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WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will step down from his Senate seat on Monday, two days before his inauguration with President-elect Joe Biden.
California Democrat aides confirmed the timing and said Gov. Gavin Newsom was aware of his decision, paving the way for him to appoint fellow Democrat Alex Padilla, now California Secretary of State, to serve both. final years of Harris’ tenure.
Padilla will be the first Latino senator from California, where about 40% of residents are Hispanic. Newsom announced its choice in December, following intense lobbying for the rare vacancy in the Senate in the country’s most populous state.
Harris will not be making any farewell speeches in the Senate. The Senate is not expected to meet until Tuesday, the day before inauguration day.
The arrival of Padilla, along with Harris becoming Speaker of the Senate when she was sworn in as Deputy Speaker, is part of the next Democrats’ majority in the Senate. But the party still needs Senators-elected Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia to be certified winners in the Jan. 5 election and then sworn in.
Harris will be the first black woman and the first woman of South Asian descent to serve as vice president, but her departure to the Senate leaves the chamber list without a black woman. Harris was only the second black female senator, winning her election in California 17 years after Democrat Carol Moseley Braun completed a single term representing Illinois.
Among Harris’ many potential successors, Newsom passed on at least two prominent black women, US Reps Karen Bass and Barbara Lee. Bass was also among Biden’s finalists for running mate.
Democrats were in the minority during Harris’ four years on Capitol Hill. Perhaps his greatest mark was fiercely questioning judicial candidates and other witnesses as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Harris was considered a future presidential candidate almost immediately after joining the Senate in 2017. She announced her candidacy for the White House in January 2019, but dropped out the following December after a lackluster campaign and before the ballots are not cast in the first in Iowa. national caucuses. Biden, himself a former senator, invited her to join the national ticket in August.
Ossoff and Warnock’s victories in Georgia ensured a 50-50 Senate, positioning Harris as the decisive vote for Democratic control. But Ossoff and Warnock cannot join the chamber until Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger certifies the final vote count. Raffensperger, a Republican, said he could act as early as Tuesday, possibly allowing Padilla, Ossoff and Warnock to join the Senate together as early as this afternoon’s session.
But Republicans will retain a slim majority until all three take office and Harris sits in the president’s chair.
Harris’s untimely departure from the Senate has several precedents.
Biden was the last sitting senator to be elected vice president. He resigned his position in Delaware on January 15, 2009, five days before the inauguration of Barack Obama and himself. Obama, a senator at the time of his election, had resigned his seat in Illinois two months before Biden.
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