Possible vice president pick Kamala Harris often avoided controversy in California. Here’s how
Kamala Harris had a reputation in California as a prosecutor and attorney general who waited rather than led, who moved on controversial issues only once she saw what was politically viable.
She didn’t take a position on the 2015 California Assembly proposal to make sure incidents involving police using deadly force got independent investigations. Today she’s cited by the bill’s sponsor as an influential voice in aiding his effort.
She opposed a 2010 state initiative to legalize marijuana. She now says she strongly supports legalization.
She did not support a 2015 push to require all law enforcement officials to wear body cameras. Though Harris had agents in her agency do so, she said it was up to local governments to decide whether their employees should wear them.
She opposed a 2004 state initiative to soften California’s minimum mandatory sentencing laws. Last year, she outlined a criminal justice reform agenda that would end minimum mandatory sentences.
And as attorney general from 2011 to 2017, she didn’t take positions on ballot initiatives because her office was tasked with writing their summaries and titles. Her stance, one not taken by most predecessors in her post, allowed her to avoid public comment on a wide range of political fraught topics.
Harris, a Democratic senator from California since January 2017, is at the top of every analyst’s list of possible vice presidential running mates for former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden has said he’ll pick a woman, and Black activist groups are pushing hard for a woman of color.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political analysis, Thursday listed her as most likely to be chosen as the nominee — but also listed among her weak points that she “sometimes tries to be all things to all people.”
“She’s not a leader on the issues,” said Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML, which advocates for legalized marijuana.
The senator’s office declined a request to comment for this story.
Harris has been criticized widely by some Black and Latino activists for her tough-on-crime stands.
But some familiar with her record – conservatives, liberals and moderates alike in California – see a different reason for concern. As she served as San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and attorney general from 2011 until 2016, they say, she too often checked the public mood before she acted.
Brian Marvel, president of the Peace Officers Research Association of California, praised Harris for her “open door” policy as attorney general.
But, he said, “She would be astute enough to see where things are going and then try to move in that direction.” That raises the question, Marvel said: “Is she going to stand firm on her 2020 positions?”
Here is how Harris evolved on several issues in California during her years in public life:
Investigating the Police
Then: In 2015, Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, introduced legislation to allow independent investigations of people who died because of deadly force by police. The attorney general – Harris at the time – could name a special prosecutor to look into the death of a civilian by an officer.
Harris did not support taking that authority away from local prosecutors. “I don’t think there’s an inherent conflict,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Where there are abuses, we have designed the system to address them.”
She did express a desire for reform. “Here’s the bottom line: I am trying to change the system from the inside,” she told The Sacramento Bee as she campaigned for the Senate in 2016. “They (activists) are trying to change the system from the outside. And together, change will occur.”
But in 2018, after the shooting of Stephon Clark, who was unarmed and holding a cell phone when shot that year in March by Sacramento police, Harris talked about the urgency of dealing with bias when police are involved with people of color.
Now a senator, she noted how as attorney general her look at training on use of force had prompted the establishment of a statewide training program dealing with handling bias.
When asked if she would back legislation that would more clearly define when police could use deadly force, Harris did not commit to supporting it, saying “I’m looking forward to seeing the language,” and calling the idea “very interesting.”
Now: McCarty today counts her as an important supporter of his effort. She began helping him in 2016, he said, and a fact sheet for his current Assembly legislation cites Harris’ efforts that year as attorney general to create teams to investigate officer-involved shootings.
“She understood the need,” the Sacramento County Democrat said. “She always knew the system was fraught with conflict.”
Body Cameras
Then: The push for police to wear body cameras intensified in 2015. The 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore while in police custody had galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement and made criminal justice reform a national priority.
Harris was attorney general, and announced her agents would be the first from a statewide agency that would be required to wear recording equipment.
But she stopped short of supporting them for anyone else.
A month after Baltimore erupted in riots after Gray’s death, Harris spoke to reporters as the Assembly was considering body camera legislation.
“I as a general matter believe that we should invest in the ability of law enforcement leaders in specific regions and with their departments to use ... discretion to figure out what technology they are going to adopt based on needs that they have and resources that they have,” The Sacramento Bee reported.
