What Kamala Harris' record in California tells us about her political future

SACRAMENTO, California — No understanding of Vice President Kamala Harris is complete without her California origin story.

That backstory has taken on new relevance amid the Democratic Party’s extraordinary election-year upheaval. As a growing number of Democrats call on President Joe Biden to step aside, the question of whether Harris could step in, secure the backing of the party and beat Donald Trump is a topic of hot debate.

Pressure for Biden to leave the race intensified this week when California Rep. Adam Schiff, a close ally of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said publicly that it was time for the president to “pass the torch.”

The Golden State is where Harris started the trajectory that led to her barrier-breaking election as the nation’s first Black, Asian American and female vice president. It's where she shaped her political instincts.

And it's where she first faced critiques that follow her to this day.

“There’s the Kamala Harris people think they know and now there's the one they will get to know in an entirely different way,” said Brian Brokaw, a former adviser to Harris based in Sacramento.

Take it from us, the Californians who have watched Harris’ career from her early days as San Francisco district attorney and state attorney general: Here’s what her formative California tenure tells us about this marquee player on the national stage.

1.

Both got an early career boost from a San Francisco kingmaker

More so than with any other politician, Harris has risen in parallel with Gov. Gavin Newsom — a prominent Biden surrogate and potential future presidential contender — down to a shared cast of political supporters.

After emerging from the competitive cauldron of San Francisco politics, Harris and Newsom enlisted the same blue-chip California consulting firm in their statewide campaigns, although Harris moved on from the firm now called Bearstar Strategies after her unsuccessful 2020 presidential run.

Willie Brown, a former California Assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor whom Harris dated in the mid-1990s, helped Harris and Newsom get footholds in San Francisco politics by placing them on boards. Brown later appointed Newsom to the city’s governing board of supervisors.

Harris and Newsom have also tapped the same pools of Bay Area wealth. But Newsom has been closer than Harris to area power players like Pelosi and the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

2.

A watershed moment on the death penalty has reverberated throughout her career

Harris was only four months into her tenure as San Francisco district attorney — her first elected office — when Isaac Espinoza, a San Francisco police officer, was fatally shot by a man wielding an AK-47 in 2004. Her handling of his murder case would reverberate throughout her career.

Harris said just days after Espinoza’s death that she would seek a prison sentence of life without parole, but not capital punishment, for his killer.

The substance of her remarks was consistent with her opposition to the death penalty, which she made clear during her campaign, and a reflection of how hard it was to successfully get a San Francisco jury to agree to such a sentence. Politically, it was tone deaf — delivered before Espinoza had even been buried and while emotions among law enforcement were still raw.

The fallout escalated when then-Sen. Feinstein spoke at Espinoza’s funeral and, with Harris watching from the pews, earned a standing ovation when she called for the death penalty. It was a stinging rebuke for a novice politician — one that triggered, in many observers eyes, an overcorrection to excessive caution from then on.

The Espinoza case resurfaced in her 2020 presidential bid; the police officer’s widow appeared on CNN harshly criticizing Harris, and the Trump campaign used it as an oppo hit when she joined the ticket with Biden. It would likely be fodder in a 2024 campaign.

3.

She’s not a legislative dealmaker, unlike Biden

Biden, a creature of the Senate, basked in his reputation as congressional dealmaker. But Harris, despite her brief tenure as California’s junior senator, has not shown as much gusto for legislative sausage-making.

Most notably, when California lawmakers introduced a raft of police accountability measures in the early days of the Black Lives Matter movement, then-Attorney General Harris steered clear of the Capitol debates occurring just blocks from her Sacramento office. Instead, Harris focused primarily on policies she could implement on her own, such as requiring body cameras for her small force of special agents and creating an online criminal justice portal.

“I saw it as a general reluctance to have an active legislative role,” former state Attorney General Bill Lockyer told the Los Angeles Times in August 2019.

Harris did champion her own legislative priorities, including an anti-truancy measure in San Francisco that she then pushed as a statewide law. (She took heat for the effort during her presidential campaign as being overly punitive to parents whose children were chronically absent from school). She has also made combating maternal mortality, especially among Black women, a priority both as a senator and vice president.

4.

She’s rusty running against Republicans

As a California Democrat, Harris has faced little in the way of tough challenges from Republican candidates — especially in federal races.

When she ran for retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat in 2016, the state’s top-two primary system put Harris up against a fellow Democrat in the general election, whom she beat by more than 20 points. From there, she launched a bid for the presidency that ended during the primary in 2019.

Her first race for California attorney general was grueling — though it was over 14 years ago and against a candidate who had little in common with today’s Trump-dominant GOP. At that time she faced moderate Republican Steve Cooley and, up until a last-minute surge in the polls, was struggling to win over California voters. The race was so close that Cooley didn't concede until more than three weeks after Election Day. She went onto trounce a different Republican opponent in her reelection bid.

5.

Her work on student debt started as California AG

As California attorney general, Harris took on for-profit colleges that she accused of saddling students with unsustainable debt — work that segued into the Biden administration’s loan relief efforts.

Harris sued Corinthian Colleges in 2013, accusing the chain of preying on disadvantaged prospective students and misleading them about the debt they would incur and the colleges’ job-placement rates. The case set the stage for Corinthian to shutter its California schools.

A decade later, when Biden pushed the largest-ever cancellation of federal student loan debt by moving to absolve Corinthian students of nearly $6 billion owed, he tapped Harris to deliver the news. Like much of Biden’s student debt relief agenda, that’s been tied up in court fights.

6.

She took on fossil fuel companies

Harris made a habit of suing fossil fuel companies during her time as attorney general, amassing $50 million in settlements from lawsuits against Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66.

Her office also sued Southern California Gas Co. over a methane leak from its Aliso Canyon natural gas facility, notched a $44 million settlement in response to a 2007 oil spill and launched an investigation into Exxon Mobil over allegations it had misled the public about the risks of climate change — although she earned criticism for claiming, incorrectly, that she “sued” the company.

And she sued the Obama-Biden administration over an environmental assessment clearing the way for hydraulic fracturing off the coast of California — creating a throughline that continued into her 2019 campaign for the presidency. After being named Biden's running mate, she drew attacks from then-President Trump for her stance against fracking.

"How do you do that and go into Pennsylvania or Ohio or Oklahoma or the great state of Texas?" Trump said at the time.

Harris’ stance also put her in direct conflict with Biden, who repeated often in 2020 that he had no plans to ban fracking, but instead supported halting new oil and gas permits on federal land.

Once tapped for VP, Harris reaffirmed the ticket’s support for fracking. A ban on the practice could be a difficult task for Harris either way, thanks to a 2005 law that exempted most forms of fracking from EPA’s oversight.

7.

She's a bicoastal vice president and regularly visits her home in Los Angeles

Harris was a Bay Area kid. She grew up in Berkeley, began her prosecutorial career at the Alameda County district attorney’s office, and was elected district attorney of San Francisco en route to statewide and then national office.

But somewhere during her national ascent, she became something anathema to many Bay Area denizens: an Angeleno. Harris now lives in Los Angeles’ affluent Brentwood neighborhood, and she frequently travels home to recharge (coupled with official White House business to justify the cross-country treks.) This followed her shocking decision to don a Dodgers cap for debate prep.

Whether she’s a NorCal loyalist or a SoCal resident, Harris’ California roots still offer a connection to some of the Democratic Party’s deepest pools of cash — although the flow may dry up if dissatisfied Hollywood players don’t succeed in nudging Biden aside.

Kelsey Tamborrino contributed to this report.