I first encountered Kamala Harris over 20 years ago when she launched her initial political campaign for D.A. in San Francisco.
Her opponent in that race, Terence (Kayo) Hallinan, was the incumbent from a storied left-wing Bay Area family. He was a colorful, no-holds-barred character out of the Old West, whose nickname stemmed from his former boxing career and a propensity to still get into fights even in the courtroom.
He also was a friend of mine. We’d occasionally meet for drinks at a dive bar in the Mission District, where I would connect him with other leading journalists and activists. When one of my kids was among those arrested in a peaceful antiwar demonstration downtown, he told me not to worry because he had no intention of pressing charges against any of the protestors.
During those years, I was teaching public interest journalism at Stanford and Kayo generously agreed to sit for a long meeting with my entire class of graduate students in his office.
The meeting was risky for him, as these students were already active journalists, so we agreed it would be off the record. Kayo was refreshingly frank about the ins and outs of San Francisco politics, the tensions between his office and the police, and how he made charging decisions.
For my students, this was an unprecedented educational opportunity to interact with an elected official, albeit an unusual one. (For me it was just pure fun.)
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris was a young assistant D.A. making her first foray into electoral politics. Running against Hallinan, her boss, as a relative unknown, she was the decided underdog in the race. But when I attended a debate between the two candidates, set in the Women’s Building in the Mission, I developed a sinking feeling about Kayo’s ability to win re-election.
Kamala was tough, smart, articulate and knew instinctively how to work the crowd. He seemed disorganized and a bit dazed by comparison. Honestly, I don’t think he knew what hit him.
These memories came back to me this week as I listened to Republicans brand Harris as a dangerous left-wing radical. Leaving aside the left-wing radical piece, which is nonsense (she is a moderate), these critics at least got the “dangerous” part right.
She represents a major danger to Donald Trump, especially at their upcoming meeting on the debate stage on September 10th. Harris is much smarter than Trump and she will very likely do to him what she did to my friend Kayo 20 years ago — slice and dice him into pieces like an onion on a cutting board.
Who knows what will happen in November, but I can tell you what happened after that debate in San Francisco.
Kamala won the election and she has never looked back.
(Read Kamala Harris’ full speech at the Democratic National Convention.)
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