As the presidential election gets closer, many people are wondering about the backgrounds of their candidates. Before these candidates decided to run for office, they had interesting childhoods and highly successful careers, most of which people don’t really know about. In this article, we’ll give brief overviews on the lives of Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Donald Trump, and J.D Vance.
Kamala Harris
Kamala Devi Harris was born on October 20th, 1964 in Oakland, California. Her mom, Shyamala Gopalan, and her dad, Donald J. Harris divorced in 1972, so she and her sister were mainly raised by her mom, seeing her dad only on the weekends. Harris grew up keeping close contact with her Indian family as she often traveled to Chennai, the capital of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Harris studied political science and economics at Howard University, and graduated in 1986. During her time at Howard, she was a part of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority founded by Black students. Harris earned a law degree from the University of California, College of the Law in San Francisco.
After gaining a law degree, Harris worked as a deputy district attorney in California, becoming known as a a tough prosecutor in cases of sexual abuse and gang violence. In 2010, she won a close race to become the first woman and first Black American to be attorney general of California.
Kamala Harris met lawyer Doug Emhoff in 2013, and they got married the next year. Emhoff has two grown children, Ella and Cole.
After she took office in January 2017, she began serving on both the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Judiciary Committee. She drew attention for her questioning of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was testifying before the intelligence committee on possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Kamala Harris announced that she was interested in winning the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. She had a strong start but people started to question her strategies and she got criticism about her prosecutor role. In December, she dropped out of the race.
Harris was a huge advocate for social-justice reform soon after the death of an African American who was murdered by a police officer, George Floyd.
In August, Joe Biden chose Harris to be his vice presidential running mate and in November she became the first woman, first Black American and first Asian American to be elected vice president.
In the last year, President Joe Biden has announced his withdrawal in the 2024 presidential race, and Harris became the first Black woman and the first Asian American in U.S. history to win the presidential nomination of a major party.
Tim Walz
Timothy James Walz, better known as Tim Walz was born in West Point, Nebraska, on April 6, 1964. He lived in rural Nebraska with his parents, Darlene Rose Walz and James F. Walz, as well as his three siblings. Walz graduated from high school in 1982, in a class of only 25 students.
Walz worked in agriculture and factory jobs for a few years while also serving as a member of the National Guard. He went to college at Chadron State College in Chadron, Nebraska, and graduated in 1989. He taught in China for a year before returning to Nebraska to teach.
Tim Walz met his wife Gwen Whipple while teaching in Nebraska and the two married in 1994. In 1996, they moved to Minnesota and Walz became a geography teacher and a football coach at Mankato West High School. In 1999 he led the team to its first state championship. Walz continued to serve in the National Guard while teaching and coaching.
In 2004, Walz decided to volunteer for the John Kerry presidential campaign and started his political journey. Walz ran against Republican Gil Gutknecht for Minnesota’s 1st congressional district and won the seat.
Walz was reelected to Congress five times. He received a reputation for attempting to work with Republicans in Congress.
Walz was elected as Minnesota’s 41st governor in 2018. His first term as governor was during the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd. Protesters started to go into the streets and caused violence the local police departments could not handle. Walz finally issued an order to send in the Minnesota National Guard but received criticism from Republicans for not doing so sooner.
He was reelected in 2022 and as governor, he helped pass secure abortion rights legislation, legalized marijuana, and gun control regulations. Walz became chair of the Democratic Governors Association in 2023.
Today, Tim Walz is Kamala Harris’s running mate in the upcoming presidential election.
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946 in New York City, New York. He was born into a rather wealthy family including his mom, Mary MacLeod, and dad, Frederick Trump, as well as four other children.
Trump attended a private boarding school in New York and then started his college career at Fordham University. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania after two years, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1968.
After graduating, he began to work for his father’s business, which involved selling and managing rental units. He then inherited his father’s business and began to expand it even more. He bought a property near Grand Central Station and refurbished it to be what is now “Trump Tower.”
In 1977, he married his first wife, Ivana Zelníčková Winklmayr, and they had three children, Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. They later divorced in 1992. He married his second wife, Marla Maples, in 1993, and had his fourth child, Tiffany. Trump divorced Maples in 1999. In 2005, he married model Melania Knauss, and had his youngest son, Barron.
Trump began his political career in 2016, when he decided to announce his candidacy as a Republican for the presidential election. He began to campaign against Hillary Clinton, who was at the time, the Democratic nominee. On November 8, 2016, Trump won election. A few months later, on January 20, 2017, he was officially inaugurated.
In 2020, Trump ran for president once more, and lost to Democrat Joe Biden. After his presidency, he moved to live in his Mar-a-Lago clubhouse, which is located in Palm Beach, Florida.
In May of this year, Donald Trump became the only former or sitting president to be convicted in federal court (he has been indicted four times). The “hush money case” resulted in 34 convictions related to falsifying documents to cover up money payed to adult film actress, Stormy Daniels. Sentencing in the case is scheduled for mid-November.
Today, Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee in the 2024 election, running alongside vice presidential nominee, J.D Vance.
J.D Vance
James David Vance, better known as J.D Vance, was born on August 2, 1984 in Middletown, Ohio. Today, he is known for being the 2024 Republican vice presidential nominee, but another large accomplishment of his was writing his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.
Vance’s childhood wasn’t the easiest and unlike his running mate, he did not grow up wealthy. His parents Beverly and Don Bowman divorced when he was young, which left him, his mother, and his half-sister, Lindsay, to live alone. Bev Bowman suffered from serious drug and alcohol addiction all throughout J.D’s childhood. Later in his teen years, he moved in with his grandparents, and they took custody of him. The whole family has deep Appalachian and “hillbilly” roots, inspiring the name of the memoir.
After graduating high school, J.D enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and was deployed to serve in the Iraq War. After having served for around four years, he began college at Ohio State University. He studied political science and philosophy, and later earned his bachelor’s degree in 2009. After college, Vance matriculated at Yale Law School and graduated in 2013.
While at Yale, Vance met and dated fellow law student Usha Chilukuri and, in 2014, the two went on to get married. The couple now have three children, Ewan, Vivek, and Mirabel. While J.D doesn’t often share too much information about his life as a father, he does occasionally shout-out his kids at political events.
After graduating Yale Law, he began to work for a successful law firm in California by the name of Sidley Austin LLP. In 2022, Vance decided to run for U.S. senate for the state of Ohio. He was officially sworn in on January 3, 2023.
As of now, he is running alongside Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election.