California state senator and Joe Biden’s presidential running mate, Kamala Harris, graces the cover of ELLE’s November 2020 issue, which came out earlier this morning. The 55-year-old former San Francisco prosecutor gets up close and personal in her cover story, spilling the details of her upbringing in an activist household, what it was like to have been a newly sworn-in senator during the chaos of Trump’s 2017 Muslim Ban, and the Black Lives Matter movement.
While dissecting Trump’s presidency and the state of the nation from her point of view, Harris emphasizes the need for optimism when approaching life’s most strenuous circumstances— a sentiment that will ring relevant to Americans, many of whom feel the year 2020 qualifies as such a circumstance. Already being ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, a crashing economy, widespread job uncertainty, and financial worries, Americans have yet another momentous event rapidly approaching: November’s presidential election.
In her cover story Harris offers the American public an opportunity to get to know her through a more personal lens than the one they are used to seeing her through on TV. Harris declares her undying belief in the power of the people, and says that, as someone who grew up experiencing racism first-hand, she would be honored to serve at a time in which racial tensions are higher than they have been in recent years.