“So, I don’t think we can have a one-size-fits-all approach to this,” she said.
Now: Earlier this month, Harris spoke at a widely-publicized Democratic press conference to introduce the Justice in Policing Act, which requires federal law enforcement officials to have body and dashboard cameras.
“We are here today with common sense solutions...at least at the federal level, to hold police accountable,” she said.
Minimum mandatory sentences
Then: Getting tough on crime was not only popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, it was a favorite Democratic talking point.
Zero tolerance was popular in the nation’s big cities. Crackdowns on drug crimes increased. Minimum mandatory sentences became a way of dealing with the notion that too many criminals got off with light penalties.
Harris was sympathetic to those who thought such sentences were often unfair, particularly to people of color. “The numbers tell us that harsh sentences aren’t enough on their own,” she wrote in her 2009 book “Smart on Crime.”
”Ignoring convicted offenders’ addictions or their lack of job education and preparedness while they are in prison contribute to their re-appearance after we release them,” Harris said.
She opposed Proposition 66 when it appeared on the ballot in 2004, as did current and former governors. Harris explained that while she had issues with three strikes, she felt that the need to prove intent would make it harder for her to prosecute domestic violence cases. The ballot measure, which was defeated, would have reclassified eight felonies that counted as a “strike,” including burglary of an unoccupied home and certain arsons that did not cause significant injury.
In 2011, she was also reluctant to get behind an effort to soften the law.
“When I was district attorney for San Francisco, I had a three strikes policy that in general did not seek a 25-year-to-life sentence unless it was of a serious or violent nature,” she told KPCC public radio.
But, Harris added, “We also have to give weight to the ability of elected DA’s to exercise good judgment in determining who will end up in state prison.”
Now: As she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination last year, there was no question about where she stood. In her 2019 criminal justice reform plan, Harris is clear about her position today: “Eliminate all mandatory minimums by letting judges issue sentences below the mandatory minimum.”
She urges an end to mandatory minimum sentences on the federal level and would “incentivize states to do the same.” Her plan has a detailed proposal for helping prosecutors, including using federal money to help district attorneys decide what cases would best help “promote public safety and justice.”
Marijuana
Then: Harris opposed the 2010 initiative to legalize the drug in certain instances. The initiative failed.
Six years later, she did not support a proposition that created the legal market in the state and reduced felonies to misdemeanors – meaning thousands of people of color could finally have non-violent drug felonies removed from their records. Harris did not take positions on ballot measures, explaining her office was involved in preparing summaries for voters.
Harris told The Bee that while she was generally supportive of legalization, “There is a whole concern about how we would detect to determine impairment for the purposes of legal or illegal driving. Those are real details and I take seriously when weighing in on a subject such as (this) that we have thought through the details.”
Among the supporters were then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said “It’s a war on the poor and it’s a war on folks of color, and it’s got to end. And the only way you end it is by going to the most destructive and the most ineffective component of that war, and that is the war on cannabis.”
Now: Her 2019 criminal justice reform said “It is past time to end the failed war on drugs, and it begins with legalizing marijuana,” she says, adding emphasis with the italics.
Doing so would also help remedy a racial disparity. Harris pointed out that “ despite roughly equal usage rates, Black people are about four times more likely than White people to be arrested for marijuana.”
To California NORML’s Gieringer, her latest stance is typical of her ability to shift with the times. “She knows which way the wind is blowing,” he said.
There’s debate about whether Harris is taking advantage of the political mood or doing what good politicians do, and evolving with their constituency.
“If they’re smart, they evolve. Nobody’s perfect, and the views of voters have changed dramatically in just the last three weeks,” said Sacramento-based Democratic strategist Andrew Acosta.
But to those who have followed Harris, concerns are still there.
“Her office now is one of the leaders we talk to for the changes we want to see. It’s unfortunate she didn’t hold those views then,” said Kara Gotsch, director of strategic initiatives at The Sentencing Project, which advocates for reform.
This story was originally published June 19, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Possible vice president pick Kamala Harris often avoided controversy in California. Here’s how."
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