Kamala's Way Read online

  Like that parade of politicians, Harris could appreciate the view. But she was not there to gaze upon the city lights or to watch the sailboats on the bay.

  7 Severing Heads. Figuratively.

  Californians weren’t paying much attention to the race for San Francisco district attorney in the fall of 2003. They, like most voters in the state, were focused on an only-in-California story, the campaign to recall California’s Democratic governor, Gray Davis. Not that Davis was the draw. The one attracting all the attention was his leading challenger for the office, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Mr. Universe and international movie star, who made the announcement of his candidacy during an episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

  Recall petitions regularly are filed against governors. That’s the right of the citizenry under a 1911 state constitutional amendment allowing for recalls and initiatives, a Progressive Era notion intended to give people the final say over their governance and serve as a check on the power of moneyed interests. Gray Davis committed no malfeasance. But the state was in the midst of a budget crisis and had endured infuriating rolling blackouts from 2000 through 2001. Fairly or, more likely, unfairly, Davis got much of the blame.

  The cost of qualifying measures for statewide ballots runs well into the seven figures. Darrell Issa, a San Diego County Republican congressman who made a fortune in the car alarm business, dearly wanted to become governor. But after spending $1.87 million to gather the hundreds of thousands of voter signatures to qualify the recall, Issa ultimately realized he didn’t have a chance against Schwarzenegger. Fighting back tears, Issa announced he wouldn’t run.

  But 135 others did, including perennial candidates, a porn star, the little-known California Democratic lieutenant governor, the opportunistic Republican politician Tom McClintock, the diminutive child star Gary Coleman (who was well past his prime), and Arianna Huffington, who later founded the Huffington Post.

  Schwarzenegger, the one to beat, overcame a front-page exposé in the Los Angeles Times in which women said he groped them, and on October 7, 2003, he became the center of the political world by unseating Davis.

  * * *

  Kamala Harris had invited her boss, City Attorney Louise Renne, out to lunch in 2002. As Renne recalled it, Harris said:

  “I am thinking about running for DA.”

  “Go for it,” Renne replied.

  Renne promised to help in any way she could. She also warned that incumbents are tough to dislodge, especially the one she was seeking to unseat, her former boss Terence Hallinan, with the legendary Hallinan name. Harris was thirty-eight at the end of 2002 when she announced her first run for public office.

  “TODAY’S VOICE FOR JUSTICE,” her website read.

  She listed the reasons she was the ideal person to replace Hallinan: She would be a competent manager. She would improve conviction rates, which were far below the statewide average. Where Hallinan “refused to prosecute serious drug dealing of crack and heroin,” she would bring drug cases as part of an effort to clean up the streets.

  “Perhaps the most alarming of all is the now irreparable animosity between the police department and the district attorney’s office—which should be working together to fight crime instead of fighting each other.”

  As Harris would learn, keeping all those promises would be tough, especially the one about ending the animosity between the district attorney’s office and the police.

  But first, she had to win.

  Mark Buell, her fund-raising chairman, was there to help, recalling that it wasn’t a tough sell. Harris was an attractive, energetic candidate who was quick on her feet, clearly part of a new generation of leaders for a city that needed a political makeover. When she talked to someone, she would make eye contact and not be scanning the room looking for some more important person to talk to. She made everyone she talked to feel as if he or she were the most important person in the room.

  “She is a good politician. She knows how to fit in in most situations,” Buell said.

  In a blitz of meetings, fund-raisers, and phone calls in the final six weeks of 2002, Harris raised $100,560. In keeping with campaign finance restrictions in San Francisco, individual’s donations topped out at $500. The haul was impressive for a first-time candidate and clearly sufficient to prove she was a serious challenger. It was a family affair: sister Maya Harris, brother-in-law Tony West, and, of course, her mother, Shyamala, each gave her $500. Early donors included many of the swells she would have met in society gatherings: members of the Pritzker family, whose wealth came from the Hyatt Hotel chain; Getty family members; Charles Schwab from the investment house that bears his name; and the Fisher family of Gap fame. Attorneys disenchanted with Hallinan also gave heavily.

  “I was tired of the old people running San Francisco. She was one of the new faces,” John Keker, one of the most successful trial and criminal defense lawyers in San Francisco, said. In 1989, Keker had led the prosecution of fellow marine Oliver North for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal, in which the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran to raise money to fund right-wing contras fighting a leftist regime in Nicaragua. “Kamala projected decency and compassion. You would turn a room over to her, and she would connect with people.”

  Mindful that she not come off as a creation of Pacific Heights or fancy downtown attorneys, Harris sought to show that she would look out for people who needed honest law enforcement the most. She placed her campaign headquarters in the middle of the troubled Bayview district, a world apart from $10 million penthouse views and the glistening Financial District. Volunteers painted slogans on one wall of the headquarters: A NEW VOICE FOR JUSTICE. THIS IS OUR TIME. TIME FOR A CHANGE. Harris promised to elevate the prosecution of domestic violence and to protect children who were trafficked.

  “We were trying to reimagine what the office could be,” Debbie Mesloh, one of Harris’s longtime friends and first campaign workers, as well as her campaign spokeswoman, said.

