After decades in public life as a prosecutor, senator and vice president, Kamala Harris has a long track record that could provide fodder for her opponents.
Trump’s campaign could focus on her reputation as a liberal senator, her support for the chaos of the Black Lives Matter protests or a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
But the issue that could hurt her most is her support for a bail fund credited with freeing a man who later committed murder, according to our exclusive survey of likely voters.
Fifty-four percent of voters said that was a problem for her. While Republicans went overboard on the issue, it was also the most problematic for independent voters who could decide the 2024 election, with a net negative rating of -43 (the difference between those who said it gave them a favorable opinion of her and those who said it was negative).
His past support for federal cannabis legalization, however, is seen as a positive among likely voters: 39 percent gave him a positive rating, compared with 27 percent who gave him a negative rating.
JL Partners tested a series of attack lines with 1,054 likely voters to see which ones worked and which ones didn’t. This reveals how the Trump campaign could best attack Harris.
The results come from an online survey of 1,054 likely voters conducted last week by JL Partners.
And it shows where Trump could gain more leverage and where Harris might need to beef up her defenses.
“If the Trump campaign wants people to feel like Harris is too liberal, or dangerous, or crazy, they need proof,” said James Johnson, co-founder of JL Partners.
“Our polling shows there would be worse places to look than her bail fund decision when she was a senator. It’s real, understandable and alarming to voters of all colors and creeds.”
The Trump campaign has already attacked Harris for being soft on crime and highlighting her support for the Minnesota Freedom Fund.
It was created in 2016 to pay bail for people who could not afford it.
Harris tweeted her support in 2020 in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which sparked widespread protests.
“If you can, please contribute now to the @MNFreedomFund to help pay bail for those protesting in Minnesota,” she posted.
In 2022, it was used to free Shawn Tillman, who was being held on a gross misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure.
Harris expressed support for the bail fund in 2020 as a way to support protesters.
Vice President Kamala Harris at an event in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday. She has closed the gap with Trump in our DailyMail.com poll
Workers build a mural of Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris outside the United Center on August 16, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.
Donald Trump has used Harris’ support for the bail fund to attack her.
Days after his release in May 2022, he murdered a man in St. Paul and is now serving a life sentence.
Republican attacks have tended to distort history, sometimes claiming Harris had donated to the fund or was backing a fund to free “murderers and rapists,” omitting the fact that her support was for BLM protesters.
“One of the dangerous criminals that Kamala helped get out of jail was Shawn Michael Tillman,” Trump himself said during a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, late last month.
—You know that name. A repeat offender who, with Harris’ help, was released.
Other arguments that performed well in our poll were that she was responsible for the “causes of the border crisis” (again, Republican attacks overlooked the fact that President Joe Biden asked her to address the “root causes” of migration in a limited number of Central American countries).
And he could be vulnerable because of his past positions on health care. In his 2020 presidential campaign, he pushed a plan that would have eliminated private insurance plans and replaced them with a government-funded system.
JL Partners surveyed 1,001 likely voters from Aug. 7-11 in a separate poll, using a combination of online, landline, cellphone and app techniques. The results have a margin of error of +/- 3.1 points. They show Harris has narrowed the gap with Trump.
“Did you do this for Trump?” asked Kevin Muñoz of the Harris campaign when asked for a response to the survey.
Attacks on other issues, such as support for the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 or advocating for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, are not as well received. Those issues are supported by 24 percent of respondents and 30 percent, respectively.
“In a political campaign you need to find the message, but also the evidence to back it up. Without both, you’re not going to get the message across to voters,” said Johnson, the pollster.
“‘Crooked Hillary’ worked because of her emails. The attacks on Trump for his high drama in 2020 were based on his aggressive performance in the debates and his record during the COVID-19 pandemic.
‘Romney seemed out of touch not only because Obama kept saying it, but also because he had his 47 percent comment to back him up.’ (Romney claimed that 47 percent of the electorate would vote for Obama no matter what because he paid no income taxes, a wild claim that failed to take into account the fact that most of those people made too little to pay taxes instead of being well off.)
Both sides, Johnson said, needed to find lines of attack based on solid foundations.