KAMALA HARRIS
“
72 | Rolling Stone | August 2019
People have come
up to me, like it’s
a secret society,
[saying], ‘I was
bused. I’m glad that
you said that.’ There
are a lot of young
women who have
not seen a woman
of color on a stage
with a certain level
of confidence.”
After months of a campaign that was stagnating in
the polls, her performance on the Miami stage edged
her into the top tier. For an electorate rightfully ob-
sessed with defeating Donald Trump, Harris made
herself look like the best person to stand opposite
him — and she did so by weakening the front-runner,
Joe Biden, in an unforgettable exchange about his op-
position to school busing in the Seventies.
“And you know,” Harris said as the former vice
president looked away from her, “there was a little
girl in California who was part of the second class to
integrate her public schools, and she was bused to
school every day, and that little girl was me.” Biden’s
head snapped toward her. The entire primary had
changed.
“There are people who have come up to me, al-
most like it’s a secret society, [saying], ‘I was bused.
I know what that was like. I’m glad that you said
that,’ ” Harris says later during Pride Weekend as
we drive through San Francisco. “There are a lot of
young women who are saying that they’ve not seen
an image of a woman of color on a stage like that with
a certain level of confidence.”
Harris’ life experience and political skill may give
her the unique ability to pull together the broadest
possible Democratic constituencies — the fabled mul-
tiracial Obama coalition that seeks both progress and
pragmatism, and a far left that has moved beyond
“hope and change” to focus on bold and concrete
policy goals. But almost immediately after her tri-
umph over Biden, she faced a series of birther-style
character assassinations from bots and conserva-
tives that echoed what President Obama faced from
Trump during his administration. (Donald Trump Jr.
briefly took part in this racist rumormongering, shar-
ing, then deleting, a tweet that falsely claimed Harris
isn’t an “American Black” because she’s “half Indian
and half Jamaican.”)
But Harris, 54, may have to overcome an even big-
ger obstacle, one that also happens to be one of the
central selling points of her candidacy: her career in
the criminal-justice system. Her decades as a pros-
ecutor — including seven years as district attorney
of San Francisco and six as the state’s attorney gen-
eral — arguably make her the perfect person to take
on our lawless president and restore order. Nobody
that has seen her grilling the likes of William Barr or
Brett Kavanaugh in Senate hearings can deny her
ability to outmaneuver an adversary. But that she is
a black woman who chose to work within a system
that’s proved time and again to be biased against Af-
rican Americans means she needs to earn the trust of
black and progressive voters. It’s a compelling quan-
dary that no other candidate faces, and decisions she
made around wrongful convictions, truancy, and sex
work are now being given a hard look by voters.
It was impossible to learn of Harris expressing em-
pathy for a gay man’s struggle and not consider one
of the first apologies she issued after launching her
campaign. During her time as California’s attorney
general, from 2011 to 2017, Harris argued that she
was beholden to write multiple legal briefs oppos-
ing court-ordered surgeries for incarcerated trans
women. “There are, unfortunately, situations that
occurred where my clients took positions that were
contrary to my beliefs,” she said in January. ACLU
staff attorney Chase Strangio argued in Out magazine
that he isn’t ready to trust Harris, since she “has con-
tributed to some of the most violent conditions faced
by trans people, particularly trans women of color, in
California and across the country. It is going to take a
lot to undo that damage.”
Now, she is asking the Democratic electorate — in-
creasingly swayed by an activist base that feels con-
stantly let down or even targeted by that system — to
send her to the White House. To let her fix the flaws
from inside the Oval Office.
It is a fascinating sell, and a difficult one. From
her very first speech of the campaign, in front of
20,000 strong in her native Oakland, Harris has em-
phasized that not only does the nation need a whole-
sale change at the top, but it needs a prosecutor in
the White House to properly revamp the system in
the wake of Trump. A candidate who actually be-
lieves in law and order — which she undoubtedly
does — rather than just using it as a marketing slogan.
