Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said this week she will run for president in 2020, becoming the fourth female lawmaker to seek the Democratic nomination.
Harris, 54, made her official announcement Monday in an interview with ABC. She has served in the upper chamber since 2017, and previously served as California’s attorney general from 2011 to 2017. She has sat on the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management and the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management.
Harris voted against the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act last year, citing opposition to the W76-2 low-yield warhead the bill authorized. Congress eventually funded the weapon, which the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has started building and plans to begin delivering to the Navy by September.
Harris has been generally critical of expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and co-signed a Jan. 29, 2018, letter from 16 Democratic senators to President Donald Trump, calling for continued movement toward disarmament, and saying the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review would undermine decades of U.S. nuclear security leadership.
In the 116th Congress she has also been elected to the Senate Budget and Judiciary Committees, as well as the Select Committee on Intelligence. She has received nearly $20,700 in campaign funds from defense contractors since she ran for Senate in 2016, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Responsive Politics.
Democratic Senate Armed Services Committee members Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have also announced their plans to run for president in 2020, as has House Armed Services Committee member Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii).
Warren is most outspoken on nuclear security issues of the bunch. The Massachusetts populist outlined a three-point nuclear policy plan months before she formed an official exploratory committee for the Democratic nomination.
Warren’s position hews to the Democratic orthodoxy that the U.S. should not deliver a nuclear first strike, should adhere to and enter into more arms control treaties, and should not build new nuclear weapons. Warren and others on Capitol Hill consider the W76-2 a new weapon.
Vivienne Machi, staff reporter for NS&DM affiliate publication Defense Daily, contributed to this report from Washington.
