Elias: Risks may outweigh benefits of a Harris run to lead California ...Middle East

Polls show that Kamala Harris holds about 50% of California voters’ approval as she heads into a self-assigned summer of decision making about her political future.

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Does the former vice president who lost last year’s election by just 1.6% of the popular vote want to give up on the possibility of succeeding Donald Trump as president? Is she ready to deal with all the detailed and complex issues that constantly confront any California governor? Can she raise the minimum of $100 million or so that’s needed to be a credible candidate for governor?

These are just some of the items on Harris’s mind as she disapprovingly watches Trump run the government in a confrontational manner completely foreign to her. She knows if she doesn’t run for president in 2028, though, that she will forfeit any advantage she would possess as a barely beaten candidate last time out, one whose defeat now has many 2024 Trump voters feeling a bit of buyer’s remorse.

She also knows that if she goes for governor, she will have to promise to serve out a full term in that office should she win. Reneging on that pledge would likely doom her in any presidential primary election, tagging her as a promise breaker. Keeping such a pledge also takes her out of the 2028 presidential running, though.

It’s a rare quandary no previous California Democrat has faced. The huge question for Harris, who will be 63 on Election Day 2026 is this: Does she care enough about the details of California issues from electric vehicle mandates to Medi-Cal for the undocumented to give up on her national ambitions, at least for most of her 60s?

Harris bears the image of a surfacy politician for sure. Rivals also blame her for failing to disclose just how disabled former President Joe Biden became. Few can name salient achievements of either her six years as state attorney general or her four years as Biden’s second in command.

Some of those are substantial: During California’s fiscal crisis of 2009 through 2012, when many thousands of mortgages were threatened with foreclosure, she leveraged the state’s sheer size to increase its share of a 2012 national mortgage settlement to $18 billion from an initial top offer of $4 billion, helping an unknown but large number of Californians evade foreclosure.

Between 2013 and 2015, her office recouped more than $1 billion for the state’s major public employee retirement funds after banks and rating agencies lied to greatly overvalue mortgage-backed securities. She also secured a 2012 agreement with Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and HP to require that all apps they sell display clear new privacy policies — and then she created a state privacy enforcement unit to seal that deal.

Her record was less noteworthy as vice president, partly because Biden assigned her impossible tasks such as fixing conditions in Latin America that encourage illegal immigration. That assignment did not come with the power to make any improvements.

So the Harris image as a lightweight, promoted in part by her cackling responses in some interviews, can be misleading and other candidates for governor would be wise not to underestimate her. That key question remains, though: How interested is Harris in pursuing the state’s problems all the way to solutions, from the fate of the partially-built bullet train to the pesky and expensive issue of caring for indigent immigrants?

No one really knows, perhaps not even Harris. That’s what makes this question so vital for a campaign in which other candidates such as former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former state Attorney General and federal U.S. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra are known for their strong interest in taking on major issues. Candidates like former state Senate President Toni Atkins and former state Controller Betty Yee are similarly known for strong focus.

If Harris runs and debates them all, plus Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, they will surely be trying to paint her as the lightweight of her reputation and not the accomplished politician of her reality. Which makes running a big risk for Harris, who could lose out as a major national player if she enters this race, regardless of whether she wins or loses.

Email Thomas Elias at [email protected], and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.

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