Kamala Harris Was Ready to Brawl From the Beginning

[RandySF]

Yet if her 2003 run proved that Ms. Harris could thrive in campaign conflict, it was also an early lesson in the challenges of negotiating the party’s base, particularly for a politician more inclined toward within-the-system reform than simmering revolution.

In many ways, no 2020 candidate has faced a hometown electorate more analogous to today’s Democratic primary conditions than Ms. Harris has. Then, as now, she was a self-described progressive, introducing herself as a potentially history-making pick in a multicultural city of vanguard liberalism, parochial neighborhood factions and often staggering income inequality.

But Ms. Harris also ran unambiguously to Mr. Hallinan’s right in a place that prided itself on showing offenders compassion. “She was the moderate,” said Nathan Ballard, a friend who worked with her as a deputy city attorney. “She was somebody who wanted to prosecute criminals.”

Getting that chance meant subjecting herself to an unpalatable fate: confronting the two men who had helped her, to a point, and were now threatening to stand in her way.

“I mean, I know how to fight,” Ms. Harris said in an interview. “But most people like to avoid a fight if you can.”





https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/15/us/politics/kamala-harris-san-francisco-da.html

[kimbutgar]

1. I remember when she ran for this race she stood outside Forest Hill station introducing herself

And asking for my vote. She was so beautiful and I thought she was brave to be out in such an open area of SF. I asked her a few questions and she gave me good answers. I voted for her every election thereafter. She’d make a great president but I am still undecided.

[emmaverybo]

2. I was sorry she felt she had to go after Hallinan so harshly. She brought out a bit of a sex

scandal he was not really responsible for in order to try to show his poor management and make
him a part of the rather sordid thing.

Well, politics, not for the faint of heart.