The good and the bad Kamala Harris brings to the Biden ticket

San Francisco — US senator Kamala Harris brings an aggressive approach to politics and public policy, deep electoral experience and hands-on expertise in the beleaguered US criminal justice system as Joe Biden’s running mate.

Harris, at 55 a full generation younger than Biden, also imparts a youthful persona and diversity, with Jamaican and Indian ancestry that may help Biden, as a 77-year-old white man, energise a Democrat base that is rapidly becoming younger, more female and less white.

But Harris comes with a track record as attorney-general of California and district attorney of San Francisco, where she was known as being tough on minority defendants, an issue she will likely need to address in the 83 days remaining in the campaign.

She at times proved a lacklustre campaigner in the primaries, which she quit in December after failing to give voters a clear idea of what she stood for.

Here’s a look at the assets and liabilities Harris brings to the Biden campaign.

Asset: electoral experience

Harris has run in statewide elections in California three times and won each time. She was narrowly elected attorney-general in 2010 and re-elected by a larger margin in 2014. In November 2016, she won the right to replace outgoing senator Barbara Boxer by defeating representative Loretta Sanchez.

She was first elected to public office in 2003 when she defeated the incumbent district attorney of San Francisco, Terence Hallinan, partly by branding him “soft on crime”.

Liability: unclear campaign persona

Harris’s presidential campaign was hobbled by her struggle to convey clearly what she stood for in an election in which voters demand authenticity. She switched positions on Medicare for All within six months, saying she supported the elimination of private insurance, then backing away from legislation she co-sponsored that did just that.

Similarly, she branded herself as “progressive prosecutor” early in her campaign, despite a record back to 2003 of presenting herself as tough on crime.

The Trump campaign already dubbed Harris “Phony Kamala” on Tuesday.

Asset: ‘simpatico’ with Biden

Harris delivered one of the toughest blows Biden ever took on a debate stage, accusing him of siding with segregationist senators over school busing in the 1970s, and she poignantly described the indignity she suffered going to school across town. “That little girl was me,” she said.

The Biden camp was stunned, especially because Harris had been friendly with Biden’s late son, Beau, when they were both state attorneys-general.

Biden, however, repeatedly said he was searching for a running mate he is “simpatico” with, who could replicate the bond he says he had with president Barack Obama. He said more recently that he didn’t “hold a grudge” for that debate swipe. And he cited her friendship with Beau Biden in Tuesday’s announcement.

Biden can use that episode to show that, unlike Trump, he doesn’t punish people who challenge him. And the incident shows their distinct backgrounds — Biden growing up in a white, working-class part of Pennsylvania in the 1940s and 50s, and Harris’s upbringing as the daughter of immigrants in California.

Both paths led to the US Senate.

Liability: mixed feelings among black voters

Possibly because of her prosecutorial record, some black voters are ambivalent about Harris. Throughout her own presidential campaign and in the spring, polls consistently showed her lagging both senator Elizabeth Warren and Biden himself in support among African-Americans.

“The data clearly shows less name recognition for Harris than for Warren and less favourability among non-whites,” said Peter Enns, executive director of the Roper Centre for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University.

Yet several experts said, and social media reaction on Tuesday backed them up, that the potent symbolism of an African-American woman on the Biden ticket may help counter that scepticism.

Asset: criminal justice experience

Harris has expertise in the US criminal justice system, which has been under fire as protests still rage over the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

Her visibility on police reform in recent months, including co-authoring a Senate bill to ban police choke holds and take other steps, helped mute criticism of her record as a prosecutor. She has recently emphasised that she started her career as prosecutor because she wanted to promote reform “from the inside.”

Harris has also stressed that addressing social ills and investing in impoverished communities is critical — a line of argument that dovetails with Biden’s call for support of what he calls the “caring economy.”

Liability: Was she too tough?

But Harris’s record exacerbates questions Biden has faced — particularly from black voters — about the tough-on-crime stands they took in the 1990s. As a senator, Biden co-authored the 1994 crime bill, which advocates now blame for disproportionately penalising black defendants.

Harris’s offices fought innocence claims from men of colour who turned out to have been wrongfully convicted, defended long prison terms for “three-strikes” criminals convicted of minor offences, and threatened to jail parents of truants.

Asset: willing to do the dirty work

Harris can score political points for Biden by upbraiding Republican opponents and appointees, allowing him to take the high road. She won fans among Democrats with her aggressive questioning of supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, during his Senate confirmation hearings, and attorney-general William Barr.

Like Biden, Harris has sometimes also been tough on Wall Street and the financial sector and is known for a settlement with banks in the aftermath of the 2008/2009 financial crisis in which she held out for tougher terms. Harris is expected to act as Biden’s surrogate in attacks on Trump and vice-president Mike Pence, as she has for the past two months of campaigning.

Just the act of Biden introducing Harris as his running mate will have powerful symbolic appeal, showing that he, his party and his running mate have the ability to change in a positive way, said Paul Mitchell, vice-president of Political Data, a bipartisan voter data company.

“The act of making someone the vice-presidential candidate is inherently going to get voters to react to them,” Mitchell said. “In Harris’s case, it might be great for motivation in the African-American community and it also might be really great for white progressives as being an important new step for the Democrat party to take.”

Bloomberg