Harris Calibrates Political Strategy to Fight Trump

President Joe Biden, who announced the end of his re-election bid in a letter on X, has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor on the Democratic ticket.

Now, Harris’ record on criminal justice — as a former prosecutor, senator and 2020 presidential candidate, as well as vice president — is coming under new scrutiny. In recent years, the country has witnessed protests following the killing of George Floyd, swings in crime rates related to the pandemic, and heated rhetoric about immigration and crime. Where does Harris stand on these and other criminal justice issues?

The Marshall Project offers five things to know:

The Biden-Harris administration has mixed feelings about criminal justice reform.

The administration has pushed some criminal justice reforms over the past three and a half years, but its record so far has been met with criticism from advocates.

After two mass shootings — one at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and the other at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York — Biden signed the Safer Communities Act of 2022. The law was the first sweeping package of gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years, included a new gun trafficking law and expanded an existing law that prevents people convicted of domestic violence from possessing guns.

But efforts on many of the issues Biden campaigned on — like abolishing the federal death penalty and promising to reverse former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies — have fallen short.

Harris’ early missteps on immigration could be used against her.

One of Harris’ first tasks as vice president in 2021 was a diplomatic role at the U.S. southern border, but the rollout was fairly disorganized. News headlines described Harris as “immigration contact” — but the vice president doesn’t oversee the border; the U.S. Department of Homeland Security does.

That, combined with verbal blunders in press interviews, including a viral clip from a speech in Guatemala — in which she told people who were considering making the “dangerous trek” to the U.S., “Don’t come. Don’t come.” — has tarnished her image.

In June, Biden announced an executive order barring migrants who illegally crossed the southern border from seeking asylum. The order is conditional and takes effect when crossings “exceed our ability to timely address consequences,” according to a White House announcement. Advocates have condemned the move, saying it raises the bar for asylum seekers.

Republicans have seized on Harris’ past missteps on immigration, calling her a “border tsar” for years — a term that resurfaced during the Republican National Convention.

At the Republican National Convention, former presidential candidate Nikki Haley said, “Kamala had one job. One job. And that was to fix the border. Now imagine her being responsible for the entire country.”

Harris bills herself as a “progressive prosecutor,” but her past is complicated.

Before joining the U.S. Senate in 2017, Harris spent years as a prosecutor in California, including as district attorney in San Francisco and the state’s attorney general. It’s hard to fit her time in those positions into a clear-cut “reformer,” “progressive” or “tough crime defender,” in large part because those definitions have changed significantly since her prosecutorial career began decades ago.

According to Jamilah King, writing for Mother Jones in 2018, “Harris has long tried to bridge the difficult gap between social progress and the work required of her as a prosecutor—sometimes more effectively than others.” Here’s a telling example: As San Francisco district attorney, Harris vowed not to seek the death penalty, but as California’s attorney general, her office argued it should be upheld.

In her 2019 memoir, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” Harris noted that “America has a deep and dark history of people using prosecutorial power as a tool for injustice.”

However, critics on the left have frequently criticized Harris for his record, which they say has contributed to mass incarceration.

In a first-of-its-kind town hall organized by and for incarcerated people and their loved ones that same year, Harris touted her record as a prosecutor and district attorney, singling out a small reintegration program called Back on Track for people charged for the first time with minor offenses, such as minor drug dealing.

In 2020, Harris ran to the left of Biden on key issues of prisons and policing.

During the 2020 presidential primaries, Harris sought to shed her image as someone who takes a tough approach to crime, and on most criminal justice issues, she sided with the left in favor of solitary confinement, mandatory minimum sentences at the federal level and decriminalizing border crossings.

Candidates Harris and Biden have also split on the issue of clemency, one of the few areas of criminal justice where the president has the power to make sweeping unilateral changes by releasing people from federal prisons.

Harris has proposed creating a federal sentencing review unit that would consider early release for people who have served at least 10 years of a prison sentence of 20 years or more. So far, the Biden administration has been comparatively restrained on the issue of clemency, approving fewer petitions than any other president in recent memory.

Harris has also outpaced Biden on police reform, saying she would support a national standard on police use of force and proposing a new federal board with authority to review police shootings. The initiative, popular among some police think tanks, would function like the National Transportation Safety Board’s reviews of plane crashes.

After nearly four years as vice president, some of Harris’ positions may have changed.

The national criminal justice landscape has changed dramatically since Harris ran for president in 2020 and served as a prosecutor in California. The murder of George Floyd, a rise in crime during the COVID-19 pandemic and record-breaking border crossings at the southern border are just some of the events that have changed the political landscape over the past five years.

The events have led some voters and politicians to support “tough on crime” policies and fueled ideological conflicts within a Democratic Party that — as recently as 2020 — largely supported reforms to a system it saw as too punitive. That means it’s less clear what approach Harris would choose as the party’s flagbearer.

Harris has also spent the past year rebuilding her image after earlier missteps in her term, and those close to her have observed a more confident vice president. Harris has made more than 60 trips this year, speaking on issues including race, abortion rights and the war in Gaza.

This story was produced by Marshall’s Project and reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media.