Harris is not just a ‘San Francisco liberal.’ I would know.

From the very start of her ascent into politics, Vice President Kamala Harris has shown herself to be a pragmatist with core principles along with the political savvy to anticipate traps and learn from her missteps.
She has a go-to expression that encapsulates her determination to transcend political dogma and posturing: “false choice.” I first heard it invoked in her 2003 campaign for San Francisco district attorney.
Harris entered that race as a decided underdog in what was widely expected to be a rematch between incumbent Terence Hallinan, an unabashed liberal whose father had run for president under the Progressive Party banner in 1952, and a challenger, Bill Fazio, with a more off-the-shelf, tough-on-crime pitch.
Enter Harris, proposing to upend a “false choice” by going after Hallinan’s abysmal conviction rate while advancing the social justice themes that are so central to San Francisco’s political culture. “Smart on crime” was her mantra.
She won – and governed as a centrist, raising the conviction rate while innovating programs to steer young people from crime and to reduce recidivism.
To caricature Harris as a “San Francisco liberal,” as the Trump campaign is shouting, is to miss both the complexity of the city’s bruising blue-vs.-bluer politics (lighter blue tends to win citywide) and the traits that have allowed Harris to endure and advance in the past two decades.
Harris managed to rise from local to statewide to national politics by refusing to be typecast.
In the days leading to last week’s announcement of her running mate, pundits widely characterized it as a choice between being strategic (by tapping Gov. Josh Shapiro of critical battleground Pennsylvania) and placating a left wing that was agitating for a ticket that’s more union friendly and concerned about the carnage in Gaza.
It turned out to be, to coin a phrase, a false choice. Her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz fit both criteria and, perhaps most important to Harris, personal compatibility.
In covering Harris over the past two decades, I’ve seen the importance of her having people around her she can trust. Her extended political family includes staffers and contributors from her first campaign who remain intensely loyal.
I always found her accessible, but her humor and humanity that radiated in small settings never quite came through in her public persona.
In the times she has struggled – the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, her first years as vice president – it’s clear that one of the factors was the way she was curtailed by the presence of people whose own agendas and ambitions did not necessarily coincide with hers.
Her first run for president was often embroiled in conflict between strategists on the East and West Coasts competing for her ear with different visions. Her vice president’s office was initially stocked with experienced Washington staffers not necessarily of her choosing.
Now the Democratic presidential nominee is less encumbered by the requirements of others. The result is reflected in the sure footedness, the energy – indeed, the joy – that Harris has showcased since President Joe Biden withdrew from the race and passed the torch to her.
As someone who has interviewed Harris one-on-one multiple times, moderated two of her debates and watched her take on volleys of questions in editorial board meetings, I know she can be thoughtful and quick on her feet.
However, she can at times turn cautious.
One of the vulnerabilities in her unsuccessful bid for the 2020 presidential nomination was her seeming indecision on whether to embrace or distance herself from both the principled and the pragmatic decisions she made as a prosecutor.
Trump blames Harris’ crowds on AI,so let’s all assume everything we don’t like is fake!
She was chastised from the right for pledging that no one on federal death row – a rogue’s gallery that includes Charleston, S.C., church shooter Dylann Roof and Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – would be executed on her watch.
She was pilloried from the left for acting as state attorney general to appeal a federal judge’s 2015 ruling that a long delay in the case of a murderer-rapist amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Harris also was caught flat-footed in summer 2019 when fellow challenger Tulsi Gabbard, then a Hawaii congresswoman and a Democrat, fired off a laundry list of examples to suggest that the former California attorney general had been putting and keeping too many people in jail.
Another low point in the campaign was a CNN Town Hall in which Harris demurred on thorny questions – Should felons be able to vote from prison? Lower the voting age to 16? Reparations for slavery? Forgive student debt? – with phrases such as “we need to have that conversation” or “we need to study that.”
She advocated, then withdrew, a call to end private health insurance.
It was clear that “false choice” is not exactly a safe choice in a primary where ideologues demand certitude.
Yes, Harris still does occasionally get caught up in “word salads” that became grist for social media. But the former prosecutor can also be forceful.
And that must scare a Trump-Vance campaign, which no doubt would have preferred the halting-and-confused opponent Donald Trump encountered in the June 27 debate.
Just ask Brett Kavanaugh, Jeff Sessions or William Barr about the grilling each faced from Harris in Senate hearings. Or, for that matter, Joe Biden in the 2020 primary debate, where Harris took him to task over his praise of two segregationist senators and his opposition to busing to achieve school integration.
“That little girl was me,” was her devastating kicker.
Rarely mentioned but critical to understanding Harris is her essential role in making same-sex marriage the law of the land.
The 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling that invalidated California’s Proposition 8 was based on the justices’ rationale that its proponents did not have a “direct stake” in the outcome and did not meet the standard of being affected in a “personal and individual way.”
The outcome might have been different if, as attorney general, Harris had intervened in defense of the initiative. She refused, on the grounds that the measure’s restriction on individual rights was clearly unconstitutional.
Her stance was both principled and pragmatic – and the direct opposite of the Republican opponent she narrowly defeated the previous year.
RFK Jr.’s campaign is imploding.He can still be an electoral problem for Trump.
Her ill-fated reach for the presidency four years ago does not necessarily presage what Americans will see between now and Nov. 5. Her history is of resiliency, lessons learned and defiance of expectations.
Harris may just be the ideal candidate to take on a former president who thrives on false choices: Open borders or mass deportations? Free trade or America-first protectionism? Lower energy prices or a healthy planet? Second Amendment or rational gun laws? Support the police or pardon the insurrectionists of Jan. 6, 2021?
Rule of law or rule of Trump?
With American democracy at stake, this is no time for false choices or mere “conversations” or interminable studies. This is a moment for Harris to demonstrate the blend of principle and pragmatism that has brought her the Democratic Party’s nomination.
American politics in 2024 is anything but nuanced. Her candidacy is a test for her ‒ as well as for an electorate that has been conditioned to the vapidity of tribalism, caustic sound bites and false choices.
John Diaz, the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial page editor from 1996 to 2021, now lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. This column originally published in the Arizona Republic. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @JohnDiazChron