  Harris often arrived at the headquarters before sunrise. Shyamala was a constant presence, pitching in wherever needed. Maya and Tony were there, too. In a Norman Rockwell touch to this family affair, Harris and her volunteers would grab ironing boards and cart them to bus stops and sidewalks outside grocery stores, where they would unfold them to create instant desks onto which they’d stack Harris for District Attorney brochures. Harris had the enthusiasm, charm, and charisma that attracted volunteers and made them want to bring their best.

  In her first television interview as a candidate, Harris spoke of her admiration for the Hindu goddess Kali, a mythological warrior who protects innocents by slaying evil. In a classic depiction, Kali holds the decapitated head of a demon, has a necklace of severed heads, and wears a skirt of bloody arms. Harris also noted that Kali is a mother figure.

  Laura Talmus, Harris’s professional fund-raiser, witnessed that maternal side of Harris. On many Saturday mornings, Talmus would arrive to volunteer with her daughter, Lili. Lili was nine and stood out in any crowd. She was smart, perceptive, precocious, read voraciously, and laughed easily. She also had Apert syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that caused her face and head to be misshapen. When she saw Lili, Harris would make eye contact, ask about her day or week at school, and thank her for her help.

  Lili and her mom would head off with their ironing board and brochures and set up outside the supermarket on Nob Hill across from the Hyde Street cable car line. On days when Lili was not quite motivated to hand out brochures, she’d stay in the headquarters, under Shyamala’s wing, stuffing envelopes or doing whatever other chores Shyamala assigned to her.

  “She just beamed in Kamala’s presence,” Talmus recalled.

  * * *

  In February 2003, Harris spoke to the first group of women who were going through the candidate boot camp she and Andrea Dew Steele helped create, and that Susie Tompkins Buell helped fund, through Emerge. The training was for an array of down-ballot offices but also, the Chronicle noted, “the
ones who fantasize about running for president someday.” That story noted San Francisco had never elected a woman as district attorney.

  “There is absolutely a double standard you need to be aware of,” Harris was quoted as telling the women. “Being a woman that some would consider attractive carries its own baggage. People assume you’re not substantial. It’s why it’s so important to talk to as many people as possible, and keep conveying what you stand for.”

  And this: “If you’ve stepped out in life, you will have enemies. It’s not the end of the world—and sometimes it’s even good. Women should feel entitled to public office; we belong in the position of being decisionmakers.”

  For much of the race, Harris trailed the men, incumbent Hallinan and Fazio, the more conservative candidate. They both brought up Harris’s ties to Mayor Brown.

  Harris understood her vulnerability: some voters had grown tired of Willie Brown’s machine. He had provided too many jobs to cronies, among them Paul Horcher, the Republican assemblyman who crossed his party in 1994 by casting a vote for Brown for Speaker. Under his leadership, the city also awarded contracts to firms that hired his friends as lobbyists. The Chronicle reported that the FBI was investigating city hall for much of his tenure. Though few indictments came of the effort, Harris, a candidate who promised reforms and a unit that would focus on public corruption, made a point of distancing herself from Brown, telling SF Weekly that her relationship with him, now eight years in the past, was her “albatross.”

  If there was any doubt that they were over, she pointedly told SF Weekly, “I refuse to design my campaign around criticizing Willie Brown for the sake of appearing to be independent when I have no doubt that I am independent of him—and that he would probably right now express some fright about the fact that he cannot control me.

  “His career is over; I will be alive and kicking for the next 40 years. I do not owe him a thing.”

  Fazio, realizing that Harris was closing the gap, continued to play the Willie Brown card, this time in a mailer sent to women. It was Halloween weekend, days before the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

  “I don’t care if Willie Brown is Kamala Harris’s ex-boyfriend,” the mailer said, quoting a woman. “What bothers me is that Kamala accepted two appointments from Willie Brown to high-paying, part-time state boards—including one she had no training for.…”

  Harris quickly answered by recording a robocall warning voters of a “trick” they’d be receiving in the mail and explaining that she used her positions on the boards to provide benefits to gay couples and to help keep a hospital open. Harris was showing herself to be deft at the art of political war. She edged out Fazio for the second spot and would face Hallinan in the runoff in December.

  * * *

  To the outside world, San Francisco is probably best known for its bustling Chinatown, the coffeehouses of North Beach, the Golden Gate Bridge, and cable cars, or maybe the lost souls who have no place to sleep other than sidewalks, freeway underpasses, and vacant lots. It is all of that. But insiders also know that San Franciscans play a hard brand of brawling politics. Politicians who make it in San Francisco know how to win. It’s no coincidence that some of the nation’s toughest current and former players—including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Willie Brown, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Governor Gavin Newsom, John and Phillip Burton, former senator Barbara Boxer, and Kamala Harris—all have San Francisco roots.

  No San Francisco race would be complete without sharp elbows being thrown. As Harris and Hallinan campaigned, Kimberly Guilfoyle, then married to mayoral candidate Gavin Newsom and on leave from the district attorney’s office, threw one Harris’s way, dishing to the Chronicle that Harris had tried to block her return to the office in 2000.

