Retired NASCAR and Indy Car driver Danica Patrick is attacking presidential candidate Kamala Harris for her refusal to weigh in on a controversial ballot measure in her native California.
After speaking at a rally supporting Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on Sunday, Patrick addressed Proposition 36, which aims to strengthen criminal penalties for drugs and theft in California.
Specifically, Patrick took issue with Harris’s refusal to tell reporters how she voted on her early ballot in her native California.
“If this is what she is certainly hiding, it makes you wonder,” Patrick wrote in X. “What else?” And why?
“Like a relationship,” Patrick added, “this is kind of a red flag.”
Retired NASCAR and Indy Car driver Danica Patrick attacks Vice President Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris has refused to publicly weigh in on Proposition 36 on the California ballot.
Proposition 36 comes a decade after an earlier ballot initiative that downgraded many nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors, such as petty shoplifting and drug use. The hope, in 2014, was that it would lead to a more equitable criminal justice system and help end mass incarceration.
A decade later, many Californians oppose that leniency.
The issue has resulted in some close races this year across the solidly blue state for Democratic and progressive members of Congress, mayors and district attorneys running for re-election. And a new state ballot measure, Proposition 36, would partially repeal the 2014 law.
Critics say criminal justice reform has been a failed social experiment.
Two years after San Francisco voters ousted one of the first reform-minded prosecutors elected to office, voters across the Bay in Oakland will decide in November whether to remove another progressive district attorney.
South of Los Angeles, District Attorney George Gascón, who co-authored Proposition 47 and won the 2020 election after protests and racial reckoning following the police killing of George Floyd, faces stiff competition from a former federal prosecutor who calls himself a “tough middle-of-the-road candidate.
District Attorney George Gascón has faced intense criticism for his lenient sentence
Just a few weeks earlier Gascón endorsed Harris for president.
“I’ve known @kamalaharris for decades,” he wrote on social media. ‘We worked together in San Francisco and I admired her work ethic, intelligence and passion for helping victims of crime. “I am proud to support his candidacy this November and encourage all Los Angeles County residents to do the same.”
Frustration over retail theft has pushed Gov. Gavin Newsom to champion a series of bills that crack down on serial offenders and car thieves, but stop short of making retail crimes felonies. again.
Proposition 36 goes further: It would make theft of any amount a felony if a person already has two convictions for theft, lengthen some sentences for felony drug and theft crimes, make possession of fentanyl a felony, and require people with multiple drug charges complete treatment or serve time. .
Voters rejected a similar initiative in 2020, but this time there is a bipartisan coalition backing Proposition 36. More than 180 Democratic elected officials, including 64 mayors, signed a campaign supporting the initiative last month.
The measure also has the support of the California Chamber of Commerce and major retailers such as Walmart, Target and Home Depot. A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 71% of likely voters said they would vote yes.
“It’s difficult for businesses and communities that are really on the front lines,” said Jennifer Barrera, president of the California Chamber of Commerce. “I think it will probably increase incarceration… but I also hope and expect that it will certainly have an impact on reducing crime.”
Neighbors and local business owners come together to support California Proposition 36
Opponents of Proposition 36, including Newsom and Democratic legislative leaders, say it would lead the state back to the policies of continuing a failed war on drugs and locking up tens of thousands of people, mostly black and Hispanics, in overcrowded prisons.
The measure could increase California’s 90,000-person prison population by a few thousand and cost tens of millions of dollars annually at both the state and county levels, according to a report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
It would also reduce funding for medication and mental health that comes from savings from incarcerating fewer people.
Patrick hasn’t been particularly vocal about California’s Proposition 36, but he found his voice during this year’s presidential campaign.
Speaking before thousands of fans in Lititz, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, Patrick, who says he had never voted in an election before this one, criticized celebrities who supported Democrats.
‘Now I’m talking. They don’t pay me to be here. I don’t have a teleprompter. I’m improvising this right now, y’all. “I don’t need a phone,” he said, referencing rapper Cardi B, who suffered teleprompter issues in her speech for Harris before finally reading her words on a phone.
Patrick continued: ‘I never went to a Diddy’s party. “I do this because I love this country and there is no one who has been tested more than Trump.”
Patrick referenced Diddy’s ties to Democrats but avoided any mention of the scandalized rap mogul’s connections to Donald Trump (pictured with Coombs and Melania).
While there are no suggestions that any celebrities who have campaigned for Harris have attended a Diddy party, some of those who have campaigned with her have crossed paths with the scandalized rapper, whose real name is Sean Combs.
Combs is in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking and racketeering charges. He denies all allegations and insists he is being unfairly targeted.
Jennifer Lopez, who endorsed Harris at a rally in Las Vegas on Thursday, dated Combs for two years, from 1999 to 2001.
Barack Obama has collaborated with Combs before: in 2004 he was interviewed by him on MTV at the Democratic Convention.
Of course, Trump is no stranger to Diddy, who invited the reality TV star to his 29th birthday party in 1998. In fact, Trump was included in the video invitation to the party, according to Newsweek.
“I love Diddy,” Trump told singer Aubrey O’Day in a resurfaced clip. “You know he’s a good friend of mine, he’s a good guy.”