“The outcome of November 2016 has led a lot of
people to question the premise of everything they
took for granted,” Harris tells me. “Over the past
two and a half years, people have been throwing
things at that inanimate object called television and
going through individual and group therapy. But let’s
remember that the founders crafted a beautiful,
beautiful design for our democracy: three indepen-
dent, co-equal branches of government, and a free
and independent press. And they presupposed there
would be a moment when an executive might abuse
his authority.”A
FEW WEEKS EARLIER, we sit inside a Los An-
geles law office, where her campaign had set
up a temporary headquarters. She and her
husband, entertainment lawyer Douglas Emhoff, live
in the area, so that meant nights in her own bed and
waking up knowing which city she’s in, for once. And
she’d get to pick through her herb garden in prepa-
ration for the thing that brings her the most joy: Sun-day dinner. “I start planning dinner days in advance,”
says Harris, who is an accomplished cook. “I love
putting my day into it — and putting my foot into it,”
she adds with a laugh.
Running for president is exhausting, and all the
more so when you face steep odds along a narrow
path to victory. To win the nomination in 2020, Har-
ris has to win or place high in Iowa and New Hamp-
shire before likely winning or placing second on Feb-
ruary 29th in South Carolina, where she has spent
more time than any other candidate. Danielle Vin-
son, a professor of politics and international affairs
at Furman University, believes that Harris has been
using her time in the state wisely. “She’s probably
doing the right thing by spending time in the part
of the state where she’s campaigning,” Vinson says,
pointing to areas like Orangeburg and Richland coun-
ties, heavily populated by African Americans and
known for some of the highest turnouts in the Dem-
ocratic primary. “If she can catch on, word will trav-
el. It’s not a big state, so you don’t have to hit all parts
of it to be engaged.”
The all-important Super Tuesday, with 1,321 del-
egates up for grabs, is only a few days after South
Carolina. And this time it includes California, which
moved up its primary in 2017, ensuring that the state
that hosts the fifth-largest economy in the world and
40 million people will play a bigger role in deciding
who the Democratic nominee will be. (As of press
time, even after her debate surge, the highest Harris
has polled is third.)
“I’m not taking it for granted,” Harris says of her
home state’s primary. “You know, it’s funny — I al-
ways tell people who are not from California that
their perception of California is usually off, and I
will remind them California voters voted for [Propo-
sition] 187. California voters voted for the most dra-
conian criminal-justice law ever, which was Three
Strikes. California voters voted for Prop 8. California
produced Ronald Reagan and Nixon, right? So let’s
be clear about the history.”
Harris was first confronted with how conservative
parts of California are when she was in college, on
her way to a court hearing. “My cousin was getting
married in L.A.,” she recounts. “We were all living in
Oakland. He needed to take a bunch of stuff for the
wedding, and he said, ‘Kamala, come drive with me.’
And I rented this car. You remember the Beretta? It
went really fast.”
The young Harris figured: Why should it take
seven hours to go from one part of the state to an-
other? Vroom. “So I’m driving, and I got stopped in
the Grapevine in Kern County doing 115,” she says,
able to laugh about it now. “And when they pulled
me over, the CHP officers were like, ‘We been chas-
ing you for miles.’ ”
On the way to her mandated court appearance in
the middle of the state, she says, “I remember see-
ing all these Confederate flags. I’ll never forget it.”
It’s still true today: Anyone who drives the 5 free-
way north from Los Angeles to San Francisco or Sac-
ramento will see their share of Trump signs, anti-
abortion propaganda, and such alongside the road.
Harris knows that to win such a vast state she needs
broad appeal. “Californians are going to pay atten-
tion to the issues,” she says. “And they’re going to
make their decisions based on a number of things
that are not just about where you were born.”Senior writer JAMIL SMITH interviewed Georgia
Congressman John Lewis for the May issue.