Attorneys in California give high marks to Harris' work as DA and AG

Following the weekend's events that saw Vice President Kamala Harris move into the running for the nation's top job, California attorneys who have known her as district attorney in San Francisco and state attorney general said they had observed in her qualities that would serve her well as president of the United States.

"She had a unique ability to connect with people," said former Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley, in an email. "It was no surprise that she soared into leadership in SF and California."

Harris, a graduate of what was formerly called UC Hastings College of the Law, began her legal career as a deputy district attorney in Oakland before taking prosecutor jobs in the San Francisco District Attorney's Office and then the San Francisco City Attorney's Office. In 2003, she was elected DA of San Francisco. She served there until 2010, when she was elected attorney general by a narrow margin. She left that post in 2017 when she was elected U.S. senator.

James M. Fineberg, who was president of the Bar Assocation San Francisco while Harris was DA, pointed to her Back on Track program, designed to divert low-level offenders from prison, help them get jobs and avoid recidivism. The program was widely criticized at the time, he said, but was eventually widely copied across the nation. Her opposition to the death penalty has also aged well, Fineberg added, pointing to the number of people on death row across the nation who have been exonerated by DNA evidence.

"She was a terrific DA," concluded Finberg, a partner at Altshuler Berzon LLP.

"She was very engaged in community relationships and had deep ties with stakeholders from domestic violence groups to small business owners to elementary school principals, trying to use the tools of her office to interrupt cycles of crime or violence that stakeholders witnessed or experienced," Kelly M. Dermody, managing partner of the San Francisco office of Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, wrote in an email.

Dermody added, "She also took the office from getting barely half of its cases to conviction to over 2/3. Her 'smart on crime' approaches were considered groundbreaking at the time, but now have become standard operating procedure for so many prosecutors."

Not everyone thought Harris was a terrific prosecutor. California Republican Party Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson pointed to what she called Harris' "sanctuary state" policies.

No attorney reached by the Daily Journal on Monday wanted to go on the record with such criticisms. But these claims -- some of which are likely to be picked up by former President Donald Trump and his allies -- are familiar to anyone who has followed Harris' career closely.

Some say her office wrote misleading ballot materials for Proposition 47, a 2014 voter initiative that weakened sentencing laws and which some blame for increased crime in California.

In 2004, as district attorney, Harris publicly said she would not seek the death penalty in the murder of police officer Isaac Espinoza, even before he was buried. Espinoza's widow went public with her story in 2019. Others say Harris was out of step and not well-liked by other district attorneys across the state. But this has also often been true for other top prosecutors in California's big cities, which exist amidst a sea of dozens of smaller, rural and conservative counties.

Critics say that Harris doesn't have much of a record on which to run for president but Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg -- the former leader of the California Senate -- said that's just not the case. Steinberg pointed to her 2012 rejection of a settlement with the mortgage industry following the 2008 financial crisis -- a move that ultimately forced these companies to make far larger payouts.

Fineberg said one of her biggest accomplishments might be that she mentored several protégés. He pointed to Maryland U.S. Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks, who has called Harris her "big sister," and Lateefah Simon, who helped lead the creation of Back on Track and is now running to replace Rep. Barbara Lee.

Harris also named Maggy Krell, then a deputy district attorney, to lead the 2016 prosecution of three executives from Backpage.com on charges of facilitating prostitution and sex trafficking. That effort failed, but Krell is now an overwhelming favorite to win a seat in the California Assembly in November.

Eric Goldman, a professor of Law at Santa Clara University and a well-known technology blogger, called the Backpage prosecution an "overreach." The charges sought to find a way around Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields online publishers from content posted by third parties.

But he added, "Elected attorneys general are political. They always take positions that extend the law or are at the boundaries of legal doctrines."

By contrast, Goldman added, in his first term Trump tried unsuccessfully to do away with Section 230 by executive order. While some top technology executives have vocally backed Trump -- notably Elon Musk -- Goldman said many in the industry are leery of him.

"In terms of technology regulation, the difference between Harris and Trump couldn't be starker," he said.