Kamala Harris becomes first ever Indian-American US Senator

New Delhi, Nov 9: Kamala Harris, California's Attorney General, was on Monday elected to the United States Senate. She was elected from California, her home state, and is the first ever Indian-American to be elected to the Senate, the US legislature's upper house.

Harris, 51, defeated fellow Democrat Loretta Sanchez by a 34.8 percentage point margin, winning 1,904,714 votes. She was backed by both US President Barack Obama, and Vice-President Joe Biden. Her election doesn't come as a surprise: in the run-up to the vote, polls had showed Harris "far ahead" of her rival, PTI reported.

Harris was born in Oakland, California, to an Indian mother - who moved to the US from Chennai - and a Jamaican-American father. In addition to being the first Indian-American in the US Senate, she has now become the very first black Senator from California, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Several Indian-Americans have served in the lower house of the US legislature, the House of Representatives. Ami Berra, the current representative from California, is one of them.