Kamala Harris talks little about potential to break gender, racial barriers

WASHINGTON — Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris regularly describes herself on the campaign trail as a "middle-class kid," a former criminal prosecutor and a longtime public servant.

One subject she usually avoids is the historic nature of her run.

If Harris wins the presidential race against former Republican President Donald Trump, she would be the first female U.S. president, the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to hold the position. Those prospects have excited many of her supporters, even as the daughter of Jam aican and Indian immigrants seldom brings up the topic.

 Unlike Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run against Trump, which leaned heavily on messages about shattering the nation’s "highest glass ceiling," Harris hasn’t played up the norm-shattering aspects of her candidacy, in part because her central focus has been on trying to define Trump as unfit, political analysts told Newsday.

"She is disrupting the image of who can lead at that highest level," said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. "So she has to convince people who may be skeptical ... that she is tough enough, strong enough, and is not there about the issue of being the first woman, but she is there because she has the strength."

Harris often has been asked about the prospect of making history if elected, but she usually avoids talking about how her gender and ethnicity are shaping her run.

"I am running because I believe that I am the best person to do this job at this moment for all Americans, regardless of race and gender," she told CNN in an August interview.

Meanwhile, Trump often has sought to make Harris’ race and gender a talking point. During a question-and-answer session at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in July, he questioned her biracial identity.

"I did not know she was Black until a couple of years ago when she happened to turn Black," Trump told the audience. "And now she wants to be known as Black. Is she Indian, or is she Black?"

Harris graduated from Howard University, a historically Black college, and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s first sorority founded by Black women. Asked to respond to Trump’s comments during their Sept. 10 debate, her answer did not focus on explaining her identity, but rather took aim at Trump’s underlying questioning of her race.

"I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently, over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people," Harris said.

Undecided voters

Jatia Wrighten, a professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University who specializes in researching Black women in politics, said Harris’ inclination to lean away from identity politics is likely a strategic move, designed to make herself appealing to voters who may be on the fence about voting for a woman.

"The voters that she's trying to reach are voters who are probably moderate. They may be Republican and uncomfortable voting for Trump, but they may also not be comfortable with this idea of voting for someone who seems super progressive," Wrighten told Newsday. "Even if they don't think her policies are super progressive, her identity as a woman, her identity as a woman of color, may feel too progressive for some of these moderates."

The possibility of Harris becoming the first Asian American president has excited voters in that demographic, according to a poll of Asian American voters released last month by AAPI Vote and NORC at the University of Chicago, which found 66% of Asian American voters plan on voting for Harris, compared with 28% who back Trump. Six percent were undecided.

Some Democratic leaders contend that there is less of a focus on Harris’ gender and background because President Barack Obama broke some barriers with his 2008 election as the first Black president, and Hillary Clinton also did in 2016 when she became the first woman to run for president as a major party nominee.

"I think in many ways Hillary Clinton's historic candidacy, and all she endured, really did normalize the idea of a woman running for president," said Robert Zimmerman, a Democratic National Committeeman from Great Neck.

Zimmerman said party leaders and organizers are excited about the prospect of Harris making history, but it’s not as big a mobilizing factor as it was in Clinton’s campaign because Democrats believe their winning message continues to be taking aim at Trump’s character and record.

"I think this presidential election is so dramatically different, because the overarching issue is character, leadership and strength," Zimmerman told Newsday.

Appeals to women voters

In a tight election year, where most battleground polls show Harris and Trump in a statistical dead heat, both campaigns recognize the importance of reaching women voters, who historically have outnumbered men at the voting booth. Women have outnumbered male voters in every presidential election since 1964, according to an analysis by the Center for American Women and Politics.

While Harris doesn’t necessarily campaign on the issue of her gender, she does make women’s issues a central part of her campaign messaging — attacking Trump for his role in overturning federal abortion protections by appointing three conservative Supreme Court justices and touting policies she contends will help women, such as a plan to reduce the cost of child care.

With polls showing Trump trailing Harris among female voters, Trump has stepped up his appeals to women. At a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania last month, he declared to women, "I will be your protector." On Wednesday, he took questions from an all-female audience at a Fox News town hall in Georgia, where he described himself "the father of IVF" when asked his stance about protecting access to in vitro fertilization treatments.

A New York Times/Siena College poll released on Oct. 8 found 56% of likely women voters backed Harris and 40% backed Trump.

Meena Bose, director of Hofstra University’s Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency, said part of the reason the Harris campaign may be focusing less on her gender and background is because her campaign, facing a much tighter race with Trump, is more cautious about messaging.

Bose noted that polls in 2016 showed Clinton ahead, and there was such widespread belief she would win that the Clinton campaign booked Manhattan’s Jacob Javits Convention Center for her election night address, in the hope she could invoke the building’s glass ceiling in a victory address.

"I think the focus is on winning, and making history will come through winning," Bose said of Harris’ campaign. "If Kamala Harris wins the presidential election, that will be historic, and her racial and ethnic background, her gender will be a part of that story, not the only part, but a big part.

"If she loses," Bose said, "there will also be questions raised about to what degree race, ethnicity and gender may have played in the election. So either way, I think it's part of the story, but it's not the whole story."

By Laura Figueroa Hernandez

laura.figueroa@newsday.com@Laura_Figueroa

Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.