Pride and politicking as Foxx, Stratton, Kelly, Yarbrough watch ‘history maker and a glass ceiling breaker’

Watching her daughters watch Sen. Kamala Harris made Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx “proud” Wednesday night.

“I have a 17-year-old who rarely wants to watch TV with her parents — she’s sitting between me [and my husband],” Foxx said. “She’s cheering — watching her watch Sen. Harris makes me proud.”

On Wednesday, ahead of her debate appearance, Foxx made the case for why the vice presidential nominee who’s been mentoring the first-term Cook County prosecutor on “some of the biggest challenges” deserved to be elected.

“She understands, she gets it,” Foxx said.

The freshman Democratic prosecutor joined Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly and Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough for a Zoom program before and after the debate to watch Foxx’s friend and mentor put her prosecutorial skills to work going head to head with Republican Vice President Mike Pence.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times file

All four Illinois elected officials urged local residents to vote and, if possible, to do so early and by mail. Stratton called Pence a “complicit party in the death and destruction that is taking place throughout Trump’s America” in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The historic nature of Harris’ appearance in the vice presidential debate wasn’t lost on the four Black women, who occupy some of the state’s top offices, either.

Kelly called Harris “a history maker and a glass ceiling breaker.

“Thanks to her, and Carol Mosely Braun before her, Black girls now grow up knowing that they could be a U.S. senator and hopefully, that they can be part of a winning presidential ticket,” the Matteson Democrat said.

Sun-Times file

Harris is the first Black woman, and first person of Indian descent, to be nominated for a presidential ticket by either of the major parties.

The California senator achieved many other firsts — she was the first South Asian American to serve in the U.S. Senate when elected in 2016. Harris previously served as California’s attorney general — the first African-American and first woman to serve in that position when elected in 2010.

She was the second African American woman in the U.S. Senate — Chicago’s Carol Moseley Braun was the first.

Facing Pence, Harris immediately knocked President Donald Trump’s administration for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying the nation has “witnessed what is the greatest failure of any president.”

Foxx said she anxious during the debate, watching the two veep canddiates volley points back and forth on the pandemic and taxes.

The first-term prosecutor said she was surprised by the vice president’s “gas lighting” and disappointed that the president’s “tactic” of attempting to “dominate the conversation.”

“There was an abject failure here,” Foxx said. “The debate is going as expected here — it’s a very pointed demonstration of the administration’s failure” at handling the coronavirus pandemic, Foxx said.

As for calling a winner of the night as she watched, Foxx said it was too early to call.

“I am not yet cheering,” the first-term prosecutor said.