WASHINGTON (Gray DC) – Before Vice President Kamala Harris was at the top of the 2024 Democratic ticket, she had a long history in public service, starting as a prosecutor in California.
Harris began was both District Attorney of San Francisco and then Attorney General of California, breaking barriers in each of those offices, as the first woman, first black American and first Asian American to hold them.
On the campaign trail, she often touts her record as a prosecutor going after transnational criminal organizations trafficking drugs, taking on polluters and large corporations.
Then was elected to serve her state in the U.S. Senate in 2017.
“She has won three elections in our nation’s largest state. That’s pretty impressive in its own right,” said Aaron Mannes, Lecturer and Research Associate at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland School.
Mannes has extensively the American vice presidency and Harris. He said she has a history of asking tough questions, both as a prosecutor and in the Senate.
“She did make herself known in hearings where, using those skills she’d honed as a prosecutor, has asked some pretty tough questions. And you can see that in clips of her questioning, for example, the Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh,” he said.
In the Senate, Harris worked on issues like fighting hunger, the climate crisis, and served on the intelligence committee.
As vice president, Mannes say she has been very involved, taking on high profile issues like reproductive rights and voting rights.
But the issue she’s worked that has received the most attention recently is her role in trying to tackle immigration issues at the US-Mexico border.
“The role she was granted was not, quote, “border czar,” said Mannes. “It was to see what could be done about reducing in effect, the supply. What could be done to dissuade people from leaving their homes in Central America? That was her mandate. Practically speaking, she did a pretty good job. She raised a lot of private sector money to invest in the Central American countries. And now it’s very tough to say whether that made a huge difference. These are hard problems. There are no simple solutions to them. It seems to have at least somewhat mitigated the problem in the process.”
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