to women in this country, but we are sort of uniquely bad in electing women to higher office. In Congress right now, 24 percent of Congress is women, and that ranks us 76th in the world in terms of our percentage of women in a national legislative body. We are tied with Afghanistan, but we trail Iraq and Mexico and many other nations.

So regardless of how it all works out between now and November, and regardless of our own political affiliations, this is a good day, I believe, for the country and a good day for the Senate when 1 of the 100 is recognized in such a way and introduced to the American public with an opportunity to serve at a significant level.

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