Vice President Kamala Harris Matched the record for most tiebreaking votes in the U.S. Senate which was previously held by ex-VP John C. Calhoun during his 1825 to 1832 tenure.
This is the second time Kamala Harris is making American history after she became the first woman or person of color to serve as vice president.
The vote, her 31st, advanced the nomination of Kalpana Kotagal to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
“It is a moment and I think that there’s still so much left that we have yet to do,” Harris told reporters afterward.
“My mother gave me great advice, which is that I may be the first to do many things,” she added. “I’m going to make sure I’m not the last.”
Kamala Harris achieved the feat faster than Calhoun. She did hers in two and a half years, while Calhoun used eight to get his total.
How Kamala Harris Achieved The Feat & Its Implication For US Politics
“The tiebreakers of Calhoun’s era were often related to the party division breakdown,” says Daniel Holt, assistant historian of the U.S. Senate Historical Office. “That’s a complicated picture in the 1820s and 1830s, as the two-party system was still developing and party affiliation was very fluid.”
Joel K. Goldstein, a vice presidential historian said Harris tie “really says more about our time, and our political climate, than it does about anything else”. “Our politics is so polarized that, even on the sort of matters that in the past would have flown through, it takes the vice president to cast a tie-breaking vote.”
Harris recited a brief script to record her vote and then received congratulations from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat.
Presiding over the Senate and breaking ties is one of the only constitutional duties of the US vice president. Schumer in his speech, described it as an “immense burden,” and he said Harris has “carried out her duties with supreme excellence” in the midst of “all the other demands she faces” in her job.
The tiebreaking role comes from the Constitution’s Article 1, Section 3, which says, “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote unless they be equally divided.”
The 2022 midterm election which brought Democrats a 51-49 majority in the Senate didn’t spare Harris from having to use her tiebreaker role. With Democratic senators John Fetterman’s hospitalization for depression and Dianne Feinstein’s absence due to a severe case of shingles, the vice president was again called to cast the deciding vote.
Casting a crucial deciding vote “was a double-edged sword,” Calhoun biographer and Baylor University associate professor of history Robert Elder said. “For someone trying to angle for the presidency, these votes raised his political profile and gave him the opportunity to craft an independent political image. But they also made him go on the record about divisive issues, which is always a liability for a politician.“
Goldstein agreed with Calhoun saying “when she breaks a tie vote, she is essentially voting the Administration’s position,” he says. “As long as the Vice President shows up, the tie goes to the Administration.”
On her assumption of office as vice president, Harris did not seem eager to make history with tiebreaker votes. “It is my hope that rather than come to the point of a tie, the Senate will instead find common ground and do the work of the American people”, she wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle.
However, tiebreakers swiftly became a core part of her job. The task could prove frustrating at times, limiting her travel and keeping her tethered to unpredictable events on Capitol Hill.
It also meant that Kamala Harris can cast deciding votes on issues like the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9-trillion pandemic relief measure, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which limited the costs of prescription drugs and created financial incentives or clean energy.
On the other hand, President Joe Biden never broke a tie vote when he was vice president under Barrack Obama. He stands alone amongst twelve former vice presidents who served with the zero tie record, with two full terms.