Vice President Kamala Harris is defending her past support of more liberal policies during her 2020 Democratic primary campaign and repeating that her values "have not changed" in her first interview since becoming her party's nominee this election cycle .
"I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed," Harris told CNN on Thursday.
Since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee last month, her campaign has moderated many of her previous policy positions, including her support of Medicare for All , the Green New Deal , Black Lives Matter , expanding the Supreme Court , a mandatory gun buyback program , a fracking ban , and even a federal job guarantee .
During the interview, Harris specifically addressed her support of the Green New Deal and more lenient immigration policies , including decriminalizing illegal border crossings and reforming the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement .
"You mentioned the Green New Deal," Harris said. "I have always believed, and I've worked on that, the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time. We did that with the Inflation Reduction Act. We have set goals for the United States of America and, by extension, the globe around when we should meet certain standards for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. As an example, that value has not changed.
"My value around what we need to do to secure our border, that value has not changed," she added.
"I spent two terms as the attorney general of California prosecuting transnational criminal organizations, violations of American laws regarding the passage, illegal passage of guns , drugs , and human beings across our border. My values have not changed."
Harris has come under increasing pressure to explain her policy positions after she became the Democratic nominee without a traditional primary process and delayed sitting down for an interview until this week. The vice president also took the opportunity to continue her outreach to Republicans and Independents, as demonstrated during last week's Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and said she is open to nominating or appointing a member of the GOP to her hypothetical Cabinet.
"I'm not putting the cart before the horse, but I would," she said. "I think it's really important. I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion. I think it's important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences. And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was a Republican."
Four years ago, during the 2020 Democratic primary, Harris’s record in California created problems for her with more liberal Democrats over her decision not to oppose California’s anti-gay Proposition 8 ballot initiative in 2013 and her defense of the death penalty in the Golden State in 2014. She also faced criticism for not changing the state’s former three strikes law but trying to scale up anti-truancy laws she introduced in San Francisco statewide.
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Still, Harris’s more liberal record in Washington, D.C., created similar problems for her with more centrist Democrats and Independents.
Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), sat down with CNN in on Thursday while in Georgia , a state that was not in play for Biden. The interview is scheduled to be broadcast in its entirety Thursday at 9 p.m.
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