Vice President–elect Kamala Harris will reportedly resign her Senate seat on Monday, two days before she is set to be sworn in as vice president alongside President-elect Joe Biden.
Governor Gavin Newsom is expected to appoint California secretary of state Alex Padilla, another Democrat, to serve out the last two years of Harris’s Senate term.
Harris has formally informed the governor of her resignation. She will not give a farewell speech from the Senate floor as the Senate does not come back into session until Tuesday, but she is expected to announce her resignation on Monday.
The California Democrat will become the Senate’s presiding officer once she is sworn in as vice president and is expected to be the deciding Democratic vote in a 50-50 split Senate, provided Democratic Senators-elect Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia are certified in their election victories.
Biden said Thursday that his first legislative priority once he takes office will be a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that includes a second round of direct payments to Americans.
Harris served in the Senate for four years of her first and only term. She was the first black woman to serve as a senator from California. Prior to her election to the Senate, she had served as California attorney general since 2011. She started her political career in the Senate in 1984, when worked a summer internship with then-Senator Alan Cranston of California.
Harris ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019 but dropped out at the end of that year. She was tapped as Biden’s running mate in August of last year. She will become the first woman as well as the first black American and South Asian American on a national presidential ticket.
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