Democratic Senator Kamala Harris jumps
into 2020 White House race
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[January 21, 2019]
By John Whitesides and Amanda Becker
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - First-term
Democratic Senator Kamala Harris of California, a rising party star and
outspoken critic of President Donald Trump's immigration policies,
launched her 2020 campaign for the White House on Monday in an
appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Harris, 54, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, enters
the race with the potential advantage of being the Democratic candidate
who looks most like the party's increasingly diverse base of young,
female and minority voters.
“Let’s do this, together. Let’s claim our future. For ourselves, for our
children, and for our country,” Harris said in a campaign video that was
released to coincide with her television appearance.
The announcement falls on the U.S. Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday
honoring the slain civil rights leader, and the day was selected as a
reminder of the aspirational fight for progress, an aide said.
The former California state attorney general has become popular with
liberal activists for her tough questioning of Trump administration
appointees and officials, including Supreme Court nominee Brett
Kavanaugh and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, during Senate
hearings.
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Her campaign will focus on reducing the high cost of living with a
middle-class tax credit, pursuing immigration and criminal justice
changes and a Medicare-for-all healthcare system. She has said she will
reject corporate political action committee money.
Harris’ campaign will be based in Baltimore, with a second office in
Oakland, California. Her slogan will be “For the People,” in a nod to
Harris’ roots as a prosecutor, aides said.
She will hold a launch rally in Oakland before the end of the month.
As one of the earliest congressional critics of President Donald Trump's
immigration policies, Harris has pushed hard for a deal to protect from
deportation those immigrants who came to the country illegally as
children, a group known as Dreamers.
Harris is the fifth Democrat to enter what is shaping up to be a crowded
battle for the nomination to challenge Trump, the likely Republican
candidate.
She and other Democrats will have to navigate the party's debate about
whether an establishment figure who can appeal to centrist voters or a
fresh face who can energize its increasingly diverse and progressive
base offers the best chance to beat Trump in 2020.
Harris, who made history in 2016 as the first black woman elected to the
U.S. Senate from California, has embraced the party's diversity ahead of
a Democratic nominating campaign where minority voters and liberal
activists are expected to have an outsized voice.
FORMER PROSECUTOR
She has pushed back against critics of "identity politics," who she says
are using the term as a pejorative to marginalize issues of race, gender
and sexual orientation.
"It is used to try and shut us up," Harris told a conference of liberal
activists last summer.
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![](../images/012119pics/news_s35.jpg)
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-CA, talks to to Christine Blasey Ford,
testifying before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol
Hill in Washington, U.S., September 27, 2018. Saul Loeb/Pool via
REUTERS/File Photo
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The former San Francisco prosecutor drew notice when her rapid-fire
grilling of Sessions during a 2017 Senate Judiciary Committee
hearing caused him to complain.
"It makes me nervous," Sessions said.
In September, she was among a handful of Democrats who aggressively
questioned Kavanaugh at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing about
his views on abortion and on the special counsel probe into
potential Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
In the Senate, she has introduced a bill to give lower-income
families cash payments and tax credits to help battle wage
stagnation and rising housing costs, and has been a strong advocate
of criminal justice reforms.
Harris launched a book tour in early January to promote a memoir,
making a series of media appearances that helped bolster her
visibility ahead of her campaign announcement.
Her campaign could be aided by the schedule for the state-by-state
party nominating process that is scheduled to begin in February
2020.
The kickoff state of Iowa, which launched Barack Obama's
presidential bid in 2008, has a strong base of liberal activists,
and the race will then quickly move to more diverse states such as
Nevada and South Carolina. Her home state of California also has
moved up its primary to increase its influence.
But political foes will pore over her record in California, where
she has come under scrutiny for declining as attorney general to
prosecute OneWest, the bank once headed by Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin, for alleged foreclosure violations.
Harris, who voted against Mnuchin's confirmation as head of the
Treasury, has said she "followed the facts" in declining to
prosecute.
She also has been criticized for saying she was not aware of sexual
harassment allegations against one of her top aides, who resigned in
December after a California newspaper asked him about a 2016
harassment lawsuit. Xavier Becerra, who replaced Harris as attorney
general, settled the lawsuit in May 2017 for $400,000.
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(Reporting by John Whitesides and Amanda Becker; Additional
reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Jonathan
Oatis, Peter Cooney and Nick Zieminski)
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