Kamala Harris has a California problem. Donald Trump and the Republicans delighted in mocking the Golden State as a dysfunctional product of liberal America even before Harris became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
But now that Harris is the contender, Trump and the Republican machine are pumping it up, reminding voters at every opportunity that she is a Californian, hoping it helps to portray Harris as the “far-left radical extremist” Trump calls her.
“When she was the district attorney she started it, she destroyed San Francisco, which is a hell of a thing to do,” Trump now says of his new 59-year-old opponent.
Trump has painted Harris, who was San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and then the state Attorney-General until 2017, as weak on crime, saying she was responsible for lawlessness in the state.
“Really, what you should do is take a look at San Francisco now compared to before she became the district attorney, and you’ll see what she’ll do to our country,” Trump said.
Trump running mate JD Vance on the weekend called Harris a “card-carrying member of the San Francisco lunatic fringe”.
Californian cities, and especially San Francisco, have been plagued for the past decade by high levels of homelessness, drug problems, housing shortages and other social problems.
Almost one-third of America’s homeless are in California, with makeshift shelters commonly seen alongside freeways, in public parks, car parks and other public spaces.
Trump has repeatedly attacked the staunchly Democrat California as a “failing” that imposes high taxes while being soft on crime, illegal immigrants, abortion, homelessness and drugs.
His attempts to portray Harris as an excessively progressive DA and AG are likely to hit the mark with his supporters even if they aren’t entirely accurate. Harris’s legacy in these jobs is a mixture of progressive and conservative decisions.
The former president claimed Harris “voted in favour of deadly sanctuary cities” and “refused to seek the death penalty against anyone” while in California before she joined the Senate in 2017.
In fact, from 2008 until 2015 Harris supported requiring police to report juvenile immigrants convicted of certain crimes to US Immigration, but she softened her position in 2015, saying “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal”.
Her record on the death penalty is mixed. As DA in 2004 Harris declined to seek the death penalty for a man accused of killing a police officer. But in 2014 she appealed and successfully overturned a US Court’s decision declaring California’s death penalty unconstitutional.
Most voters will not take time to examine Harris’s legal record but they will remember Trump’s repeated claims that she “destroyed” San Francisco. Polls show California is on the nose with many Americans.
Harris’s fellow high-profile Californian Democrat, Governor Gavin Newsom, appears to have done Harris a timely political favour by moving to improve his state’s image with just over three months to go before the presidential election.
Just days after Harris became the party’s presumptive nominee last week, Newsom took his strongest stand yet against growing homeless camps by ordering them removed on state land.
California political analyst Brian Sobel was quoted as saying the timing of Newsom’s move was “curious” in the context of the election campaign.
California is solidly Democratic and will deliver its 54 electoral votes, the largest of any state, to Harris in November.
The Golden State has not voted for a Republican in a presidential contest since it voted for Californian Ronald Reagan in 1988.
Only 24 per cent of voters in the state are registered Republicans compared with 47 per cent registered Democrats, and no Republican has won a statewide poll since governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was re-elected in 2006.
California is so on the nose with conservatives that if Trump can persuade voters that Harris is a Californian-style liberal, it could hurt her.
A recent poll showed half of American adults believe California is in decline, while 49 per cent of republicans consider California as “not really American”.
The Project 2025 policy document, a conservative manifesto drawn up by former Trump administration officials and conservative think tanks, takes specific aim at California on abortion rights, fuel emissions standards, climate change, LGBTQ+ rights and the transition to electric vehicles.
“Instances of California really going in a different direction from what the Republican Party wants is all over the (Project 2025) report – everything from diversity, equity and inclusion, to connections to China, to hi-tech to homelessness,” Bruce Cain, a political-science professor at Stanford University told the Los Angeles Times.
The aim was to portray a state in disorder, an “undemocratic, patronising state controlled by the hi-tech elites completely out of touch with where the rest of America is”.
Trump’s claims about California had become increasingly colourful even before Harris took over. He has claimed the state has so little water that even rich people in Beverly Hills can’t take proper showers. He has said crime is so rampant that there is no solution except to shoot criminals on sight and he says illegal immigrants are offered pension funds and mansions and are allowed to vote repeatedly.
“The world is being dumped into California,” he has said. “Prisoners. Terrorists. Mental patients.”
Now, with a Californian opponent challenging him for the presidency, Trump’s California bashing is just beginning.
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