How Kamala Harris’ career as a prosecutor went from being a liability to a strength for Philly Democrats

During her first major remarks of her presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris immediately leaned into her background as a “courtroom prosecutor.”

“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” she said to a room of campaign operatives in Wilmington as she tried to draw a contrast with her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, the first ex-president in history to be convicted of a crime.

There was uproarious applause.

It was a notable moment — not only for the newly minted presumptive Democratic nominee, but for the party itself, which just four years ago backed now-President Joe Biden over Harris as its presidential pick.

At the time, Biden was seen as a more viable option to take on Trump. And through Harris’ 2020 campaign, there was an undercurrent of dissatisfaction over her background as a law enforcement officer, especially among left-leaning Democrats who called her “Kamala the cop.”

Today, the mood in the party has markedly shifted — so much so that Harris’ background as a prosecutor could be a strength with voters in such cities as Philadelphia, and Gov. Josh Shapiro, himself a former top law enforcement officer, is being floated as her potential running mate.

Democrats’ swift embrace of Harris, despite some progressives’ concerns about her background, is no doubt a reflection of her opponent.

“She’s a prosecutor running against a convicted felon. That’s the sum and substance of where we are,” said former Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter, who first met Harris two decades ago when she was San Francisco’s district attorney. “If they want to talk about her past, let’s instead talk about his present.”

» READ MORE: Pennsylvanians consider crime a major problem and think Trump will do a better job addressing it, our poll finds

But it is also part of a trend of changing attitudes on policing and criminal justice since 2020, when the police murder of George Floyd prompted a national conversation about the role of policing in society. While a majority of Democrats support criminal justice reforms and an end to police brutality, voters today appear more likely to support candidates with law enforcement driven approaches to crime.

That’s been true in major cities, including Philadelphia. A May poll from The Inquirer, New York Times, and Siena College showed Philadelphians were more likely to say crime is a major problem compared with other Pennsylvania residents. And last year, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker — who ran on a promise of restoring “order” to the city and embraced policing tactics like stop-and-frisk — won the Democratic primary decisively.

Harris’ background and her identity as a Black woman could endear her to Democrats in Philadelphia in a way that’s unique compared with Biden, said Mustafa Rashed, a political consultant based in the city. Some party operatives have expressed concern about sagging turnout in Philadelphia, a deep-blue enclave where Democrats running statewide typically try to run up the score.

“The thing an African American candidate can uniquely do is have real conversations that don’t sound like a dog whistle when we say ‘we need more law and order,’” Rashed said. “Every city in America that’s facing challenges wants to hear from candidates who have plans for it.”

On Tuesday, Harris’ campaign announced that its first event in Philadelphia since she became the presumptive nominee will be led by former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, an Arizona Democrat who was shot in 2011. Harris is not scheduled to attend. Giffords is slated to talk about how the vice president is “leading the charge to tackle gun violence.”

During her 2020 presidential bid, Harris was criticized by left-leaning opponents and some activists for her tenure as San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and as California attorney general, an office she held for six years until 2017. They homed in on her record aggressively prosecuting marijuana-related offenses.

But during the campaign, Harris acknowledged that “times have changed.” As a senator, she introduced legislation to decriminalize cannabis. And the Biden administration has overseen criminal-justice reforms, including rescheduling marijuana to be categorized as a lower-level drug.

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Nutter said that Harris took a “smart on crime” approach and that attitudes in the party are no longer as hostile toward law enforcement as in 2020. He attributed that to the pandemic-era surge in crime, which led to record levels of gun violence in Philadelphia through 2022.

Since then, shootings in the city have declined precipitously and in line with national trends.

Rashed said Harris’ prosecutorial background could neutralize one of the GOP’s strengths with voters, especially those most impacted by crime. The May poll showed about half of Pennsylvania voters thought crime was a major problem in the state and favored Trump over Biden on the issue.

He said Trump’s conviction makes it easy for Democrats to draw a contrast.

“When it comes to law and order, which is a mantle that Republicans have usually taken away from Democrats, I can’t see that working in this case,” Rashed said.

» READ MORE: From defund to refund: Why Democrats are shifting their tone on policing two years after George Floyd’s murder

Harris has the potential to further lean into those credentials if she chooses Shapiro as her running mate. In endorsing Harris, Shapiro highlighted their shared backgrounds as prosecutors, and this week he touted his record pushing back on Trump’s false election fraud claims during the 2020 election.

“I spent more time with my team in court trying to protect people’s rights,” Shapiro said, “because Donald Trump was trying to rip them away.”

Some progressives worried that Harris’ background could turn off left-leaning voters. Robert Saleem Holbrook, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Abolitionist Law Center, said bluntly: “People are going to stay home.”

“If she wants to win, if she wants to create a big tent, she’s going to have to shift her policies when it comes to mass incarceration,” Holbrook said. “That’s the only way she’s going to bring out a significant wing of the progressive vote, and also bringing out new people to vote.”

But, he acknowledged, many will “hold their nose” and vote for her “because the alternative is just so horrible.”

And City Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke, a member of the progressive Working Families Party, said while voters may consider Harris’ record in law enforcement, it wouldn’t be a determining factor in turnout and that it’s unlikely “marijuana possession becomes the topic of the day.”

Tough-on-crime approaches weren’t a determining factor in 2020 for Biden, who authored the now-notorious 1994 crime bill, which provided for 100,000 new police officers and allocated nearly $10 billion to prisons.

Rotimi Adeoye, a Philadelphia-based political commentator and a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Young Democrats, said Harris can still appeal to progressives by emphasizing the Biden administration’s work on the care economy, reproductive rights, and student-loan forgiveness.

And he said the historic nature of her candidacy could energize younger voters regardless of her background.

Joe Corrigan, a Democratic strategist, said a law enforcement officer with a history of prosecuting cannabis-related offenses may not have been the ideal candidate for the 2020 Democratic primary.

The circumstances now, he said, are widely different.

“In a general election, when you’re running against a ... fraudster,” Corrigan said, “it sets a very clear contrast.”