SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Lateefah Simon arrived for her first day at the top cop\u2019s office in her usual outfit of tracksuit and Pumas, ready to work with young men who were fresh out of prison. Her new boss \u2014 the woman who persuaded her to trade her career as a high-profile activist and organizer for a job in the district attorney\u2019s office \u2014 wasn\u2019t having it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re working in government, and government is about service, so you never dress down for your people,\u201d Kamala Harris, then San Francisco\u2019s chief prosecutor, sternly told Simon. \u201cGo home and come back tomorrow in a suit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simon, who is now running for Congress to represent California\u2019s East Bay, said the scolding was \u201cmy first taste of Boss Kamala, not Mentor Kamala.\u201d It was an early example, nearly 20 years ago, of Harris\u2019s exacting standards. Simon left her office chastened.<\/p>\n
Yet when she walked into work the next day, clad in business casual clothes hastily borrowed from friends, Harris presented her with a shopping bag. Inside were a newly purchased gray pantsuit and a scarf embroidered with an \u201cL\u201d for Lateefah.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe made it her business to make me better professionally and politically,\u201d Simon recounted this week.<\/p>\n
To her, the story illustrates the two sides of Harris: A hard-driving, demanding public servant, who also displayed compassion and kindness behind closed doors, especially with young people, whether they were on her staff or victims of a crime. Those traits helped Harris navigate the notoriously cutthroat world of Bay Area politics, where she rose from intern to district attorney in little more than a decade, building a career that has taken her to the heights of American government.<\/p>\n
As Harris assumes the role of Democrats\u2019 likely presidential nominee, those who worked with her and campaigned against her in California say her time in the crucible of her hometown\u2019s politics could be both blessing and burden come November.<\/p>\n
Oakland and San Francisco shaped her political instincts, but despite a rich history of producing powerful leaders, the Bay Area has never bred a U.S. president. Indeed, while California has sent several Republicans to the White House, no Democrat from this state has been elected to the nation\u2019s highest office.<\/p>\n
In the days since President Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed Harris, conservatives have quickly revived old tropes, tagging her as a \u201cSan Francisco liberal\u201d and a \u201cCalifornia socialist.\u201d Simon and others say Harris\u2019s early career prepared her to parry such attacks, like an attorney handling cross-examination.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery single day of my time with Kamala Harris, I saw not only her rigor and how hard she worked but also how people constantly discounted her and she refused to be anything less than excellent,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the Kamala who is going to be president of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris was born in Oakland and raised in a house on Bancroft Way in the formerly redlined Berkeley flatlands. It was from this home that she was bused to an elementary school in the city\u2019s wealthy hills as part of an integration program.<\/p>\n
She was 12 when her family left Berkeley for Canada, where her mother taught at McGill University. There, Harris met a friend whose story of abuse would motivate her to become a prosecutor, and when she returned to the Bay Area, it was to study law.<\/p>\n
She got her start as an intern in the Alameda County district attorney\u2019s office, a coveted post in an agency with a storied list of alumni, including former U.S. Supreme Court chief justice Earl Warren. Her time there was transformative, Harris wrote in her memoir, \u201cThe Truths We Hold.\u201d She recalled helping free an innocent woman who was swept up in a drug bust, a victory she characterized as \u201ca defining moment in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
She landed a full-time job in the office and was eventually assigned to a unit that prosecuted sex crimes, where her team supervisor, Nancy O\u2019Malley, remembers her displaying \u201can amazing ability to connect with people,\u201d especially young victims of sexual violence.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Malley still thinks about one of Harris\u2019s cases, which involved prosecuting a group of young men who had gang-raped a 14-year-old in foster care. The girl, whose testimony would be key to securing a conviction, was wary of the attorneys. But Harris took her hand, comforting and reassuring her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat Kamala did was make that girl feel like she was the queen of the world,\u201d O\u2019Malley said. \u201cI will never forget watching their interaction, and this young woman transformed before my eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris remembers the case, too. She won a conviction, she wrote in her memoir, but later heard a rumor that the young victim had fallen back into a cycle of abuse. \u201cIt was hard not to feel the weight of the systemic problems we were up against,\u201d Harris acknowledged.<\/p>\n
