Vice President Kamala Harris
Former Vice President of the United States
pronounced KAH-muh-luh // HAR-iss
Harris was Vice President of the United States and was a Democrat. She served from 2021 to 2025.
She was previously a senator from California as a Democrat from 2017 to Jan. 18, 2021.
![Photo of Vice President Kamala Harris [D, 2021-2025]](/static/legislator-photos/412678-200px.jpeg)
Harris served five years in the Senate before being elected to Vice President. In 2020, we surveyed the bills she had introduced in the Senate, including bills to aid disaster victims and relief for renters, criminal justice reform including legalization of marijuana and providing a lawyer to detained undocumented immigrants, surveying sexual orientation and gender identity in the census, helping elementary schools stay open later to help working parents, and honoring Black historical figures.
Analysis
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Harris is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the Senate in 2020 positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).
The chart is based on the bills legislators sponsored and cosponsored from Jan. 6, 2015 to Dec. 21, 2020. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Harris was the primary sponsor of 3 bills that were enacted:
- S. 129 (116th): Saint Francis Dam Disaster National Memorial Act
- S. 3033 (115th): COUNT Victims Act
- S. 729 (115th): John Muir National Historic Site Expansion Act
Does 3 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.
We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if at least about half of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110th Congress).
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
Harris sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Public Lands and Natural Resources (18%) Health (17%) Crime and Law Enforcement (15%) Immigration (12%) Environmental Protection (11%) Taxation (11%) Labor and Employment (10%) Housing and Community Development (7%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Harris recently introduced the following legislation:
- S. 4781 (116th): Asuncion Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act of 2020
- S. 4519 (116th): RELIEF Act
- S. 4513 (116th): Climate Equity Act of 2020
- S. 4455 (116th): Paycheck Protection Program Transparency Act of 2020
- S. 4397 (116th): Uterine Fibroid Research and Education Act of 2020
- S. 4399 (116th): HELP Act of 2020
- S. 4401 (116th): Environmental Justice For All Act
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 2017 to Jan 2021, Harris missed 398 of 1,320 roll call votes, which is 30.2%. This is much worse than the median of 2.4% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Jan 2021. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absences, major life events, and running for higher office. Legislators running for president or vice president typically miss votes while on the campaign trail — that’s normal. See our analysis of presidential candidates’ missed votes.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
- Office of Kamala Harris for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
