California is less safe today because of Kamala Harris

For three and a half years, we have experienced the ramifications of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris ’s disastrous administration, which has left people less safe as crime has surged. In California , we’ve had a front-row seat to Harris’s soft-on-crime policies for two decades. Having suffered from her far-left, extreme agenda that for years prioritized criminals over Californians, we know better than anyone that the last thing Harris deserves is a promotion to the White House.

As California’s attorney general, Harris wrote ballot summaries for ballot initiatives that California voters would consider before casting their votes. Two specific ballot initiatives that passed with the help of Harris had devastating impacts on crime in the state.

In 2014, Proposition 47, the horribly mistitled “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act,” infamously made theft of up to $950, along with a series of other crimes, a misdemeanor and enabled criminals not to fear consequences for their actions. In the aftermath of its passage, then-Attorney General Harris was criticized for her summary that left out critical information and failed to offer voters a full picture of the problematic initiative.

She did not inform voters that Prop. 47 would restrict DNA collection from criminals, which is often used to solve other unrelated, and at times more serious, crimes. She also prevented independent analysts from writing a thorough and transparent impact statement on the proposition for voters considering the initiative when she refused to give the analysts access to critical information on gun thefts.

Today, the impacts of Prop. 47 are more prevalent than ever, with smash and grabs and rampant theft regularly dominating the nightly news. It’s so bad that more than 900,000 California voters helped qualify a new ballot initiative for this November’s ballot to clean up much of the mess created by Prop. 47. Harris bears real responsibility for the lasting effects of this dangerous law, which to this day empowers criminals across the state.

Proposition 57, the equally misleading “Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act,” also received a glowing ballot summary from Harris in 2016. As she put it, the law “allows parole consideration for persons convicted of nonviolent felonies.” What she doesn’t tell you is nonviolent felonies include such atrocious and blatantly violent acts as raping an unconscious person, human trafficking involving sex acts with a child , and domestic violence involving trauma, to name a few. Even prominent California Democrats have called out this harmful omission from the summary.

In 2022, in a horrific event so close to the California Republican Party’s Sacramento office that a stray bullet went through our window, Smiley Martin participated in a shootout with rival gang members that killed six people. He was free on that day because his previous domestic violence conviction was somehow considered a nonviolent offense, and he had been released from prison early.

Harris’s atrocious soft-on-crime record in California extends far beyond ballot language. As San Francisco district attorney, she refused to seek the death penalty against a gang member who murdered a police officer, Isaac Espinoza, despite pressure from fellow Democrats to do so. The late Sen. Dianne Feinstein even expressed support for the death penalty at Espinoza’s funeral.

Harris again did not seek the death penalty against an illegal immigrant gang member who murdered a father and his two sons. Separately, San Francisco police at the time accused Harris of being slow to prosecute in murder cases, while in drug cases, she offered favorable deals to avoid trial and refused to prosecute entirely in other cases.

As one of California’s U.S. senators , her radical, soft-on-crime stances grew. She supported defunding the police, including then-Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s plan to slash $150 million from the Los Angeles Police Department’s budget. She repeatedly called to “reimagine” the role of police in our communities.

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As Biden’s “border czar,” Harris allowed millions of illegal crossings into our country as the border sat wide open, but her failure is hardly a surprise if you saw her record in California. As district attorney, she expressed support for the city’s sanctuary city status. As senator, she advocated “starting from scratch” with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement while saying we should “reexamine” ICE. She also supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings and signed onto a letter arguing that Title 42, which temporarily closed the border, violated federal law.

Today, Harris is gleefully touting her background in public safety as a reason she should be our nation’s next president. But trust a Californian who has seen firsthand the disastrous consequences of Harris’s real record on public safety: It is absolutely disqualifying, and she should not be anywhere near the White House.

Jessica Millan Patterson is chairwoman of the California Republican Party.