What I Learned Covering Attorney General Kamala Harris

Twelve years ago, as California struggled to shake off the effects of the 2008 housing crisis and financial crash, I followed Kamala Harris around the state for several days, for a profile in The Nation, as she barnstormed in support of the Homeowner Bill of Rights. This legislation was intended to provide a series of protections for homeowners facing foreclosure by their mortgage lenders, and with Harris’s backing it was passed into law, taking effect in January 2013.

Harris was elected state attorney general in 2010, breaking a long run of Republicans controlling that important office, and becoming the first woman, the first African American, and the first person of South Asian descent to hold that position. In alliance with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, she used her time in office to push the big banks to come up with billions of dollars to at least partially redress the damage homeowners faced because of the banking industry’s unscrupulous lending and foreclosure practices. By the end of her negotiations, she had secured upwards of $18 billion for California, a sum many times higher than what the banks had offered at the start of the process.

The California settlement wasn’t perfect—and it certainly didn’t solve California’s spiraling housing crisis—but it was a whole heap better than the deal the big banks came up with for most other states. And it helped to cement Harris’s reputation as a tough-as-nails negotiator.

The then–attorney general told me that she had been a chess player since she was 8 years old, and that it impacted how she thought about the world. I don’t know if she still plays chess, but I imagine that the analytical skills the beautiful game inculcates in participants continues to affect the way she strategizes and approaches key decisions. Gaming scenarios out, working out what one’s opponent is thinking and how they are ginning up their own moves—all of that will now serve Harris in good stead as she hits the presidential campaign trail. It will serve her well when she makes the hugely consequential decision of choosing her vice presidential running mate. And it will benefit her as she crafts a political message that renders her distinct in key ways both from Joe Biden and, of course, Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

When Trump and his minions make racist and sexist claims that she has only risen to the top of the political ladder as a “DEI hire” or through trading sexual favors with powerful politicians, when Trump goes down a rabbit hole of outrageous attacks against her, when Republicans accuse her of being simultaneously too liberal or a California “socialist” and, at the same time, too rigidly conservative as a prosecutor, she will have ready responses. If Trump debates her—which, despite his recent bluster about being willing to have multiple debates with Harris, I seriously doubt, since it would involve a candidate convicted of 34 felonies and facing dozens of additional charges going toe to toe on primetime TV with a successful prosecutor—she will likely be a far more formidable, and strategic, opponent than she would have been back in 2019.

During Harris’s brief run for the 2020 Democratic nomination, it was clear that on the national stage the candidate still faced a steep learning curve. Her speeches weren’t compelling; her interaction with voters on the stump didn’t provide them a strong reason to vote for her over the other hopefuls; and her policy proposals weren’t crisp and memorable.

More than four years later, Vice President Harris is an entirely different figure on the campaign trail. There is a confidence and an energy in her campaign that feels more like Barack Obama’s run for the presidency in 2008 than Harris’s in 2020. This is likely partly due to the unprecedented grassroots enthusiasm following Biden’s withdrawal, but partly because she is clearly a political figure who has come into her own.

Back in 2012, Harris, who loves to cook, told me that she fantasized about setting up a little food stand on a beach somewhere, and spending her free time swimming in the Caribbean.