2020 race, VP debate: Kamala Harris’ record shows courtroom-honed approach, complicated ideology

Vice President Mike Pence portrays her as an emissary of the ‘radical left’. But some Republicans have found common ground.

Senator from California and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Picture: Olivier Douliery/AFP

Sen. Kamala Harris has endorsed some high-profile progressive proposals, such as universal health care known as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal multitrillion-dollar climate policy.

The Democratic vice presidential candidate also has worked with several Republicans in the Senate and when she was California’s attorney general, but she isn’t known for bipartisan deal making.

Ms Harris’s record will be one of the focal points of Wednesday’s debate with Vice President Mike Pence.

Mr. Pence has portrayed her on the campaign trail as an emissary of what he calls the “radical left.” President Trump has seized on stances she took during her own presidential run that his supporters oppose, such as banning fracking. In 2019, the nonpartisan site GovTrack.us rated her “most liberal” in the Senate, where she has largely voted with her party.

Pragmatic streak

A review of Ms. Harris’s record as a senator since 2017 and as attorney general of California before that, as well as interviews with officials from both parties who have worked with her, show that she also has a pragmatic streak that often favours incremental steps rather than sweeping changes and that she is willing to work across the aisle on individual issues.

While she has been a prominent Democratic critic of many Republican initiatives, she also has disappointed some in the progressive wing of her party by not endorsing their priorities.

“She has been one that I think is willing to look at some of the other ideas that folks have out there and see if this is something that she can support,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski. The Alaska Republican introduced legislation with Ms. Harris that would require public companies to disclose in filings the number of settlements related to workplace harassment they have reached and aggregate settlement amounts.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, left and US Vice President Mike Pence. Harris hopes to deploy her former prosecutor's repertoire against Pence when they meet to debate. Pictures: Saul Loeb, Jim Watson/AFP

“I think it depends on the issue,” added Dan Sullivan, Alaska’s other Republican senator, who knew Ms. Harris when they both were state attorneys general and worked with her on domestic violence legislation in the U.S. Senate.

Her bills with Ms. Murkowski and Mr. Sullivan didn’t pass. During her tenure in the Senate under a GOP majority, four bills for which Ms. Harris was the primary sponsor were enacted into law.

Struggle to explain shifts

Ms Harris struggled during her presidential campaign to explain her policy positions as they evolved. As a senator she supported Medicare for All, which would shift the health care system from private and employer-based insurance to a government-run program. But during her run for the White House she released a more moderate proposal to expand access to Medicare while keeping private insurance intact.

Workers install plexiglass protections on the stage of the debate hall ahead of the vice presidential debate in Kingsbury Hall of the University of Uta. Picture: Eric Baradat/AFP

Now, as part of Joe Biden’s presidential ticket, she supports his plan, which calls for expanding the Affordable Care Act by creating a government-insurance option.

When she broke with most Democrats and opposed Mr. Trump’s renegotiated trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, it was because she didn’t view it as aggressive enough on climate change, which Mr. Pence has brought up in his criticism of Ms. Harris on the campaign trail.

Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said the debate would provide Mr. Pence the chance to expose Ms. Harris’s support for a “radical agenda.” “Kamala Harris is the most liberal member of the entire U.S. Senate and she serves to push Joe Biden even further to the left,” he said.

Going it alone

The Biden campaign declined to comment.

Ms Harris has a record of going it alone in ways that at times angered both moderates and progressives in her party.

Some Democrats, including California’s senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, criticised her for not pursuing the death penalty as state attorney general in 2004 against a man accused of killing a police officer — a stance that was supported by advocates of overhauling the criminal justice system. But those advocates were upset when Ms. Harris later defended California’s capital punishment policy in court.

A signature moment in her time as California’s attorney general involved post-financial-crisis negotiations with big banks over mortgages. Although she faced pressure from the Obama administration to accept a 2012 settlement over the banks’ treatment of customers, Ms. Harris initially rejected it.

She said that, as a result, she got a deal that was better for Californians and tougher on the banks. But the delay — in which she was joined by then-Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, the former vice president’s late son — also rankled negotiators from other states, who saw the move as designed to further her political ambitions.

“She looks at each issue on its merits — a lot of times that means you piss off your own friends,” said Brian Brokaw, who was the campaign manager for Ms. Harris’s attorney general bids.

Rob McKenna, a former Washington attorney general and a Republican, said their offices worked together on several topics, including digital consumer privacy and the mortgage settlement. At the time, Mr. McKenna said he did not view her as a partisan. “My politics are obviously different from hers, but I was impressed with her,” he said.

Republicans have dismissed Kamala Harris’ committee performances as ‘theatrics’. Picture: Mark Makela/Getty Images/AFP

As a first-term senator, Ms. Harris’s legal experience also helped build her national profile with her aggressive questioning of Trump administration nominees, including now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.

Republicans have dismissed her committee performances as theatrics. Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee said he became confident during Ms. Harris’s questioning of Mr. Kavanaugh in 2018 that she was soon going to announce her presidential bid.

But Mr. Lee also said he has found her to be a good ally on some legislation, including a bill he co-sponsored with her to remove caps on immigration green cards based on country of origin, describing her as “tenacious and detail-oriented.”

Jim Kessler, co-founder of centrist think tank Third Way, said his organisation views her as an ally.

Too radical?

“There’s not a lot of evidence that she’s too radical in any way or even too far to the left in the Democratic caucus,” Mr. Kessler said. “In some ways, she reminds me of [former President] Obama, the lawyer who sees six different sides and then makes a cogent argument for one of them.”

Former aides say a 2014 meeting when Ms. Harris was California attorney general shows her focus on pushing for results, even incremental ones. In the meeting, about the growing number of unaccompanied minors entering her state illegally from Central America, Ms. Harris questioned her aides before asking for copies of all the government forms the children had to go through after crossing the border.

She then went through the reams of documents with her staff, as they explained the requirements and timing for each of them. While the California Assembly worked on a legislative fix to help deal with the minors, Ms. Harris convened lawyers from top law firms in the state and asked them to donate 500 hours of pro-bono legal services to represent minors.

Daniel Suvor, who served as chief of policy and senior counsel to Ms. Harris at the time, said: “She wanted to put herself in the shoes of the kid.”

— Lindsay Wise contributed to this article.

Wall Street Journal