  “The bottom line is she didn’t want me there,” Guilfoyle said. Her ploy was to suggest that Harris had tried to impede the progress of a successful law-and-order prosecutor. Indeed, in 2001, after Harris had left the office, Guilfoyle gained notoriety as one of two prosecutors in an especially awful case against two lawyers who had kept two one-hundred-plus-pound Perro de Presa Canario dogs named Bane and Hera while the animals’ owner, an Aryan Brotherhood member nicknamed “Cornfed” who was both their client and adopted son, served time in prison. Cornfed had bred the beasts to guard meth labs, and they were vicious. One of the lawyers had the dogs on leashes when they broke free and mauled to death a university lacrosse coach in the hallway outside her apartment. Guilfoyle and her partner on the case won convictions, and Guilfoyle caught the attention of cable news bookers. That ultimately led her to the conservative world of Fox News, a divorce from Newsom, and, in time, a relationship with Donald Trump Jr.

  In the meantime, Harris succeeded in brushing off Guilfoyle’s claim. To the contrary, Harris said, she wanted to help Guilfoyle. In the end, Guilfoyle couldn’t touch her, and Harris found a smart way across the finish line.

  * * *

  In San Francisco, winning candidates don’t run to the right. It’s not a winning strategy. But some do find nuanced ways to seem less to the left than their opponents. That was Harris’s path. In the runoff against Hallinan, she promised reforms but also appealed to Fazio’s voters, many of whom were, if not conservative, at least less liberal than Hallinan’s supporters. The Chronicle endorsed Harris on December 7, 2003, under the headline “Harris, for Law and Order.”

  Harris did not list Willie Brown’s endorsement in any of her campaign material. But Brown, loyal to old friends and willing to help talented Black candidates, was helping behind the scenes and using his clout to open doors for Harris. That included access to his donors. But it was Harris’s job to close the sale. Many of her donors previously backed Hallinan, but politics had turned Harris’s way. With his fund-raising choked off by the upstart, Hallinan used $50,000 of his own money to keep his campaign afloat. By Election Day, she had raised almost three times what Hallinan raised, $1 million for that first election, virtually all of it in $500 increments. Many donors who gave to that campaign remain contributors to this day.

  Brown made a brief appearance at Harris’s victory party: “It is obviously a gender victory. It is obviously an ethnic victory. But it was her competence that defeated Terence Hallinan,” he said.

  Harris won by a 56 percent to 44 percent margin and received more votes than any other candidate in San Francisco that day, including the newly elected mayor, Gavin Newsom.

  In early 2004, after the votes were counted and the new guard was sworn in, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that one of Willie Brown’s protégés, Mohammed Nuru, a top official in the public works department, passed word that members of a city-funded street cleaning crew known as the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners, or SLUG, should vote for Newsom. Nuru told reporters he had campaigned for both Newsom and Harris on his own time and denied pressuring anyone. Reports of such irregularities weren’t new in San Francisco. The new mayor and the new district attorney promised to clean up the town. The San Francisco city attorney, the California secretary of state, and the newly elected district attorney all said they would look into the allegations. Nothing came of it.

  Harris emerged from the swampy, backstabbing politics of San Francisco with some scars. She also learned, Kali-like, how to figuratively sever a head or two. Her skill and charisma, her intelligence and grit, and her willingness to fight hard set her apart. In time, Californians would see more of that.

  8 Officer Down

  In her 2003 campaign for San Francisco district attorney, Kamala Harris promised voters that she would never seek the death penalty, no matter how heinous the crime. She faced the first test of that pledge three months after taking the oath of office. Her decision affected her career for years to come.

  At about 9:30 p.m. on April 10, 2004, San Francisco police officer Barry Parker eased an unmarked gray Crown Victoria past a liquor store selling discount beer and wine at the corner of Third Street and Newcomb Avenue in the Bayview district. His partner, Is
aac Espinoza, was in the passenger seat.

  “Woo, woo,” a spotter shouted, signaling to others doing illicit business that police had arrived.

  Cable cars didn’t run to the Bayview–Hunters Point district. It was a different city from the one that tourists and the fancy people of Pacific Heights see. In Bayview–Hunters Point, gangs owned many streets to the point that people took to calling parts of it a “war zone.”

  Two young men seemed startled when the Crown Vic pulled close. One of the men wore a peacoat, though the evening was warmer than normal. Espinoza shined a flashlight onto the man’s face. He kept walking. The officers, dressed in plain clothes, stopped and got out of their car.

  “Hey, let me talk to you,” Espinoza said.

  “Stop. Police,” he said twice, maybe seven feet away.

  The man turned, pulled an assault rifle he had been hiding under his coat, and, in five seconds, fired no fewer than eleven times. Espinoza, shot in the gut and thigh, never had time to unholster his weapon.

  “Officer down,” Parker, wounded in the ankle, radioed.

  Espinoza, twenty-nine years of age, the father of a three-year-old girl, had been on the force for eight years and was a volunteer on the anti-gang detail. By 10:00 p.m., two days before the seventh anniversary of his wedding to Renata Espinoza, Officer Isaac Espinoza had bled to death.