Sen. Kamala Harris shocked fellow presidential hopeful Joe Biden at the Democratic debate in Miami last month by dressing him down over busing. She immediately saw her poll numbers jump and the nation got a glimpse of a steely competitor.
But for those who have been a part of Harris’ long tenure in California politics, the moment was pure déjà vu — a vintage Harris move fostered in the bare-knuckled, hyper-competitive cauldron of Bay Area politics.
“San Francisco is a political crucible that has chewed up and destroyed a lot of fairly talented and ambitious people,” says Dan Newman, a close advisor to California Gov. Gavin Newsom who also was a strategist on various Harris campaigns.
“There’s an intense interest in politics here, robust political journalism and an engaged electorate,” he says. “Those who have the ability to survive and thrive here tend to do so at broader national level.”
Harris, who gets both another chance to show the nation her stuff and a Round Two with Biden during the next Democratic debates on July 31, showed early on that she had such mettle.
In 2003, during her first run for public office as San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris faced down two male rivals, incumbent Terence Hallinan and former prosecutor Bill Fazio.
Harris’ political consultant, Jim Stearns, warned her that the men would choose an upcoming public meeting at a city church to attack her candidacy as being propped up by kingmaker and then-Mayor Willie Brown, whom Harris briefly had dated in the mid-90s.
“Those two men quickly learned what Joe Biden found out in Florida,” says Stearns. “You don’t mess with Kamala Harris. There’s always a double bind for female candidates, but she’ll throw an elbow if she needs to.”
In Stearns’ retelling of the event, Harris calmly walked around her rivals and — after casually mentioning that Hallinan had pilloried Fazio for being caught at a massage parlor, and Fazio had criticized Hallinan for staffers having sex at work — told the crowd the race should be run on the issues only.
“The whole crowd stood up and applauded,” Stearns says with a laugh. “We never heard about Willie Brown after that.”