Experts say Kamala Harris' law enforcement background might help her at the ballot box

Vice President Kamala Harris’ decades of experience as a prosecutor might help her carry Long Island in the 2024 presidential election, political scientists, campaign consultants, historians and criminal justice experts said. 

Harris, political analysts said, should emphasize her law enforcement background and, like Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) did earlier this year, challenge her opponent on crime and public safety, issues traditionally seen as winners for Republicans. Harris is expected to face Republican and former President Donald Trump in November.

Suozzi defeated the GOP candidate, Nassau County Legis. Mazi Melesa Pilip (R-Great Neck), in the 3rd Congressional District special election in February. By touting her record as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, Harris will not only energize suburban voters but also will help dispel allegations that she is an extreme Bay Area liberal, election analysts said.

"Her law enforcement background is going to be a plus," said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University in Houston and a CNN presidential historian. "Nobody is going to say Kamala Harris doesn’t like the police. It will be an asset against Trump. It is hard to paint her as a feel-good liberal."

The vice president’s decadeslong career in law enforcement began in 1990, when she joined the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office as a prosecutor. Harris, 59, served as the district attorney of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011, and as California’s attorney general from 2011 to 2017, overseeing thousands of criminal prosecutions before becoming a U.S. senator.

"The idea of public safety is a winning issue," said John V. Kane, an associate professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. "It’s a volcanic issue. Everybody agrees violence is bad. It’s not like abortion, where we are deeply divided."

Ex-prosecutor vs. felon

Harris' years in state and local government is a sharp contrast from Trump, 78, who was born in Queens and now lives in Florida. Trump began his career working for his father's real estate development company before embarking on projects in Manhattan and elsewhere.

Trump and his surrogates portray Harris as an out-of-touch San Francisco liberal. But Harris has a long history of prosecuting sexual predators, fraudsters and cheaters, as she said in her first campaign appearance on July 22, a day after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Trump, meanwhile, has a lengthy list of legal woes, including 34 felony convictions in his Manhattan hush money trial in May. 

"There is an extraordinary contrast between her platform and President Trump," said James Sample, a professor of constitutional law at Hofstra University. "The list of problems he has had is staggering. But do people care?"

Republican strategist Susan Del Percio thinks some Long Island voters do care.

"Donald Trump's biggest challenger on Long Island won't be Harris," Del Percio said. "It will be the couch. By that, I mean people who do not like Harris' policies but are not comfortable with Trump will stay home. The couch will be a huge factor for right-leaning independents."

Trump has a history of turning off potential voters with crude comments and boorish behavior. His false allegation made during the recent National Association of Black Journalists convention that Harris, born in Oakland to immigrant parents from India and Jamaica, recently "turned Black" for political gain outraged Democrats and embarrassed Republicans across the nation. 

The Trump campaign has said it hopes to increase support among Black voters, but critics say his comments at the convention are in line with a long history of racist attacks that began long before the 2016 election, when he questioned whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States — and then called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug traffickers when he kicked off his campaign in 2015.

"The hostility Donald Trump showed on stage [Wednesday] is the same hostility he has shown throughout her life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power and inflict his harmful Project 2025 agenda on the American people," Harris spokesman Michael Tyler said after Trump's appearance at the convention.

Political analysts told The Washington Post recently that the Trump campaign is posting misleading and racist messages on social media to attack Harris on crime. When Harris was a senator in 2020, she posted a message encouraging people to donate to a bail fund for people detained during protests decrying the police murder of George Floyd. The campaign has described beneficiaries of that fund as dangerous criminals, but charges against some were later dismissed (others resulted in convictions and guilty pleas, including unintentional murder). "Harris is a pro-criminal extremist," Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told the Post.

Political analysts say the posts are part of a broader strategy to exploit stereotypes about crime and people of color — bluster that could cost Trump support. 

Swing states still the key

It is unlikely that Harris will spend much time on Long Island, Brinkley said. Her campaign will focus on Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and other battleground states.

But what sells in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee also should sell in Nassau and Suffolk, said Kevin Madden, a former adviser to the George W. Bush and Mitt Romney campaigns. The independents needed to win in the suburbs — in Milwaukee or New York — are most worried about inflation, immigration and crime, he said.

"Those swing voters, these are the voters that Kamala Harris needs to address if she wants to beat Donald Trump," Madden said. 

Harris can appeal to voters in Nassau, Suffolk and Arizona — a critical swing state with 11 electoral votes — by naming Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) as her running mate, according to Michael Dawidziak, a pollster and consultant who has frequently worked with Republicans.

Harris is expected to name a vice president nominee next week, and her choice for vice president can help blunt charges that she is too far left, Dawidziak said, calling this year's "veepstakes" the most consequential in modern history.

