Kamala Harris is only the third woman in the history of the US to be selected as the VP nominee. In 1984, Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman to achieve this feat.
Joe Biden has nominated Kamala Harris as the vice-presidential candidate in the upcoming US elections. The California senator is the third woman and the first black woman in the history of the United States to be nominated as a VP candidate.
Biden had earlier pledged to select a woman candidate as his running mate in the coming elections, and after speculating over it for months and going through candidature of dozens of women, finally selected a woman of South Asian and black descent. Harris has earlier served as California’s attorney general, has been a senator since last three years, and even ran for president in 2020 before ending her bid in December.
Here are the other women candidates who have preceded Kamala Harris as vice presidential candidates in the US.
Sarah Palin
Stunning everyone with her candidature in 2008, Sarah Palin was a social conservative who had served as Alaska’s governor for two years. It was in the same year that Barack Obama chose Biden as his running mate that Palin was nominated to be VP on the Republican ticket.
Palin initiated her political career in 1992 after being elected to the Wasilla city council. Later, she went on to be the mayor of this Alaskan town, as well as the chairwoman of the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to regulate reserves for the state of Alaska. She also achieved the feat of becoming the youngest and the first woman governor of Alaska.
Geraldine Ferraro
Before Kamal Harris and Sarah Palin, Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman and the first Italian American from a major party to get nominated as the VP candidate.
She grew up in New York, where she first worked as a teacher and then passed examinations to be a lawyer. Before being selected as the running mate by Walter Mondale, this democratic congresswoman was a member of the US House of Representatives where her focus was on legislation for economic equality of women. Under Bill Clinton’s administration, she was appointed as the ambassador to the UN Commission on Human Rights.
In the presidential elections, Palin and Mondale could not garner enough support and lost to the immensely popular duo Ronald Reagan and George H.W Bush. She died in 2011 at age 75 due to blood cancer.
