Harris provided some answers on the first day of her newly launched campaign.
WASHINGTON, DC — Fresh off announcing her presidential candidacy on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Sen. Kamala Harris confronted some questions about her past track record on criminal justice during a press conference at Howard University, her alma mater.
“I was the Attorney General of California for two terms and I had a host of clients that I was obligated to defend and represent,” she said when asked about her role defending the Department of Corrections and its efforts to prevent transgender inmates from getting gender reassignment surgery. “I couldn’t fire my clients and there were unfortunately situations that occurred where my clients took positions that were contrary to my beliefs.”
Harris, a longtime prosecutor who’s served as San Francisco District Attorney as well as California Attorney General, has faced criticism about her “smart on crime” approach toward criminal justice, even as she’s deemed herself a “progressive prosecutor.”
A recent New York Times’ op-ed from University of San Francisco law professor Lara Bazelon argued that Harris was far from progressive, noting that she fought to keep individuals facing wrongful convictions in jail, fell short in her support of sentencing reforms and offered a confusing defense of the death penalty even though she’s personally against its use.
Harris’s aides told CNN that many of these claims were missing context, and did little to acknowledge the advancements she made to combat implicit police bias and keep first-time offenders out of jail.
