WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – Vice President-elect Kamala Harris he will resign his Senate seat on Monday, two days before he and President-elect Joe Biden took office.
Aides to the California Democrat confirmed the moment and said that Governor Gavin Newsom was aware of his decision, paving the way for him to appoint Democrat Alex Padilla, now California’s Secretary of State, to serve the final two years of Harris’ term.
Padilla will be the first Latin American senator from California, where about 40% of residents are Hispanic. Newsom announced its choice in December, after intense lobbying by the country’s most populous state for the rare Senate seat.
Harris will not deliver a farewell speech in the Senate. The Senate is not expected to meet again until Tuesday, the eve of the inauguration day.
Padilla’s arrival, along with Harris becoming president of the Senate when she took office as vice president, is among the majority of Democrats in the Senate. But the party still needs the one elected by Sens, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, of Georgia, to be certified as winners in the January 5 elections and then take office.
Harris will be the first black woman and the first female descendant from South Asia to serve as vice president, but his departure from the Senate leaves the camera list without a black woman. Harris was only the second black senator, winning her California election 17 years after Democrat Carol Moseley Braun ended a single term representing Illinois.
Among Harris’ many potential successors, Newsom left out at least two prominent black women, US deputies Karen Bass and Barbara Lee. Bass was also among Biden’s finalists for running mate.
Democrats were in the minority during Harris’ four years on Capitol Hill. Perhaps his biggest mark was a fierce questioner of court nominees and other witnesses as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Harris was seen as a future presidential candidate almost immediately after joining the Senate in 2017. She announced her candidacy for the White House in January 2019, but withdrew in December following a lackluster campaign and before the ballots were voted on first in nation’s caucuses. Biden, himself a former senator, invited her to join the national ticket in August.
Ossoff and Warnock’s victories in Georgia secured a 50-50 Senate, placing Harris as the tiebreaker for Democratic control. But Ossoff and Warnock cannot enter the chamber until Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger certifies the final vote count. Raffensperger, a Republican, said he could act as early as Tuesday, possibly allowing Padilla, Ossoff and Warnock to enter the Senate already at that afternoon’s session.
But Republicans will maintain a narrow majority until the three take office and Harris sits in the president’s chair.
Harris’ early departure from the Senate has several precedents.
Biden was the last senator to be elected vice president. He resigned from Delaware on January 15, 2009, five days before he and Barack Obama took office. Obama, a senator at the time of his election, resigned his seat in Illinois two months before Biden.