Vice President Kamala Harris took a risk by highlighting her record as a prosecutor as she kicked off her campaign as the Democrats’ near-certain 2024 presidential nominee this week.
At a rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he compared his Republican rival, former president and convicted felon Donald Trump, to the “predators,” “swindlers” and “cheaters” he used to put away.
But bragging about her time as San Francisco district attorney and then California attorney general may not help Harris, who is seeking to become the first woman, first African American and first Asian American president of the United States.
The 59-year-old faces criticism from both the left and the right: Progressives blame her for more prosecutions of Black Californians under her watch, while those on the right describe her as a left-wing activist with a powerful role.
Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized Harris as “dangerously liberal” and said she “has to answer for her own terrible record of being weak on crime in California” from the 1990s to the 2010s.
Kamala Harris, then San Francisco district attorney, speaks with a family member of a slain police officer
Kamala Harris, then San Francisco’s district attorney, and then-mayor Gavin Newsom and others walk in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom March in 2004.
America First Legal (AFL), a conservative legal action group led by former Trump administration officials, this week launched a series of public records requests about Harris’ time as a prominent attorney in the Golden State.
The group’s vice president, Dan Epstein, said he would “aggressively investigate” everything from Harris’s failure to enforce California immigration laws to her alleged refusal to disclose conflicts of interest.
“Every step up the career ladder seems to be marked by improprieties or scandals,” Epstein said.
DailyMail.com looks back at some of Kamala’s most controversial decisions from those decades…
MERCY FOR THE POLICE KILLER
In 2003, Harris became the first woman elected San Francisco’s chief prosecutor, after campaigning in part on a promise not to seek the death penalty.
His stance was tested almost immediately, when police officer Isaac Espinoza was brutally murdered in 2004.
Black gang member David Hill shot him with an AK-47 during a routine traffic stop.
Despite pressure from several California Democrats, including the state’s two U.S. senators, to pursue the death penalty against Hill, Harris stood firm and secured a sentence of life in prison without parole.
Even Gavin Newsom, then mayor of San Francisco, said the killing “shook” his opposition to state executions.
The officer’s widow, Renata Espinoza, told CNN in 2019 that Harris did not call her before announcing at a news conference that she would not seek the death penalty.
“She just took justice away from us, from Isaac,” said Renata Espinoza.
David Hill shot and killed an officer with an AK-47 during a routine traffic stop.
San Francisco Police Officer Isaac Espinoza, 29, was killed on duty in one of the city’s most troubled neighborhoods.
Officer Espinoza’s widow, Renata Espinoza, said Kamala Harris did not call her before announcing at a news conference that she would not seek the death penalty.
MS-13 killer escapes
Edwin Ramos, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador and member of the ultra-violent MS-13 gang, committed a triple murder in 2008 in San Francisco when Harris was district attorney.
Ramos’ horrific murders of three members of the Bologna family — Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16 — in a drive-by shooting made national headlines.
The family members were returning home from a picnic when Ramos opened fire, apparently mistaking them for gang rivals.
Harris did not seek the death penalty against Ramos, fulfilling a campaign promise, despite pleas from grieving mother and widow Danielle Bologna.
“It didn’t make sense,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle at the time.
She said she was “extremely angry” that the city “did nothing” and urged officials to “take responsibility.”
“And to think that they didn’t deport him, knowing that he didn’t have papers and that he was here illegally, is a big problem,” added Danielle Bologna.
Ramos already had a record before the triple.
He had reportedly been arrested several times as a youth for a gang attack on a bus passenger and an attempted robbery of a pregnant woman.
But he slipped through the cracks because of a city policy of not questioning minors’ immigration status.
Edwin Ramos, the man who shot and killed a father and his two sons in a mistaken gang shooting in 2008, was spared the death penalty thanks in part to Harris.
San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris poses for a portrait in San Francisco, June 18, 2004.
Kamala Harris said taxpayers should fund a sex-change procedure so convicted murderer Rodney James Quine can become Shiloh Heavenly Quine
SEX CHANGE FOR KILLER
When Harris was California attorney general in 2014, she controversially agreed to a deal that allowed a transgender killer to undergo a sex-change procedure at taxpayer expense.
Rodney James Quine and an accomplice kidnapped and shot to death Shahid Ali Baig, a 33-year-old father of three, in downtown Los Angeles in 1980.
He was robbed of $80 and his car during a drug- and alcohol-fueled shootout.
In 2009, Quine began living as a woman after being locked up with men for 36 years and sued the state for the “cruel and unusual punishment” of being forced to keep the genitals he was born with.
Baig’s daughter Farida unsuccessfully tried in court to block Quine’s surgery.
He opposed inmates receiving taxpayer-funded surgeries that are not readily available to non-criminals.
“My father begged for his life,” he said.
“I felt dizzy and sick. I’m helping pay for her surgery; I live in California. It’s like a slap in the face.”
Harris disagreed and supported the settlement, which set in motion California’s permissive approach toward transgender detainees.
Dozens of male biological convicts are now serving their sentences in women’s prisons, increasing the likelihood of rape and pregnancy among female inmates.
