Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) acknowledged that he urged President-elect Joe Biden to choose a Black female running mate, making a private case that he strongly believed it would help him win more votes against President Donald Trump. “I said to him in private that I thought that a lot of the results would turn on whether or not that woman was a Black woman,” Clyburn, credited with resetting Biden’s Democratic primary trajectory, told CNN’s Dana Bash on Saturday about the running mate search. “I gave him all my advice to him in private. But I am very pleased that it was a Black woman selected. I think it cemented his relationship to the Black community.”

Biden’s presidential victory also means that Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) will become the first woman and first Black vice president-elect in America.