Kamala Harris and the New Democratic Hope [View all]

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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/can-kamala-harris-keep-californias-democratic-streak-going/384473/

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The last time California had a male or Republican senator, George H.W. Bush was president, Boyz II Men was dominating the charts, and Czechoslovakia was still a country. And a young lawyer named Kamala Harris had barely begun her career as a district attorney in Oakland.

Today, Harris is the Golden State's attorney general—and she announced Tuesday that she'll run for retiring Senator Barbara Boxer's seat. The announcement makes her the frontrunner, and could keep the streak going.

Harris is the kind of candidate both parties dream of: young (for a politician, at least; she's 50), charismatic, multiethnic, accomplished. In 2013, President Obama came under fire for calling her "the best-looking attorney general in the country," for which he later apologized. Born to an Indian physician mother and a Jamaican-American father who was a professor of economics at Stanford, she was elected attorney general in 2010, after spending most of her career as a prosecutor. That made her California's first black, first female, and first Asian-American AG.

That's a big change from the days when Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan dominated the state, but it also makes her one of the highest-profile apostles of Barack Obama's model of Democratic politics: high-achieving, diverse meritocrats who run on personal background and serve without drama. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she was one of the politicians tabbed to speak at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, and she was floated as a potential successor to Attorney General Eric Holder.