Vice President Kamala Harris, a California voter and former attorney general, has not said how she will vote. One of the most significant For the first time in years, a criminal justice ballot measure will be presented to state voters.
As she runs for president, Harris is highlighting her background as the former top law enforcement officer of the nation's largest state, presenting herself in advertisements and at the Democratic National Convention in August as a “tough” person who hunts down smugglers and seeks justice for crime victims.
But her campaign did not respond to The Times' questions about how she would vote on Proposition 36, a tough, prosecutor-led ballot measure aimed at eradicating crime. Divide the Democratic base but, Widespread support Polls show that California voters favor this bill. Impose tougher penalties and potentially longer prison sentences Repeated fentanyl and theft charges would overturn part of voter-approved ballot measure 10 years agoHarris was Attorney General.
Harris also declined to comment on the measure. Proposition 47 She did not campaign before voters approved the measure in 2014, and her campaign declined to answer questions from The Times asking about her position on an earlier bill that reduced sentences for certain nonviolent crimes and reduced the prison population.
Her refusal to answer questions about the two crime measures highlights Ms. Harris's caution even before the election. She has given relatively few interviews since Democrats named her as their top candidate in late July, and those did not address the issue. Ms. Harris' strategy hinges on winning over moderate voters in battleground states who may view California's issues in a more conservative light than California's politicians.
Former President Donald Trump, who is registered to vote in Florida, is struggling to answer how he would vote on a high-profile ballot measure that would expand abortion rights in the state. In an interview with NBC in late August, Trump suggested he might support a Florida abortion rights bill, but reversed course the next day after being criticized by anti-abortion activists. While Trump has boasted that as president he fulfilled a 2016 campaign promise by appointing the Supreme Court justice who overturned Roe v. Wade, the issue has become one of his biggest political weaknesses.
Republicans attack Harris for crimes As a statistic Most property and violent crimes are down both in California and across the nation. Trump said cities were “out of control,” a misleading statement he made in August, trying to link the issue to immigration and portray broader unrest. Claimed Harris has been accused of “destroying California” for her role in Proposition 47, even though she had no role in passing the bill.
Harris did not take a stance on Proposition 47, but some of her allies have been involved in the campaign to promote the bill, which she calls progressive criminal justice reform.
“This is a lose-lose issue for Democrats, period,” said Alex Conant, a Republican consultant who advises Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. “She's still trying to explain and walk back comments she made four years ago about defunding the police. She wants to talk about crime in balanced rhetoric, but she won't give any specifics.”
Harris praised efforts to scrutinize police budgets in the wake of the George Floyd shooting, but distanced herself from those views when she became Biden's running mate in late 2020 and subsequently increased funding for law enforcement. During the 2020 presidential primary, she faced criticism from left-wing activists who said “Kamala is a cop,” and she struggled to handle her background as a career prosecutor and failed to adequately explain her more nuanced record.
Harris entered politics in 2004 as San Francisco's district attorney and was elected state attorney general in 2010 and 2014. She defines her approach to law enforcement as “getting smart on crime,” which is also the title of her 2009 book. During her time as district attorney, this included creating a program to provide job training and other support to young, nonviolent drug offenders and strengthening enforcement against sex offenders and suspected violent criminals.
But when Proposition 47 came before voters in 2014, Harris, then attorney general, declined to offer an opinion. There were two reasons, according to her chief of staff at the time, Nathan Barankin: The advocates who drafted the proposition hadn't consulted her or asked her for her support, which he found surprising. And because, as attorney general, she was responsible for writing the ballot summaries and titles, she had long ago decided that it was a conflict of interest for her to advocate for or against most ballot measures.
“Attorneys general always face the dilemma that the more they do, the more they don't do, the more they're going to be criticized,” Barankin said, “but if you speak out, someone is going to yell and accuse you of writing this in a certain way to favor your view.”
But Harris was involved in at least one other bill while she was attorney general. During her 2016 Senate campaign, she Ballot Initiative Her campaign said at the time that it was aimed at taking money out of politics.
Harris also refused to use her powers as attorney general to defend a 2008 statewide bill that would have made same-sex marriage illegal when it was challenged in court.
Other attorneys general have followed a similar path, staying neutral on ballot measures, but like Harris, have made some exceptions: Former Attorney General Jerry Brown, for example, campaigned against a measure that would have suspended the state's climate policy when he ran for governor in 2010, and Attorney General Rob Bonta has said he supports three propositions on abortion rights, same-sex marriage and funding for mental health treatment.
“The reality is that Ms. Harris has taken positions when she thought it was the politically smart thing to do, but sometimes she didn't take positions that voters wanted in an attorney general,” said Dan Morain, a former Times reporter who wrote a biography of Ms. Harris, “Kamala's Way: An American Life.”
Morain said Proposition 36 is a particularly complicated issue from both a policy and political standpoint. California Democrats are divided, with some arguing the bill would help get more people off the streets and into drug treatment, while others warn it would return to a tough-on-crime era when prisons were overcrowded with Black and brown Californians.
“The politics of this issue are pretty tricky,” he said. “I'm not surprised she hasn't taken a stance on this yet.”
Even Gov. Gavin Newsom, who vigorously opposed Proposition 36 when the campaign first began, appeared to soften as it became clear the bill had a good chance of passing, saying last week that he was unlikely to devote any more time or money to the opposition.
“I might not be able to do it all,” Trump told reporters at a bill-signing ceremony in San Francisco on Sept. 19, noting that he has a busy political agenda that includes electing Harris as president.
The comments came on the heels of a poll showing 71% of likely voters support the bill, while only 26% plan to vote no, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll. That was a much wider margin than an August poll by the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies and The Times, which showed support for the bill 56% to 23%.
