Kamala Harris

Harris was criticised for changing her position on cannabis while her prosecutorial record was already under attack from the left. In 2014, as a candidate for re-election as Attorney General, she did not support recreational legalisation. In 2019, as a senator and presidential candidate, she co-sponsored federal decriminalisation and conviction expungement legislation; as Vice-President in 2024, she publicly described the federal classification of cannabis as profoundly unjust.

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During the presidential campaign, pro-Palestinian activists from the Uncommitted movement claimed that Harris had shown openness to discussing an arms embargo on Israel. Her team promptly denied this interpretation. The episode illustrated pressure on Harris from part of the Democratic coalition to break more decisively with Joe Biden's policy on Gaza.

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The Harris campaign raised and spent exceptional sums during its race of only a few months against Donald Trump, with reported expenditure of $270 million in September alone. Following her defeat, criticism focused on campaign costs, and rumours claimed that she had left $20 million in debt and paid celebrities for their endorsements.

Weeks before the 2024 election, several passages in 'Smart on Crime', a book published by Harris in 2009 with Joan O'C. Hamilton, were accused of reproducing other sources without adequate attribution. The Associated Press verified several similarities and citation problems, including passages closely resembling public sources.

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Tasked by Joe Biden with a portfolio focused on the root causes of migration in Central America, Harris attracted criticism from both the right and sections of the left. In Guatemala, she warned prospective migrants: 'Do not come'. The following day, questioned by NBC about not having personally visited the southern border, she replied that she had not been to Europe either, a remark that became emblematic of her team's communication difficulties on the issue.

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As San Francisco District Attorney and later California Attorney General, Harris made chronic school truancy a public policy priority and supported mechanisms that could lead to parents being prosecuted in serious cases. Progressive critics argued that this approach risked criminalising poor or vulnerable families.

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Harris's first presidential campaign began with considerable visibility but fell apart before the primaries began. Reuters reported difficulties raising sufficient funds, stabilising her ideological positioning and building a lasting campaign argument, while her prosecutorial past was fiercely debated within the Democratic Party. She withdrew on 3 December 2019.

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As Attorney General, Harris was criticised because her office had resisted certain requests for post-conviction review, notably new DNA testing sought by Kevin Cooper, who had been sentenced to death for four murders. After becoming a senator, she publicly called for California to authorise more sensitive DNA testing in his case.

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In litigation over California prison overcrowding, lawyers from Harris's office argued that expanding sentence credits for certain minimum-security prisoners would deprive prisons of a workforce considered 'vital' — cooks, gardeners and maintenance workers paid a few cents an hour. The argument was strongly criticised as defending incarceration in order to preserve cheap prison labour.

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The San Francisco police drug laboratory scandal, centred on technician Deborah Madden, led to hundreds of drug cases being dropped. In May 2010, a Superior Court judge found that the office led by Harris had violated defendants' rights by failing to disclose damaging information about the technician to the defence, strongly criticising the prosecution's handling of the problem.

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A few months after taking office as San Francisco District Attorney, Harris decided not to seek the death penalty against David Hill, accused of killing Officer Isaac Espinoza, in keeping with her election pledge to oppose capital punishment. Espinoza's family, the police union and several political figures, including Dianne Feinstein, strongly criticised the decision.

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While a deputy prosecutor in Alameda County, Kamala Harris had a relationship with Willie Brown, the powerful Speaker of the California Assembly. Brown appointed her to the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and then the California Medical Assistance Commission, both paid public positions. The appointments were described at the time as patronage and fuelled allegations for decades that Brown had accelerated her career.

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