Kamala Harris is quickly becoming a front runner in the race to the DNC Primaries. Being as how new she is to the political arena in regards to running for president, it might be time to take a look at some common criticisms of Kamala Harris and how they actually hold up.
Original Author is user /u/The_Bainer and this article is written with permission to convert and post on the medium.
Let’s start with the criticism most often brought up first.
“Kamala Harris is supported by Hillary who famously represents the interests of the 1%”
I am going to start by saying I fundamentally disagree with this premise and my addressing your questions is not an acceptance of, what I view as, a flawed statement as true. That being said, I have no interest in and will not re-litigate 2016. Kamala Harris is not Hillary Clinton, she is not Bernie Sanders, she is not Barack Obama. She is Kamala Harris.
The second reason is this article in the NY Times
Also for the record — This article is an opinion piece as well and poses as nothing else.
I have read the article many times. And have looked into the issues raised and found the veracity of Ms. Bazelon’s statements in the article wanting. I’m not going to go through the article point by point because I have other things to do today and you also have access to Al Gore’s internet. But here are a few quick points.
First, the opinion is anti-Harris and avoids talking about her accomplishments as District Attorney and Attorney General entirely. Lateefah Simon, an advocate for civil rights and racial justice in San Francisco, wrote a response to Bazelon’s piece and it is worth a read.
Bazelon misrepresents Harris’s position on the death penalty. She has been consistently and vocally opposed to the death penalty, but when she ran for AG she stated she would have her office defend the constitutionality of it in court none-the-less. But she also refused to seek the death penalty as a prosecutor, a position which drew criticism from her own party.
Bazelon also misrepresents Harris’s position on a variety of issues such as body cameras. Yes, she did oppose a specific bill creating standards for body cameras across California, but her opposition was base on flaws in the bill (i.e. a one-size-fits-all approach) when she has been a consistent supporter, advocate, and implementer of body cameras.
Bazelon also goes through a number of cases that were argued by the California Attorney General office on appeal and presents them as if Harris herself were in the courtroom of every case making the arguments.
As Attorney General, she did not personally argue every case and write every brief. She had a supervisory responsibility, yes, but was not in the room crafting every argument. There were some deputy Attorneys General who were too clever for their own good who thought they could win on problematic arguments, Some did and some didn’t. Harris did not, and no Attorney General does, supervise every case much less every detail of every argument in every case.
A good example of this is the infamous prison labor argument that was used to oppose releasing prisoners from overcrowded prisons. As an aside, the argument itself is of a common type meant to discourage appellate courts from taking actions with far-reaching implications on the legislative framework of the sate. But it is quite possibly the worst example of this type of argument ever being used.
Back to my point though, when Harris learned this argument had been made in court, she condemned it:
“The way that argument played out in court does not reflect my priorities,” she said, adding that she fears state lawyers taking that position will create more distrust in the criminal justice system. Harris worried that heavily policed communities may suspect the state has an “ulterior motive,” especially when it seems “the penalty may not be proportionate to the crime.”
“The idea that we incarcerate people to have indentured servitude is one of the worst possible perceptions,” said Harris. “I feel very strongly about that. It evokes images of chain gangs. I take it very seriously and I’m looking into exactly what needs to be done to correct it.”
Another good example, which is cited by Bazelon, is the case where a police laboratory technician, who had a history of drug abuse, was corrupting drug evidence. (I’ll note Bazelon fails to mention that the lab in question was controlled by the Police Department, not the District Attorney’s office, but you know, details.) When Harris was made aware of the extent of the problems at the Police Department’s drug lab, she dropped over 500 cases that were potentially affected.
Bazelon presents a number of other cases as if they were argued by Harris herself and the positions as positions taken by Harris herself. When, in fact, Harris was not the attorney working the cases. Bazelon even says things like “Harris argued” or “Harris fought for” for cases that Harris was not herself working. That is deeply disingenuous and deceptive.
Now I am not saying Harris is without fault in these situations. Like she has said on multiple occasions, the buck stopped with her and she had the ultimate responsibility for managing the personnel at the Attorney General’s office. So I think it would be fair to criticize her in the situations for poor management. Though I would personally also acknowledge the sheer size of the California Attorney General’s office and the fact that though she had a more progressive view of the role of prosecutors, the AG’s office as a whole still had many hold-over “tough on crime” prosecutors.” Bazelon, though, does not make a managerial criticism in the cases she goes through. She attacks Harris for holding views and making arguments that she did not hold and did not make.
Anyway, enough with that opinion piece. On to Kamala’s record.
“I am worried that Kamala Harris is simply riding the progressive and socialist wave that is traveling across America.”
Kamala Harris is her own candidate with her own record of progressive accomplishments and positions going back more than a decade.
