Is she on track to be the first Democratic president from California? Here are nine ways that California shaped Kamala Harris and that Harris has shaped California.
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Now that voters are reconsidering whether Harris has what it takes to be president of the United States — and asupon her — we’re resurrecting this look at her California years and career. Here are nine ways that California shaped Kamala Harris, and that Harris shaped California.She was was born in 1964 in Oakland — the hospital a little over a mile from the city hall where, more than half a century later, she would announce her short-lived 2020 bid for the presidency.
Renne thought Harris, who had focused on child abuse and sexual exploitation cases in Alameda County, would be a good fit. “I don’t know what the term ‘teenage prostitute’ means. I have never met a ‘teenage prostitute.’ I have met exploited kids,” Mesloh, then Harris’ communications director, recalls her boss saying at her first all-staff meeting. Harris then ordered her prosecutors not to use the term in court. A year later, Harris sponsored a bill putting the crime of human trafficking into the state criminal code.
The arrest was based on a contentious legal argument that pit anti-trafficking fervor against the First Amendment. Since Backpage was merely a platform for ads, its lawyers argued, it was protected by the same law that protects Google from being held liable for illicit websites listed in its search results.
Harris has been quick to point out that the “stick” in this carrot and stick approach only came out after a series of escalating interventions, including mandatory meetings with school staff and social workers. No one went to jail under the program, though a handful of parents were fined. Within a few years, city truancy rates fell by a third and Harris took credit.
The decision engendered a predictably fierce backlash from the police union and rebukes from politicians. “This is not only the definition of tragedy,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at Espinoza’s funeral, “it’s the special circumstance called for by the death penalty law.” The assembled officers cheered while Harris remained seated.
Afterward, Harris formed a unit to handle the sharing of evidence with criminal defense attorneys. She has also said that sheIn 2015, for example, lawyers for an inmate convicted of murder attempted to have the case thrown out after new evidence suggested that Riverside County prosecutors lied on the stand during the initial trial.
“It is an adversarial system and so she was filling a particular role, but I think that she was able to do it in a very sophisticated, smart and responsive way,” she said.Harris’ biggest accomplishment while California’s attorney general was to secure a financial settlement with some of the country’s largest banks accused of illegally foreclosing on homeowners.
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