Vice President Kamala Harris took a gamble when playing up her record as a prosecutor at the start of her campaign as the Democrats’ all-but certain 2024 presidential candidate this week.
At a rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she compared her Republican rival, former president and convicted felon Donald Trump, to the ‘predators,’ ‘fraudsters,’ and ‘cheaters’ she used to lock up.
But bragging about her time as San Francisco’s district attorney and then California‘s attorney general may not help Harris, who aspires to be the first woman, first African American and first Asian American US President.
The 59-year-old faces criticism from left and right — progressives blame her for more prosecutions of black Californians under her watch, while those on the right paint her as a lefty activist in a powerful role.
Trump’s campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt slammed Harris as ‘dangerously liberal’ and said she ‘needs to answer for her own terrible weak-on-crime record in California’ from the 1990s to the 2010s.