Examples of things she did to improve the criminal justice system as District Attorney & Attorney General
California: Kamala Harris announces police anti-bias training program
- California’s attorney general announced a statewide training program aimed at getting police officers to avoid having built-in biases compromise their ability to enforce laws fairly and with appropriate force. The announcement Friday came as Kamala Harris outlined the results of a 90-day review by her agency that sought to find ways to strengthen the trust between police and the public following recent slayings of unarmed civilians by officers in cities across the country.
- Harris also said that under a pilot program, of Justice Department special agents would be outfitted with on-body cameras similar to those worn by officers of some local forces in California.
- San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris said Tuesday she will not seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing a San Francisco police officer over the weekend, a decision that legal experts say is rare if not unprecedented in California. The death penalty was restored in California in 1978, but The Chronicle’s review found only limited documentation about the outcome of cases before 1987.
- Focusing on 90 cases since 1987, the newspaper found that prosecutors sought the death penalty in nearly every case in which a suspect was arrested.
ALTERNATIVE SENTENCING GAINING ACCEPTANCE
- Back on Track, a San Francisco program for first-time young adult drug offenders, involves job training, apprenticeships in the building trades, G.E.D. preparation, money-management skills, child care, and other features. Because failure to complete the program means the defendant goes right to jail, the recidivism rate has been less than 10 percent. Back on Track costs $5,000 per year per participant, a significant reduction from the average cost to incarcerate someone, which can run anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 or more.
L.A. County Jail launches a program to keep inmates from coming back
- She was the only AG to investigate big banks for their role in the mortgage crisis. Without her, the national mortgage settlement would be watered down promises rather than the guarantee it was.
- In 2012, Harris helped win a massive, $25 billion settlement with Wells Fargo and other financial institutions for foreclosure abuses:
“As the fraud was being uncovered, many of the AGs were yelling ‘Settle, settle, settle.’ They just wanted to get their hands on the money,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who during the negotiations was setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for the Obama administration. Warren has endorsed Harris for U.S. Senate and has appeared in one of the attorney general’s campaign ads.
“[Harris] was the one who said ‘No, we have to do better, and we have to investigate more. Too many families have been destroyed by the crisis and the illegal activity of these banks.’”
In 2012, Harris also helped push through a bill in the California Legislature that offered homeowners some of the strongest protections in the nation against aggressive foreclosure tactics by banks, which was credited in part for a plunge in foreclosures in the state. The measure also gave private citizens the right to sue financial institutions if they violated the law.
Shortly after taking office, Harris created a mortgage fraud task force that not only assisted with the mortgage settlement, but also went after financial firms that targeted homeowners facing foreclosure. The task force also took legal action against the banks and financial ratings firms for the massive losses that California’s two giant public pension systems, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and California State Teachers’ Retirement System, sustained after unknowingly investing in securities that included risky subprime mortgages.
Harris’ office collected $921 million in mortgage-backed securities settlements with JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup, Inc., Bank of America Corp., Standard & Poor’s and Goldman Sachs.
Troncoso, who led the mortgage fraud strike force, said building a criminal case against bankers involved in the foreclosures that led to the national mortgage settlement would have been “extremely difficult.” Harris acknowledges as much.
“I too, like most Americans, am frustrated. Clearly crimes occurred and people should go to jail,” Harris said. “But we went where the evidence took us.”
She is arguably one of the most progressive members of the Senate
She has introduced bills to provide a tax credit of up to $6,000 for lower and middle-income individuals and families and tax credits for renters. Vox did an analysis of the candidates’ anti-poverty bills and Kamala’s LIFT Act and Rent relief act has the potential to lift the most people out of poverty, 9.6 million and 7.8 million respectively.
She supports raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour
She has also introduced bills to address bail reform and start body camera programs at CBP and ICE
She supported the FIRST STEP Act, as a first step, but she said would like there to be more prohibitions on private prisons in the FIRST STEP ACT.
“All of the Act’s sentencing reforms should be applied retroactively, and the Act should further expand application of earned good time credits, place more prohibitions on private prisons which profit from the incarceration of individuals, and further limit the use of electronic monitoring,” Harris added.
She has also supported banning private prisons.
She co-sponsored Booker’s bill legalizing marijuana.
She was the first co-sponsor on Sanders’s M4A bill.
In the town hall last week she stated her support for the Green New Deal and outlined some specifics she would like to see in it.
She also clearly and firmly stated her support for protections and a pathway to citizenship for dreamers and DACA recipients, as well as their parents. That was also in the town hall, she also referenced that support in her kickoff.
That’s just a few things, there’s obviously more but she has a lot of ideas and I hope we see more as she rolls out her campaign. I’d recommend watching her town hall from last week if you have the time and access, there was quite a bit of policy discussion. Its available on Youtube via CNN.
Disclaimer: This article was not written by anyone involved officially in the Kamala Harris Campaign.
