What Kamala Harris’s low-key, record-breaking year made possible

Earlier this month, to little fanfare, Kamala Harris broke a 191-year-old record set by John C. Calhoun for the most tiebreaking votes ever cast by a vice president. 

Harris’s 32 tiebreakers included passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which provided pandemic relief for businesses and individuals, support for vaccines and testing, $1,400 checks to individual taxpayers, help with healthcare coverage and extended unemployment insurance.

Another key tiebreaker was Harris’s vote guaranteeing the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. That groundbreaking law made the single largest federal investment in alleviating climate change, cut insulin costs to $35 a month for seniors, allowed the federal government to negotiate seniors’ prescription drug costs, and capped those costs at $2,000 per year.  

Five of Harris’s votes advanced judicial nominations that have given a record number of women and people of color a voice in meting out justice, including the record-setting tiebreaker that confirmed the 161st Biden judge. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) praised Harris’s achievements as a “record-breaking milestone,” and presented her with a ceremonial golden gavel.  

The previous record-holder, John C. Calhoun, who served as vice president from 1825 to 1832, was a staunch segregationist who argued that slavery was good for Black people. Calhoun became the most prominent spokesperson for the so-called Doctrine of Nullification which, he claimed, would give Southern states the right to nullify federal laws they deemed to be unconstitutional, especially any statute that threatened the institution of slavery. 

To have Calhoun’s record shattered by Harris is an ironic twist of history. As Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) noted, “It is only fitting that Vice President Harris — the first woman, the first Black American and the first South Asian American elected vice president — has set a new standard and brought us into the 21st century.” 

The Constitution gives the vice president few responsibilities, the most prominent bestowing on the vice president the ceremonial title of president of the Senate, who presides over debates, votes in case of a tie and succeeds the president in the event of a death or resignation. 

Tiebreaking votes were common in the early days of the Senate when 36 members were present. John Adams, the nation’s first vice president, cast 29 such votes. But as the number of senators expanded to today’s 100, tiebreaking votes became less and less common. During the entire history of the office, only 301 tiebreaking votes have been cast.  

Today’s partisan polarization has made more votes cast by vice presidents possible. Back during Joe Biden’s eight-year tenure as vice president, he cast zero tiebreaking votes. Biden had no chance of breaking ties when the start of the Obama presidency saw a Senate composed of 60 Democrats. This made it possible for the Senate to pass Obamacare without having the vice president vote on it — or on anything else. 

Mike Pence had a few more opportunities to break ties, casting 13 Senate votes during his tenure.

But an evenly divided Senate at the start of Biden’s presidency, and the close division of the Senate since, allowed Harris to break Calhoun’s eight-year record in just two years. Whenever the vice president leaves the White House for Capitol Hill, Biden tells her, “Well, that’s going to be a winning vote.” 

The paucity of constitutional responsibilities given to the vice president caused John Adams to write to his wife, Abigail, “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” 

Thomas R. Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, joked: “Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea; the other was elected vice president of the United States. And nothing was heard of either of them again.”

John Nance Garner, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first vice president, said the office wasn’t “worth a pitcher of warm spit.” (Garner’s true denunciation was far more graphic.)  

Even vice presidents who became president gave the office little mind. Harry Truman once asked a close aide of his vice president, Alben Barkley, “What is Alben up to?” 

Lyndon Johnson delighted in humiliating his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, virtually banning him from the Oval Office. Humphrey later described the vice presidency as “one of the most awkward offices ever created by the hand of man.” 

Jimmy Carter helped transform the office by giving his vice president, Walter Mondale, significant responsibilities that catapulted the office into a position of power.  

Ever since, the vice president, in the words of Joe Biden, has become “the last person in the room” whenever crucial decisions are made.  

Today, vice presidents spend little time in their ceremonial office on Capitol Hill and virtually all their time either at the White House or traveling on important presidential missions. 

Another profound change has been to make the vice presidency a stepping stone to winning a party’s presidential nomination. Since 1960, eight of the 13 vice presidents ending with Mike Pence have become their party’s standard-bearer, the last being Joe Biden. In 2028, Harris will undoubtedly position herself as a leading presidential candidate. 

While the final denouement of the Kamala Harris vice presidency has yet to be written, the record number of votes she has already made will certainly be part of this historic narrative.  

John Kenneth White is a professor of politics at The Catholic University of America. His forthcoming book is titled “Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism.”