Harris leans into prosecutorial background as campaign nears end

Vice President Harris is leaning into her time as a prosecutor and her law enforcement background in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.

Harris has sought to appeal to undecided voters in key swing states by touting her prosecutorial chops. Last week, in an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Harris discussed being a gun owner, revealing she’s had a firearm for “quite some time.” 

And during a lengthy discussion with shock jock Howard Stern, the vice president divulged, “I have put a lot of people in jail.” 

From the official start of her campaign in July, the Harris campaign framed the race as the prosecutor versus the “convicted felon,” former President Trump. 

As Harris begins to make her closing arguments, she is spending more and more time highlighting the law enforcement parts of her background, particularly as she seeks to peel off some GOP voters from Trump in a tight race.

Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau said it’s an effective strategy to “counter what some voters assume she is.”

“Republicans have created this narrative of a wild-eyed crazy liberal from California,” Mollineau said. “This is her filling in pieces of her bio and presenting who she really is. 

“To the extent that Trump talks a lot about crime and law and order, it’s a counterbalance to that,” he added. “I think this is her saying, ‘The caricature people have painted of me is untrue, and who I am is a lot more nuanced.'”

Democratic strategist Joel Payne described the tack as perhaps “her strongest moderate play.” 

“It’s powerful to be able to talk about how you governed, particularly when you’re not running in a primary and you’re not as vulnerable as people from the left,” Payne said. 

Not all Republicans are convinced the strategy is a sound one, however, particularly as Harris shows signs of struggling to draw Black men to her column.

“Here’s the challenge for her: She’s not getting enough of her base,” veteran GOP strategist Susan Del Percio said. “Until she gets that part of her base locked down, she may be making a mistake, unless their internal polling is telling them differently.” 

At the same time, other Republicans say centrists will be able to see through the strategy.

“One of the more potent lines of attack against Harris has been that she is more closely associated with the progressive wing of her party that supports policies like defunding the police,” said Kevin Madden, the veteran Republican strategist who served as a senior aide on Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah) 2012 presidential campaign. “That’s problematic when you’re trying to appeal to more centrist voters in these battleground states where voters are looking for a tougher approach to crime and public safety issues.”

Still, Madden added, “Harris is trying to use that prosecutor stint from her resume to signal to those voters and blunt her opponent’s attacks.”

And it’s a successful strategy to convey strength, Democratic strategist Anthony Coley said, especially when Republicans have sought to drive a narrative that portrays her as unqualified and incapable of dealing with dictators across the world. 

“When you think about everything that is happening in the world and the geopolitical environment, she is in part addressing people’s concerns that Trump is better than she is in terms of strength and handling these strongmen,” Coley said. 

He said the strategy has been effective in appealing to so-called Nikki Haley voters, pointing to recent data which shows that 10 percent of voters who support Trump are still open to supporting Harris. Haley, the former South Carolina governor, lost the primary to Trump.

“They are rightly focused on voters who haven’t made up their mind but are open to changing their mind,” Coley said. 

In a recent contrast ad titled “Prosecutor” that has been playing in battleground states for the last month, Harris sought to use her experience to highlight her willingness to reach out to Republicans.

“As a prosecutor, I never asked a victim or witness, ‘Are you a Republican or a Democrat?” the vice president says in the ad.

In the “60 Minutes” interview earlier this month, Harris told journalist Bill Whitaker that she owns a Glock handgun. 

“I mean, look, Bill, my background is in law enforcement,” Harris offered, before revealing that she has fired the gun at a shooting range. “Of course I have.” 

On Stern’s radio program, she detailed prosecuting “everything from … child sexual assault to homicides. And then as attorney general, transnational criminal organization which I took on as a leader.” And she acknowledged that in that role, she had received death threats from drug traffickers.

“I refuse to live in fear of the bad guys,” she told Stern.