Hours ahead of the vice presidential debate between California Sen. Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence, Elle released a cover story on the Democratic vice presidential nominee’s optimism and “the fight for justice and freedom she’s been waging since birth.”
Part of the magazine’s Women in Politics series, the interview grounds Harris’s political life in her childhood as she grew up as a black and Indian American child — following her path from growing up in Oakland to becoming a prosecutor, a senator, and now, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
The story documents her “get things done” attitude — whether that was getting a hold of former White House chief of staff John Kelly in the first months of her tenure in the Senate or getting white people to “fight harder against racist systems and actions” by showing them “how racism also hurts them.”
As November 3rd looms, vice presidential nominee @KamalaHarris is urging Americans to feel hopeful. “Optimism is the fuel driving every fight I’ve been in,” she tells @iSmashFizzle in ELLE’s November cover story. https://t.co/sVgody0D2T pic.twitter.com/W6ezIjv55F
— ELLE Magazine (US) (@ELLEmagazine) October 6, 2020
Harris and Pence are scheduled to debate Wednesday night in Salt Lake City. The debate will proceed as planned, according to officials from the White House, the Commission on Presidential Debates, and the University of Utah, but the two will be separated by plexiglass barriers as more people in Trump’s orbit announce that they’ve tested positive for COVID-19.
Pence has tested negative, and officials said that he hasn’t been in close contact with the president since they met before the last week’s presidential debate. But he attended the Rose Garden event during which President Trump announced that Judge Amy Coney Barrett would be his latest nomination to the Supreme Court. The event has since been recognized as a superspreader event.
All attendees will be required to take a COVID-19 test prior to Wednesday night’s debate, and masks will be required for the entire event.
