Vice President Kamala Harris took a gamble this week by highlighting her record as a prosecutor as she kicks off her campaign as the Democratic nominee for president in 2024.
At a rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she compared her Republican rival, former President and convicted felon Donald Trump, to the “predators,” “con artists” and “fraudsters” she used to lock up.
But bragging about her time as San Francisco’s district attorney and later as California’s attorney general probably won’t help Harris, who is running to become the first woman, the first African-American and the first Asian-American president of the United States.
The 59-year-old has been criticized by both the left and the right. Progressives blame her for increased persecution of black Californians under her administration, while those on the right portray her as a left-wing activist in a powerful role.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt called Harris “dangerously liberal” and said she “needs to answer for her own poor record on crime in California” from the 1990s to 2010.
Kamala Harris, then San Francisco’s district attorney, speaks with a family member of a slain police officer
Kamala Harris, then San Francisco’s district attorney, and then-city mayor Gavin Newsom and others participate 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, filed a series of public records requests this week about Harris’ time as the Golden State’s top lawyer.
The group’s vice chairman, Dan Epstein, said he would “aggressively investigate” everything from Harris’ failure to enforce California’s immigration laws to her alleged refusal to disclose conflicts of interest.
“Every step of her career has been marked by irregularities and scandals,” Epstein said.
DailyMail.com looks back at some of Kamala’s most controversial decisions from those decades…
Mercy for police officer killer
Harris became the first woman elected San Francisco’s chief district attorney in 2003, after campaigning on a pledge not to seek the death penalty.
Her 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 seek the death penalty against Hill, Harris stood his ground and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Even Gavin Newsom, then mayor of San Francisco, said the killing “shaken” 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 press conference that she would not seek the death penalty.
“She just took justice from us, from Isaac,” said Renata Espinoza.
David Hill shot an officer with an AK-47 during a routine traffic stop.
29-year-old San Francisco police officer Isaac Espinoza was killed in the line of 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 SPARED
Edwin Ramos, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador and member of the extremely violent MS-13 gang, committed a triple murder in San Francisco in 2008, when Harris was district attorney.
Ramos’ gruesome murder 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 news.
The family members were returning home from a picnic when Ramos opened fire, apparently thinking they were gang rivals.
Harris did not seek the death penalty for Ramos, despite pleas from grieving mother and widow Danielle Bologna, keeping a campaign promise.
“It was pointless,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle at the time.
She said she was “extremely angry” that the city “did nothing” and urged authorities to “take responsibility”.
“And to think that they didn’t deport him back, knowing that he had no papers and was in the country illegally, that’s a huge problem,” added Danielle Bologna.
Ramos already had a record before the triple throw.
He was reportedly arrested several times as a youth for a gang attack on a bus passenger and an attempted robbery of a pregnant woman.
But he slips through the net because city policy does not question the immigration status of minors.
Edwin Ramos, the man who shot and killed a father and his two sons in a gang-related mistake 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 the gender reassignment procedure so convicted murderer Rodney James Quine could become Shiloh Heavenly Quine
Sex change for a murderess
When Harris was California’s attorney general in 2014, she agreed to a controversial settlement that allowed a transgender killer to undergo gender reassignment surgery at taxpayers’ expense.
In 1980, Rodney James Quine and a kidnapped accomplice shot and killed 33-year-old Shahid Ali Baig, a father of three, in downtown Los Angeles.
They stole $80 and his car during a drug- and alcohol-fueled robbery.
Quine began living as a woman in 2009, after 36 years of imprisonment with men. She sued the state for the “cruel and unusual punishment” it entailed: she was required to retain the genitals she was born with.
Baig’s daughter Farida tried unsuccessfully through the courts to block Quine’s operation.
She opposed the fact that prisoners had to undergo taxpayer-funded surgery, while this is not so easy for non-criminals.
“My father begged for his life,” she said.
“It made me dizzy and nauseous. I’m helping pay for his surgery; I live in California. It’s kind of a slap in the face.”
Harris disagreed and supported the settlement, marking the beginning of California’s permissive approach to transgender prisoners.
Dozens of biological male prisoners are now serving their sentences in women’s prisons, increasing the risk of rape and pregnancy among inmates.