Kamala Harris Taps Allies on and Off the Hill in White House Bid

Vice President Kamala Harris, catapulted onto the world’s biggest campaign stage with little more than 100 days in her fight to win the White House, is leaning on a network of allies from Capitol Hill, California, and the private sector.

She’s known for keeping a small club of informal advisers, a group that already has begun to expand rapidly as she seeks the presidency and courts party donors.

During Harris’ four years in the Senate, she built ties with younger progressive Democrats and even some Republicans like-minded on policy priorities. She has occasionally hosted women senators of both parties, Susan Collins (R-Maine) among them, at the vice president’s residence.

Harris in particular will be able to lean on support from the Senate’s younger generation of Democrats, like Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Chris Murphy (Conn.), and Brian Schatz (Hawaii).

“We’re all fans,” said Schatz, who worked on legislation with Harris related to college debt and American Indian tribes.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) questions William Barr, US attorney general, next to Sen. Cory Booker, (D-N.J.) during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on May 1, 2019.

Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Harris was best known on Capitol Hill for her performance at hearings, drawing on her background as a prosecutor, not as a prolific legislator; Republicans held the majority after all.

Harris’ grilling on the Intelligence Committee about Russian connections with Trump’s 2016 campaign visibly rattled then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and her inquisition of Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings before the Judiciary Committee won her national acclaim on the left and disdain on the right.

“She was always prepared,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Intelligence Committee. “She already has relationships on both sides of the aisle, and that’s a big plus because you walk into some of these issues that have a bit of a shelf life.”

Chops to Talk

Her legislative record offers clues about her policy priorities should she get to sit behind the Resolute Desk and expand on the work of the administration in which she serves.

“She’s got the chops to talk about it with communities that probably are disproportionately burdened,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Some of the highest costs that people are facing right now — around housing, around child care — I think she is uniquely qualified to talk about that.”

To burnish her credentials as an advocate for changes to the criminal justice system after decades in law enforcement, she introduced legislation that would have legalized marijuana at the federal level, changed the bail process with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and limited the ability to deny housing to applicants with criminal records with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) All of those proposals underpinned her presidential campaign platform in 2020.

Her bipartisan effort with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Booker to designate lynching as a federal hate crime ran afoul of Paul’s objection and didn’t become law until halfway through her vice presidential term (Public Law 117-107).

Other policy areas similarly focused on helping marginalized populations. Her health care legislation focused on promoting Black maternal health, and she teamed up with House progressives on bills compelling Congress and executive agencies to analyze the impact of those rules on communities most affected by climate change.

Alliances with the Capitol’s left wing includes her original co-sponsorship of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) bill establishing universal access to Medicare.

Her tax policies focused on creating credits for the middle class and those facing higher comparative rent prices. During the pandemic, she wrote legislation creating protections for mortgage holders and renters against eviction, foreclosure, rent increases, and hits to credit ratings for missed payments.

Just as it is today, immigration offers a trickier balancing act for Harris. Years before President Joe Biden tasked her with addressing the root causes of migration from Central America, Harris campaigned on creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children but voted against a 2018 package that included such a concession in exchange for tougher border security measures.

Shoulder-to-Shoulder

Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), a close Harris ally, previously ran EMILY’s List, a key supporter of Harris’ past bids for elected office since her days in San Francisco.

Some of Harris’ Senate connections were forged during the 2008 financial crisis, long before she came to Washington.

Harris and now-Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) were both Sacramento officials then and collaborated on banking policy when he was on the committee of jurisdiction in the state Senate and she was California attorney general.

Harris also worked with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) when Warren was setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Harris was California’s top law enforcement official.

“She and I were fighting shoulder-to-shoulder against the giant banks that were trying to cheat homeowners,” Warren said.

Harris, Sanders, Warren, and Booker went on to seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. All fell short to Biden.

Family Ties

Harris’ husband, former DLA Piper lawyer Douglas Emhoff; sister, Maya Harris; and brother-in-law Tony West, who is senior vice president and chief legal officer for Uber Technologies Inc., are among her closest advisers. West was on the plane Monday when Harris and Emhoff went to visit campaign headquarters in Delaware.

She has former aides and allies scattered around the lobbying, consulting, and business sectors from Sacramento to Washington, D.C.

Nathan Barankin, who runs California-based Oak Tree Strategies, was Harris’ chief of staff when she was attorney general and in the Senate. Brian Brokaw, managed her campaign in 2010 for attorney general, and was an adviser on her Senate campaign and ran a super PAC supporting her presidential campaign, according to his Sacramento-based firm’s website.

Debbie Mesloh, now at OpenAI, worked for Harris’ state and Senate campaigns. Harris has former aides who have gone into federal lobbying and other allies on K Street.

Halie Soifer, who was a national security adviser to Harris in the Senate, is chief executive officer of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. Soifer said Harris had been “unwavering throughout her career in her support” for Israel. “This has been incredibly meaningful in the aftermath of Oct. 7,” Soifer said. Republicans, however, have criticized Harris for declining to preside over a joint session of Congress where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to speak on Wednesday.

Beyond Washington, Harris has access to networks of young and Black voters.

Divine Nine

Members of Black sororities and fraternities, known collectively as the Divine Nine, will be critical in her campaign for the White House.

The group boasts more than 2.5 million active members, including Harris herself. Their organizing and voter registration efforts helped propel Biden to victory in 2020, and Harris is expected to lean on them to boost voter turnout for her candidacy.

She is slated to appear at Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Inc.’s biennial convention in Indianapolis on Wednesday. It will be one of her first public appearances since she launched her campaign for president.

Harris, 59, often says on the campaign trail that she loves Generation Z, the group of Americans born between 1997 and 2012. Young political activists and celebrities are organizing to support Harris.

Gen-Z for Change, a group of left-leaning activists, blasted out its support for Harris Sunday to its 1.8 million TikTok followers. British pop artist Charli XCX endorsed Harris in an X post that referenced her latest album, “Brat.” And singer Katy Perry posted a montage of Harris on Instagram, set to her song “Women’s World.”