Kamala Harris becomes first ever Indian-American US Senator

Kamala Harris, California’s Attorney General, was on Monday elected to the United States Senate. She was elected from California, her home state, and is the first ever Indian-American to be elected to the Senate, the US legislature’s upper house.

Harris, 51, defeated fellow Democrat Loretta Sanchez by a 34.8 percentage point margin, winning 1,904,714 votes. She was backed by both US President Barack Obama, and Vice-President Joe Biden.

Her election doesn’t come as a surprise: in the run-up to the vote, polls had showed Harris “far ahead” of her rival, PTI reported.

Harris was born in Oakland, California, to an Indian mother – who moved to the US from Chennai – and a Jamaican-American father.

In addition to being the first Indian-American in the US Senate, she has now become the very first black Senator from California, the Los Angeles Times reported.