WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – Elected Vice President Kamala Harris will resign her seat in the Senate on Monday, two days before she and President-elect Joe Biden are inaugurated.
California Democrat aides confirmed the timing, saying Governor Gavin Newsom was aware of her decision, paving the way to appoint fellow Democrat Alex Padilla, now California Secretary of State, for the final two years of Harris’ term. .
Padilla becomes the first Latino senator from California, where about 40% of the residents are Hispanic. Newsom announced its choice in December, after intense lobbying for the rare Senate vacancy in the country’s most populous state.
Harris will not give a farewell speech on the Senate floor. The Senate will not meet again until Tuesday, the eve of the inauguration day.
The arrival of Padilla, along with Harris becoming the Senate presiding officer if she is sworn in as vice president, is part of the Democrats’ forthcoming majority in the Senate. But the party still needs Sens.-elect Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock from Georgia to be certified winners in their January 5 elections 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 from the senate leaves the chamber roster without a black woman. Harris was only the second black senator, winning her California election 17 years after Democrat Carol Moseley Braun ended a single term representing Illinois.
Among Harris’s many potential successors, Newsom passed by at least two prominent black women, US representatives Karen Bass and Barbara Lee. Bass was also one of Biden’s finalists for running mate.
Democrats were outnumbered during Harris’ four years on Capitol Hill. Perhaps her biggest goal came as a fierce questioner of judicial nominees and other witnesses as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Harris was almost immediately considered a future presidential candidate when she joined the Senate in 2017. She announced her offer for the White House in January 2019, but dropped out in December after a lackluster campaign and before the votes were cast in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses. Biden, a former senator herself, invited her to the national ticket in August.
Ossoff’s and Warnock’s victories in Georgia spurred a 50-50 senate, positioning Harris as the deciding vote for democratic control. But Ossoff and Warnock cannot join the chamber until Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has declared the final vote. Raffensperger, a Republican, has said he could perform as early as Tuesday, making it possible for Padilla, Ossoff and Warnock to join the Senate together during that afternoon’s session.
But Republicans will keep a narrow majority until all three take office and Harris sits in the presiding officer’s chair.
Harris’s early departure from the Senate has multiple precedents.
Biden was the last sitting senator to be elected vice president. He resigned in Delaware on January 15, 2009, five days before he and Barack Obama were inaugurated. Obama, a senator at the time of his election, had resigned his seat in Illinois two months before Biden.