WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of immigrants who rose through the ranks of California politics and law enforcement to turn into the first woman to function vp in U.S. history, formally secured the Democratic presidential nomination Monday — becoming the first black woman to guide a significant party.

More than 4 years after her first presidential bid failed, Harris’s ascension as her party’s chair caps a tumultuous and frantic period for Democrats, sparked by President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in a June debate that shook his supporters’ confidence in his reelection probabilities and sparked a unprecedented intraparty war over whether he should remain in the race.

Once Biden abruptly ended his candidacy, Harris and her team worked quickly to secure the 1,976 party delegates needed to clinch the nomination in a proper roll-call vote. She reached that time at lightning speed, with an Associated Press survey of delegates nationwide showing she had closed the needed pledges just 32 hours after Biden’s announcement.

Harris’ nomination became official after Democratic National Convention delegates concluded a five-day round of online voting Monday night, with the party saying in a press release just before midnight that 99% of voting delegates solid ballots for Harris. The party had long considered early virtual voting to make sure Biden would seem on the ballot in every state. It said it will then formally certify the votes before holding a ceremonial vote at the party’s convention later this month in Chicago.

An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted after Biden withdrew found that 46% of Americans have a good view of Harris, while nearly the same share have an unfavorable view of her. Still, more Democrats say they’re satisfied along with her candidacy than Biden’s, energizing a celebration that has long resigned itself to having the 81-year-old Biden as its candidate against former President Donald Trump, a Republican they see as an existential threat.

Harris has already said she doesn’t intend to stray too removed from the themes and policies which have framed Biden’s candidacy, corresponding to democracy, gun violence prevention and abortion rights. But her message might be much fiercer, especially as she draws on her prosecutorial experience to sharply criticize Trump and his 34 convictions for falsifying business records in reference to financial fraud.

“Having this extraordinary voice of a new generation, a prosecutor, and a woman, when it comes to fundamental rights, especially reproductive rights, it’s almost as if the stars aligned for her at this moment in history,” said Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, who was elected to succeed Harris in the Senate when she became vp.

Washington buzz ahead of 2020 primary collapse

Kamala Devi Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, the daughter of Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer researcher who emigrated to the United States from India when she was 19, and retired Stanford University professor Donald Harris, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Jamaica. Her parents were civil rights activists, which gave her, in her own words, “a walker’s perspective on the movement.”

She worked for a few years as a prosecutor in the Bay Area before becoming the state’s attorney general in 2010 and then being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016.

Harris arrived in Washington as a senator at the starting of the volatile Trump era, quickly becoming a reliable liberal opponent of the latest president’s staff and policies and stoking speculation about her own presidential bid. Securing a seat on the coveted Judiciary Committee gave her a national highlight that allowed her to query outstanding Trump nominees corresponding to current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“I can’t be rushed that quickly,” then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during a 2017 confirmation hearing when Harris repeatedly pressed him about potential talks with Russian nationals. “That makes me nervous.”

Harris launched her 2020 presidential campaign with high hopes, drawing comparisons to former President Barack Obama and drawing greater than 20,000 people to a launch rally in her hometown. But Harris withdrew from the race before the primary nominating contest in Iowa, tormented by staff opposition that spilled into the highlight and an inability to lift enough campaign money.

Harris has struggled to deliver a consistent message to Democratic voters and has wavered on key issues like health care. She suggested she supported eliminating private insurance in favor of a completely government-run system — “Medicare for All” — before releasing her own health plan that may preserve private insurance. Now, as she heads into her campaign, Harris has already reversed a few of her earlier, more liberal positions, like a ban on fracking, which she supported in 2019.

While Harris has tried to make use of her law enforcement background as an asset in the 2020 presidential campaign, it has failed to achieve enough support inside the party, which has struggled to reconcile a few of her past tough-on-crime stances at a time of heightened concern over police brutality.

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Joining Biden’s Team — and Evolving as Vice President

Still, Harris was at the top of Biden’s list of running mates when he was considering his running mate, after promising in early 2020 to choose a Black woman as his running mate. Biden liked Harris, who developed a detailed friendship along with his late son Beau, who was Delaware’s attorney general when she was California’s attorney general.

Her first few months as vp have been removed from smooth. Biden asked her to guide the administration’s diplomacy with Central America on the root causes of migration to the United States, which has drawn Republican attacks on border security and stays a political weakness. Things haven’t improved when Harris has stumbled in high-profile interviews, corresponding to in 2021 during a sit-down with NBC News’ Lester Holt, when she dismissively replied that she “hasn’t been to Europe” when the anchor noted that she hadn’t visited the U.S.-Mexico border.

Harris spent her first two years in Washington, D.C., often to interrupt ties in the evenly split Senate. That helped Democrats win landmark victories on climate and health care, but it surely also limited Harris’ ability to travel the country and meet with voters.

Her visibility has turn into way more visible since the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, as she has turn into the administration’s lead advocate on abortion rights and a more natural messenger than Biden, a lifelong Catholic who has historically advocated for restrictions on the procedure. She is the first vp to go to an abortion clinic and has spoken about reproductive rights in the broader context of maternal health, particularly for black women.

Throughout her vice presidency, Harris has tried to stay loyal to Biden while emphasizing that she could be able to step in if needed. That dramatic shift began in late June after the first debate between Biden and Trump, in which the president’s missteps were so disastrous that he never managed to reverse the lack of trust from fellow Democrats.

Moved to the top of the ticket list

After Biden ended his candidacy on July 21, he quickly endorsed Harris. And in the first two weeks of her 2024 presidential campaign, enthusiasm amongst the Democratic base has surged, donations have flowed, dozens of volunteers have shown up at field offices and the variety of supporters has grown a lot that event organizers have had to alter locations.

Harris’ campaign now believes it has a brand new probability to compete in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia — states that Biden has begun abandoning in favor of strengthening the so-called “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

“The country is able to see the Kamala Harris that we all know,” said Bakari Sellers, who was national co-chair of her 2020 campaign. “We really didn’t let the country see her” 4 years ago. Sellers said: “We had her in bubble wrap. People are seeing now that she’s real, that she’s talented.”

But Democrats predict Harris’s political honeymoon will end and she will inevitably come under greater scrutiny due to her positions in the Biden administration, the state of the economy and instability abroad, particularly in the Middle East. Harris also has not taken prolonged questions from reporters or sat down for a proper interview since her campaign launched.

The Trump campaign has been wanting to define Harris as she continues to pitch herself to voters across the country, releasing an ad blaming her for the high variety of illegal border crossings at the southern border during the Biden administration and calling her “Failed. Weak. Dangerously liberal.”

Supporters of the GOP nominee have also sneered at Harris, saying her hiring was a diversity effort, while Trump himself has made nasty racial attacks, falsely claiming that Harris has historically only promoted her Native American heritage and only recently embraced her black identity.

His comments follow a series of racist and sexist accusations against the first woman and first person of South Asian descent to function president.

“I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago when she became black and now she wants to be known as black,” Trump said, speaking at the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. “So I don’t know if she’s Native American or black?”

In her response, Harris called it “the same old spectacle – division and disrespect” and said voters “deserve better.”

“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who doesn’t react with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts,” Harris said at a Sigma Gamma Rho sorority meeting in Houston. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us.”