Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are a team. After the California senator was announced as Biden’s vice presidential running mate last week, the pair have hit the ground running, appearing at this week’s Democratic National Convention and encouraging voters to come out in November.
“It’s really, really, really important to have someone [like Harris on the ticket] with this intellectual capacity, educational background, backbone and stature,” Biden tells People in the pair’s first joint interview. “It’s going to change a lot.”
When asked if Harris would be the kind of vice president to tell Biden when he was wrong, the presidential candidate quickly replies, “Yes, she is.”
“We already have that understanding. I’m going to be the last one in the room — and there to give him honest feedback,” Harris adds. “Being vice president to Joe Biden to me means supporting his agenda and supporting him in every way.”
The two also open up about the moment that Harris was offered the job, saying that they asked that her husband, Doug Emhoff, be included in the exciting news.
“We started with [my wife] Jill and Doug. We share the same basic values set: It all starts with family,” Biden explains.
Harris says that she and Emhoff traveled to Delaware to visit with the Bidens in their home the next day.
“We just hung out with homemade chocolate chip cookies. I saw some family pictures,” Harris recalls. “Joe called my in-laws and we surprised them. Then Joe said, ‘Tell me how the kids are doing?’ This is the thing — among the many things I love about Joe Biden — he said, ‘Let’s call them.’ So he called, separately, [Harris’ stepchildren] Ella and Cole to welcome them into the family.”
The proud stepmom also opens up about her philosophy on her modern family.
“That’s one of the things we have in common,” Harris says of Biden. “My children don’t call me stepmom, they call me Momala. We’re a very modern family. Their mom is a close friend of mine. … Joe and I have a similar feeling that really is how we approach leadership: family in every version that it comes.”
In fact, the two politicians met through Biden’s late son, Beau.
“The first time I was aware of who she was, I got a phone call from Beau saying, ‘I want you to nominate Kamala Harris for the United States Senate. She’s a friend of mine,'” Biden shares.
“That is how I got to really know Joe as a person, hearing about him through his son,” Harris adds. “But I also want to add this: Joe Biden had the audacity to say he was going to have a woman as his vice president. He didn’t apologize for it. In a country where we still have so much to do to fight toward our ideals, he just fast-forwarded the whole thing.”
“The government should look like the country,” Biden replies simply.
