United States President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have been chosen as the Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2020, the publication announced on Friday.
“For changing the American story, for showing that the forces of empathy are greater than the furies of division, for sharing a vision of healing in a grieving world, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are TIME’s 2020 Person of the Year,” the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal said.
Three others finalists for the title were the frontline health workers and top US infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci, outgoing President Donald Trump, and the movement for racial justice, which was sparked by the killing of George Floyd in May.
Biden won the Electoral College vote – the state-by-state competition deciding the winner – by 306 to 232. The Electoral College is scheduled to meet on December 14 and formally declare the winner of the US presidential election.
In his victory speech on November 8, Biden had pledged to be a president who will act as a unifier and not a divider. “I pledge to be a president who does not see red or blue states, but United States,” he said.
Harris, meanwhile, created history by becoming the first woman and person of Jamaican and Indian heritage to occupy the vice-president’s post. She paid a tribute to her mother and women for various ethnicities in her victory speech. “But while I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last, because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities,” she had told a crowd of cheering supporters.
Last year, teen climate activist Greta Thunberg had bagged the title. She was the youngest person to be chosen for the honour by the magazine in a tradition that started in 1927.
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