Kelly, a moderate Democrat, is the obvious choice to win over Long Island voters, Dawidziak said. He is a former astronaut and Navy combat pilot, and his military experience will appeal to conservative-leaning voters in Nassau and Suffolk. Trump picked Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate.

Voters like candidates who sometimes buck their party, the analysts said, and Kelly has criticized the Biden administration's southern border policies, which might counter Trump's attacks on immigration. His stance on gun control may bring in voters fed up with mass shootings. Kelly's wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords, suffered a brain injury while surviving an assassination attempt at a constituents' event in 2012 and is now an advocate for gun control. "He has huge bona fides on the gun control issue," Dawidziak said. 

Biden won Long Island in 2020, taking 51.6% of the vote compared to Trump's 47%, and the total Democrats outnumber Republicans on Long Island by a margin of 791,876 to 666,532, according to the New York State Board of Elections. There are also 70,230 unaffiliated voters.

Sample said Democrats have struggled with turnout in recent years. Before Suozzi's special election win earlier this year, Republicans had won all of Long Island's congressional seats, dominated the county legislatures and took the district attorney and county executive offices in Nassau and Suffolk. 

Del Percio said Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly set the stage for the GOP's red tide by emphasizing her experience as a longtime prosecutor before she was elected in 2021, when voters were concerned about rising crime rates in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Donnelly spoke about issues voters were concerned about, not culture war controversies that have little impact on day-to-day lives. 

To motivate Black, Latino, Asian and youth voters on Long Island and beyond, the experts said, Harris will have to redefine public safety. She will have to reject the tough-on-crime approach progressives say led to mass incarceration and a failed war on drugs in the 1990s and 2000s — an approach that Harris sometimes took as a prosecutor.

"Americans want justice, and the Harris campaign needs to reach out to young and Black voters," said Insha Rahman, director of Vera Action, which is working to end mass incarceration and advocates for prisoners’ rights. "They believe in less incarceration. Harris can pivot and say, ‘I was tough on crime, but I have learned from the past and what I care about now is safety, accountability and justice.’ ”

Harris' vision of public safety, analysts said, should emphasize law and order, but also gun control measures that can help end mass shootings. She will have to support the police, but she will also have to keep them accountable for officer misconduct. She will have to advocate for safety — in schools, churches, synagogues and shopping centers — as a fundamental right.

Suozzi created blueprint, analysts say

Suozzi, analysts said, created a blueprint for victory in a swing district by leaning head-on into issues such as crime and immigration. Del Percio said Harris could win over Nassau and Suffolk voters by reminding them that Trump urged lawmakers to reject a border bill negotiated by Sen. James Lankford, a deeply conservative Republican from Oklahoma. Suozzi was helped by the fact, she added, that Pilip, a Nassau legislator, had little name recognition. 

"They put up a resume, they put up slogans, but they forgot that candidates matter," Del Percio said.  

Harris’ record as district attorney and attorney general is much more complicated than the "woke" agenda described by some Republicans, political analysts said. Progressives shunned her during the 2020 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination because she often embraced the tough-on-crime policies popular with Democrats and Republicans during the 1990s.

As San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris supported legislation that called for parents of habitually truant students to be prosecuted, despite fears that the law would primarily target low-income people of color. As California attorney general, she opposed legislation that would require the office to independently investigate police shootings. She also defended convictions even after evidence emerged that raised questions about defendants’ guilt.

But in other ways, Harris was a reformer during a time when "lock 'em up" was the reigning philosophy in law enforcement. As district attorney, she tackled recidivism with her "Back on Track" program that helps defendants exit the criminal justice system with job training, financial education and other support, said Lenore Anderson, president of California’s nonpartisan Alliance for Safety and Justice.

"That kind of program was pretty unique at the time," said Anderson, who worked under Harris in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. "She had creative ideas that were unusual for that time."

Harris was one of the first district attorneys to develop programs to support victims of domestic violence and other crimes, Anderson said.

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, she implemented training to address racial bias and made the California Department of Justice the first statewide agency to require body cameras. She also launched a platform that makes information about killings by police available to the public.

Although many national political figures started their careers as prosecutors, few have served as district attorneys or attorneys general — which gives the Trump campaign ample opportunities to dig up cases they believe will embarrass her.

"There is a downside to having the extensive public record she has," Hofstra’s Sample said. "That would be true of anybody whose career has been defined by the public sector."

NYU’s Kane said Republican researchers have undoubtedly combed through district attorney and attorney general records to find something they can use against Harris. "I have no doubt they will find a case they will hammer her on," he said.

But whenever Harris can, Kane added, she should follow Trump’s lead and dismiss attacks as politically motivated hackery and move on. Wave off allegations by saying she wasn’t directly involved in a case. Tie him to the 34 felony convictions in the hush money trial and his long list of scandals and controversies, Kane said.

"Trump changed the quality of running for president," Brinkley said. "Skeletons in the closet are not such a bad thing anymore."