Students who voted for Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris said they support her vow to protect reproductive rights, endorse economic policies focused on boosting the middle class and empower historically marginalized communities if elected as the country’s first woman of color president.
More than 20 students said they’re excited to support a candidate fighting for bolstered economic support of small business owners and parents and the protection of reproductive rights in the wake of the repeal of national abortion protections and an election cycle in which abortion access is on the line in many states. Many of the students said they believe Harris, a Black and South Asian woman, will better represent their communities in office than past presidents because of her experiences combating misogynistic and racist remarks from her opponents that seek to delegitimize her career advancement.
Junior Amina Robinson, the treasurer of the Black Student-Athlete Alliance from Detroit, Michigan, said Harris can understand, advocate and design policy in ways that men cannot, resembling “a breath of fresh air.” She said Harris empathizes with the struggles Black women face in the United States, having faced remarks from political opponents like being called a “DEI hire.”
“It makes me, personally, feel safer for my future, knowing that someone’s going to be advocating from the standpoint that I’ve always thought not everybody else understands,” Robinson said.
Harris worked as a deputy district attorney in Oakland, California, and she earned a reputation for prosecuting cases of gang violence, drug trafficking and sexual abuse before becoming the district attorney in 2004. In 2010, Harris was narrowly elected attorney general of California, the first woman and the first Black American to hold the title.
Emily-Anne Santiago, the programming director for GW College Democrats from Georgia, said she believes Harris’ plan to provide a $6,000 child tax credit to parents of newborns would also open doors for women to join the workforce. She said the policy would allow women to focus on their job and not “strain themselves” as much when they come home.
Santiago also praised her inclusion of celebrities along her campaign stops that mobilize people who may be more skeptical to vote for a Democrat, especially a woman. She specifically contrasted Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny, who backed Harris late last month, with comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who called the territory a “floating island of garbage” while speaking a Trump rally the same day.
“So whether it be Obama, Bad Bunny, whether that be Eminem — who can I bring on, who can advocate for me in these communities where my voice, at this moment in time in society, is not valued or not respected?” Santiago said of Harris’ campaign approach.
EJ Tennant, a senior from Tennessee and the co-president of Foggy Bottom Plan B, said Harris’ election would help grant women better access to safe abortions. Harris has made abortion rights a core tenet of her campaign and has backed eliminating the filibuster to restore Roe v. Wade in the Senate after the Supreme Court overturned the federal abortion protections in June 2022.
As of last month, 21 states ban or restrict abortion before Roe’s previous 24-week standard. Trump’s abortion beliefs are at-times unclear, as he has floated a national abortion ban and also argued states should decide issues like abortion access.
“A Trump presidency would put the work that D.C. community members do to provide reproductive health in grave danger, and I think a Trump federal abortion ban is still on the table,” Tennant said.
Logan Olszewski, the chief of staff for GW Dems, said Harris’ economic policies, like a $50,000 tax deduction for new small businesses, was a proposal that incentivized his support for the vice president. He said his mom has wanted to open a small boutique in his home state of Michigan for five years but has struggled with initial costs of obtaining a space and inventory.
“That would just be huge in empowering everyone in the economy, but specifically getting us closer to that equality that we as Americans say that we believe in creating, that everyone’s equal under the law,” Olszewski said.
He said Harris has also been successful in “reclaiming” patriotism from the Republican Party, which he said has “co-opted” what was once a nonpartisan belief. He pointed to her campaign underscoring democracy and its ideals, like the peaceful transition of power and the American Dream, as major themes.
“I’ve never been to a Democratic rally where every few minutes people are chanting ‘USA,’ and last night, I was at the Harris rally, and it was constant,” he said.
First-year William O’Donnell, an international affairs student, said Harris’ middle-class background and career trajectory makes her more relatable than Trump, who is a businessman worth nearly $8 billion, and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who worked in the Silicon Valley tech industry for fewer than five years.
Harris has said she will build an “opportunity economy,” which includes down payment assistance of up to $25,000 for first-time homebuyers and a $40 billion “innovation fund” to help local governments build more affordable housing. The plan would also extend the $35 cap on insulin and $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs to all citizens instead of seniors.
“We’re in an age globally, where we don’t want career politicians,” O’Donnell said. “We want something new. We want something fresh. We want people who haven’t been in Washington that long, and I think Kamala offers that.”
Junior Kate Amistoso, a member of the Philippine Cultural Society from northern California, said she sees Harris’ presidential run as a “exciting opportunity” to embrace that the country was built by immigrants.
“For us to have a leader who has that positionality of being a woman, a woman of color, who’s also from immigrant parents, I think she could provide a lot of insight into what these identities mean and how to create inclusive policy that really shows we understand these point of views and the struggles that these communities are going through,” Amistoso said.
Sophomore Rachel Stanton, a political science student from Virginia, said Harris understands how to enact policies because of her background serving as the former attorney general and later senator for California. As a senator, Harris advocated for Medicare for All, a federal anti-lynching bill and the Green New Deal.
“The lawyer in her comes through when she’s answering questions and talking about the things she’s gonna do,” Stanton said. “It’s detailed and specific.”
Junior Shahaan Bashir, a member of the Pakistani Students’ Association and an international business student from Virginia, said he is voting for Harris because of their similar South Asian backgrounds, and his belief that she will prevent the escalation of the war in Gaza because she’s repeatedly called for a ceasefire.
“If I had to think of one candidate who would be a little bit more receptive to the idea of placing some sort of sanctions or helping out find a more balanced solution in the Middle East that isn’t very one-sided as it is right now, I think Harris is that candidate because of her more rational decision-making,” Bashir said.
Harris has not called for any changes in U.S. aid sent to Israel, and her campaign did not allow a pro-Palestinian speaker to take the stage at August’s Democratic National Convention, a request from voters uncommitted in voting for Harris due to her stance on the war.
Senior Stephanie Animdee, the president of the Mu Beta Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and a member of Alianza — an Afro-Latinx student organization — compared Harris to the late Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to campaign for a presidential nomination for a major political party, because they are part of both the Black and Caribbean communities and sought powerful political positions.
“For once in history, women are actually being taken seriously,” Animdee said.
Grace Chinowsky, Olivia Blackburn, Ryan Saenz and Louisa Hannoucene contributed reporting.
