Vice President Kamala Harris’s extensive 27-year career in criminal prosecution in California may pose challenges in appealing to moderate voters, who remember the obstacles she faced during her failed 2020 presidential bid. Now, both Republicans and Democrats are preparing to scrutinize her political record, which has drawn criticism from both parties.
Now that the spotlight has turned to Harris after President Biden unexpectedly dropped his bid for the Democratic nomination for a second presidential term on Sunday, Republican strategists are preparing to step up their offensive against her.
Despite calls from many Republicans for Biden to resign immediately, one House Republican strategist told Fox News Digital that “what's most important over the next week or so is defining Kamala as this far-left liberal from San Francisco.”
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President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris (Fake Images)
“During the Kenosha riots, she defended the rioters, and that's in the key state of Wisconsin, where that was very unpopular. We need to make sure that voters remember all these crazy things that she said and wanted to do,” the strategist said.
Harris' tenure as California attorney general has also come under fire from left-wing critics, primarily related to her tough-on-crime approach and other criminal justice policies she championed.
During her 2020 presidential campaign, which she launched in January 2019, Harris faced significant criticism for her prosecution record. Opponents of harsh criminal prosecution argue that it disproportionately affects low-income families and minorities, further entrenching them in the prison system.
One of the most criticized aspects of Harris's record was her handling of truancy cases. Harris supported a truancy law, passed in 2011, that allows district attorneys to charge parents with a misdemeanor if their children were chronically absent during the school year without a valid reason.
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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally on June 28, 2024, in Las Vegas. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
In 2019, HuffPost’s Molly Redden reported on how the truancy program affected some families in her article, “The Human Costs of Kamala Harris’ War on Truancy.” Among those affected was Cheree Peoples, an African-American mother arrested in April 2013 after her son missed 20 days of school.
Harris later backtracked on her truancy crackdown in a 2019 podcast, saying it was “never the intention” to criminalize parents and describing the California law as one with “unintended consequences,” Politico reported at the time.
The new Democratic presidential candidate also faced criticism for her conflicting stances on the death penalty. She defended the death penalty in California, which was controversial among some progressive groups opposed to capital punishment.
Later in her career, she changed her stance and publicly opposed the death penalty. In the 2020 Democratic presidential debates, Harris responded to her primary opponent. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, when he accused Harris of omitting key evidence that would have “freed an innocent man from death row” during her time as attorney general.
During the debate, Gabbard said she was “deeply concerned” by Harris' record.
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President Biden, former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris (Fake Images)
“Senator Harris says she's proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she'll be a prosecutor president, but I have deep concerns about her record,” Gabbard, now an independent, said at the time. “There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana-related violations and then laughed about it when asked if she ever smoked marijuana.”
“I have personally opposed the death penalty my entire career,” Harris said. “And that has never changed.”
She also faced accusations of being too tough on low-level drug offenders during her time as San Francisco's district attorney and later as the state's top cop. Liberal critics argued that her policies contributed to the mass incarceration of black men rather than focusing on rehabilitation and criminal justice reform.
Meanwhile, some Democrats are describing a potential Harris-Trump showdown as “the prosecutor versus the criminal,” in light of Trump's recent court cases.
Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York wrote on Sunday: “November 5th: The prosecutor against the criminal.”
The anti-Trump group known as the Lincoln Project also weighed in with a new ad supporting Harris.
“As a tough prosecutor, Kamala Harris has had to deal with men like Trump all the time: rapists, con men, frauds, criminals… she's used to guys like Trump, used to putting them in their place,” the narrator says in the ad.
Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., also expressed support for Harris in X.
“The contrast in this race could not be clearer: a prosecutor versus a convicted felon. A defender of Americans' fundamental liberties versus a man who has tried to take them away at every turn. Let's get to work,” he wrote.
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Democrats will officially nominate candidates for president and vice president at next month's Democratic National Convention, which will be held in Chicago from August 19-22.
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Fox News Digital's Kyle Morris contributed to this report.
