![]() ![]() She shot up in the polls after a strong first debate, but then fell and never really regained traction. Harris dropped out of the presidential race late last year after running low on money. She serves on several high-profile committees in the Senate, including the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee. Harris has been a vocal supporter of racial justice legislation in response to the killing of Floyd, supporting proposals to overhaul policing and make lynching a federal crime. ![]() She has also backed proposals to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and revise the country’s bail system. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill before shifting her position during the presidential campaign. ![]() In recent years, she sought to align herself more with the Democratic Party’s left wing, initially supporting Sen. During her relatively brief time as California’s junior senator, she has become known for her intensive interrogations of Trump administration officials and nominees, including Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing and Attorney General Jeff Sessions during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. Senate CareerĮlected to the Senate in 2016, Harris was the first Black woman in the chamber in more than a decade. The criminal justice plan she released during her presidential campaign contained a number of progressive policies that she had opposed earlier in her career. But 10 years later, when a judge declared California’s death penalty unconstitutional, she appealed the decision, saying she was obligated to do so as the state’s attorney general. She was also criticized for refusing to allow advanced DNA testing that might have exonerated Kevin Cooper, a Black man on death row, and for defending some convictions against allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.Īn opponent of the death penalty, she refused to seek it when a police officer was killed in San Francisco in 2004 - an episode that drew protests at the time but that she has pointed to as an example of her commitment to a fairer criminal justice system. She has said she became a prosecutor because she believed she could best change the system from within, a message that became a key part of her pitch as a presidential candidate: that voters could trust her to overhaul the justice system because she knew it “from the inside out.”īut aspects of her record have been a source of criticism, especially from the left.Īs attorney general, she rarely prosecuted police officers who killed civilians, though by the time she left that office, she had opened some reviews of police departments. Harris has described herself as a “progressive prosecutor” and argued that it is possible to be tough on crime while also confronting the deep inequities of the criminal justice system. Harris’ record as a prosecutor - she was the San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011, and the California attorney general from 2011 to 2017 - was a major theme of her presidential campaign and will almost certainly be discussed in the general election, especially given the national outcry over police brutality and systemic racism since the killing of George Floyd. ![]()
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