Kamala Harriswho made history as the first woman or person of color to serve as vice president, made history again Wednesday when she tied the record for most tie-breaking votes in the U.S. Senate.
The vote, her 31st, advanced the nomination of Kalpana Kotagal to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The only other vice president to issue as many was John C. Calhoun, who served as vice president from 1825-1832.
“It’s a moment and I think we still have a long way to go,” Harris told reporters afterward.
“My mother gave me great advice, which is that I might be the first to do a lot of things,” he added. “I’ll make sure it’s not the last.”
Unlike Calhoun, who spent eight years amassing his total, Harris tied the record in two and a half years. It is a reflection of its unique circumstances, with a deeply divided Senate and a markedly partisan atmosphere.
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“It really says more about our time and our political climate than anything else,” said Joel K. Goldstein, a historian of the vice presidency. “Our politics are so polarized that even on the kinds of issues that would have happened in the past, the vice president has to cast a tie-breaking vote.”
The occasion was hardly memorable or particularly ceremonial. Harris spent just a few minutes in the chamber, reciting a brief script to record her vote, and then was congratulated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat.
According to the Constitution, presiding over the Senate and breaking ties is one of the vice president’s only constitutional duties. Schumer described it as an “immense burden” and said Harris “has carried out her duties with supreme excellence” amid “all the other demands she faces” in her job.
Harris had hoped to get a reprieve from that role after the midterm elections, when The Democrats expanded their majority from 50 to 51 votes.
However, circumstances intervened. Sen. John Fettermana newly elected Democrat from Pennsylvania, he was hospitalized for clinical depression. Senator Dianne Feinsteina Democrat from California, contracted shingles and was also hospitalized.
The absences revived Harris’ tiebreaker streak. Earlier this year he helped confirm two federal judges, one in Massachusetts and the other in California.
Both Fetterman and Feinstein have returned to the Senate, but contested nominations may still require Harris to be present, such as on Wednesday.
Harris didn’t seem eager to make history with tie-breaking votes when she became vice president. Before assuming office, he wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle that “it is my hope that instead of coming to a tie, the Senate will instead find common ground and do the work of the American people.”
But tiebreakers quickly became a core part of his job. The assignment could prove frustrating at times, limiting her travel and keeping her tied to unpredictable events on Capitol Hill.
However, it also meant that Harris cast the deciding votes on issues such as the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief measure, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which capped drug costs with prescription and created financial incentives or clean energy.
“It’s a blessing,” Goldstein said, “because it associates him with some major achievements of the Biden administration.”