In her telling, the case planted a seed, forcing her to consider policy changes that might disrupt patterns of violence. Others believe she always aspired to higher office.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was ambitious,\u201d O\u2019Malley said. \u201cShe always had her sights set higher than where she was, appropriately so.\u201d<\/p>\n
The DA\u2019s office in Alameda County had a deep bench \u2014 including O\u2019Malley, who would eventually become the first woman to hold the top job. But across the Bay Bridge, the path to power appeared easier. And in 1998, Harris accepted a job at the San Francisco district attorney\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
Still, her first political campaign five years later was bruising and difficult.<\/p>\n
She was the underdog against her former boss, the incumbent DA Terence Hallinan, as well as longtime prosecutor Bill Fazio. The contest resurfaced a sensitive subject, Harris\u2019s brief romantic relationship with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, a local political kingmaker.<\/p>\n
The two had broken up years earlier, but Brown supported Harris\u2019s candidacy, and her critics accused her of benefiting from political patronage. According to her then-campaign consultant, Harris came up with an effective counter. Answering a question at a candidate forum about her independence, she highlighted scandalous accusations made about her two opponents before promising to run a positive, issue-focused campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe knows how to play politics way better than I ever did,\u201d Fazio, now a Harris supporter, said. \u201cShe thinks on her feet, and trial attorneys have to do that because you never know what\u2019ll come next. She\u2019s smart, she\u2019s bright, she\u2019s aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Early on, Harris branded her approach \u201csmart on crime\u201d in an attempt to balance law enforcement and liberal values. She opposed capital punishment and called herself a \u201cprogressive,\u201d yet the San Francisco Chronicle\u2019s endorsement still declared she was \u201cfor Law and Order.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris won, and she and Fazio eventually became friendly, bonding over the loss of their mothers, who died within months of each other. He remembers her as a tough prosecutor and said the Brown attacks \u2014 then and now \u2014 are \u201cnonsense\u201d that would never dog a male candidate.<\/p>\n
In her first years at the DA\u2019s office, Harris increased the conviction rate but also began taking her first real political heat. In 2004, a San Francisco police officer was killed in the line of duty, and soon after Harris announced she would not seek the death penalty against the perpetrator, infuriating police officers and other elected officials. In an op-ed, Harris maintained her position, writing that \u201cthere can be no exception to principle.\u201d<\/p>\n
She then drew criticism from the left when she instituted a policy punishing parents of truant children with fines and possible jail time, though the latter penalty was never applied and truancy rates fell. Her office was also plunged into scandal after accusations that she had violated the rights of defendants by covering up the misconduct of a police lab technician. Harris later said she wasn\u2019t aware of the problems but took responsibility as head of the office.<\/p>\n
Louise Renne, who hired Harris to work in the city attorney\u2019s office before her run for DA, said the vice president is part of an illustrious line of barrier-breaking San Francisco women, including former U.S. senator Dianne Feinstein, who died in September, and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who took hits from right and left but \u201cknew how to stand their ground and be firm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris is far more moderate than either side gives her credit for, Renne said. As district attorney, \u201cKamala was looking at being very practical,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople don\u2019t understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n
During her second term as DA, Harris announced a bid for California attorney general. The move would take her out of San Francisco and position her more squarely in the national spotlight. As she advanced, some faulted her for being too cautious and often avoiding controversial issues, especially pressing criminal justice matters, said Dan Morain, author of the biography \u201cKamala\u2019s Way.\u201d Critics said the approach undercut her claims of bold leadership.<\/p>\n
Even then, however, her opponents knew she would be a formidable force for years to come. In the 2010 AG race, Republicans \u2014 more successful in the state than now \u2014 picked a strong candidate to oppose her and poured millions into the contest. They viewed it, Morain said, as their last chance to stymie a promising career.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they had beat her in 2010, she would probably be a lawyer at some fancy San Francisco law firm \u2026 but that didn\u2019t work and here we are,\u201d he said. \u201cThey saw in her a rising star.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Lateefah Simon arrived for her first day at the top cop\u2019s office in her usual outfit of tracksuit and Pumas, ready to work with young men who were fresh out of prison. Her new boss \u2014 the woman who persuaded her to trade her career as a high-profile activist and organizer for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6879,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}