Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on Monday formally submitted her letter of resignation as senator from California to Gov. Gavin Newsom, CNN reported.
In commentary for the San Francisco Chronicle, she wrote “serving as your senator has been an honor.”
Harris won't give a farewell speech on the Senate floor, since the upper chamber isn't scheduled to reconvene until Tuesday, the eve of Inauguration Day.
"As I resign from the Senate, I am preparing to take an oath that would have me preside over it," she wrote in the commentary. "Thus, as I leave the United States Senate, this is not goodbye. This is hello."
With Harris' resignation, Newsom is expected to appoint fellow Democrat Alex Padilla, now California's secretary of state, to serve the final two years of Harris' term.
Harris is the first woman ever elected vice president — and the first Black woman and first woman of South Asian descent to serve in that office. But her Senate departure leaves the chamber's roster without a Black woman. Harris was just the second Black female senator, winning her California election 17 years after Democrat Carol Moseley Braun finished a single term representing Illinois.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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