California could be punching bag in first Trump-Harris debate

SAN FRANCISCO — A third character could play a major role in tonight’s presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump: the state of California.

As he tests out lines of attack against his new opponent, Trump is leaning on GOP caricatures of Harris’s deep-blue home state as a lawless dystopia of tent cities and shuttered businesses — the result of failed Democratic policies. A Harris president, he argues, would bring that hell to the rest of the country.

Controversial proposals passed by the Democratic-controlled, supermajority state House have already provided fodder for the Trump campaign, including a bill that Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed last week to help undocumented immigrants buy homes.

Tony Strickland, Trump’s Orange County campaign chairman, said he has encouraged the campaign to connect Harris to California’s liberal policies and deep-seated affordability issues. He said he expects Trump to continue hammering that theme during the debate.

“Sometimes people don’t realize how bad it is. San Francisco used to be one of the greatest cities in the world,” said Strickland, a Republican city councilman in wealthy coastal Huntington Beach. “Believe me, the last thing people in Middle America want is what we have in California.”

But don’t expect Harris to rally around California’s defense. Rather, she’ll defend her own record as a prosecutor who locked up rapists and cartel members before turning the tables on Trump, who she said she expects to repeatedly lie on the debate stage.

Harris’ team has been focused on touting her record in the White House, where the Biden administration passed the largest infrastructure bill in generations, helped the country recover from the pandemic and put her at the forefront of defending abortion rights after they were struck down by the Supreme Court. But her campaign has been touchy about the state of the economy, and while she is personally close to Biden, her larger goal is to portray herself as the candidate of the future and Trump as a figure from the past — including telegraphing how she plans to run the country independently of the current administration.

California Rep. Robert Garcia, a national co-chair of the Harris-Walz campaign and her longtime friend, said the Republican Party’s effort to tie Harris to progressive policies in California, especially ones she was not involved in, indicates that the Trump camp is still struggling to gain traction.

“They haven’t been able to go from one bizarre attack to another,” Garcia said. “Everyone knows the vice president is from California. People are going to focus on her record as vice president.”

Republicans have long used California’s ultra-liberal reputation to smear prominent state leaders, such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as out-of-touch “Left Coast” elites. Harris’s resume has made that trickier, as her career in California was dominated by her work as attorney general. But she did lean left when she served in the Senate and ran for president in 2019.

Brian Brokaw, a former Sacramento adviser to Harris, said that while Trump allies want to blame the vice president for policies implemented in California years after she left office, he doubts that “phony” attack will reach beyond the Republican base already aligned with Trump.

“She’s not running for president of California, she’s running for president of the United States,” Brokaw said. “That buddy Kamala BS just has nothing behind her.”

Below are some areas where Trump is likely to launch attacks.

Theft and Justice Reform: The Spirit of Prop 47

Trump and California Republicans have sought to portray Harris as soft on crime by linking her to the bitter fight over Proposition 47, a decade-old ballot measure that eased harsh sentencing laws dating back to the 1990s.

Critics say the measure has led to an increase in thefts and fueled the state’s fentanyl epidemic because offenders don’t have to fear arrest or jail time.

Harris had no role in drafting or promoting the measure. She took no position on Prop 47 when it was on the ballot during her tenure as attorney general in 2014, angering progressives. She argued that she had to be neutral because her office wrote the ballot summary.

That hasn’t stopped Trump from blaming her for the initiative’s alleged fallout: “She was the one who did it,” he said last month at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “I didn’t know this, but you can rob a store as long as it’s under $950.”

Harris has not yet taken a position on a controversial November referendum to roll back parts of Prop 47, which has received support from some leading Democratic mayors and Republicans.

Immigration: Sanctuary city DA

The GOP has portrayed Harris as ultra-liberal on immigration, citing her time as a district attorney in the sheltered city of San Francisco as well as recent pro-immigration policies by state lawmakers.

Trump last week called for banning illegal immigrants from getting mortgages — a position he took days after lawmakers in Sacramento approved a proposal to help illegal immigrants buy homes. Newsom vetoed the measure on Friday, watering down the issue for debate.

Still, Republicans have pointed to Harris’ defense of urban sanctuary policies that limit police cooperation with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The GOP has also pointed to her more liberal stance on immigration during her last presidential campaign, when she agreed during a debate that migrants crossing the U.S. border should not be subject to criminal penalties.

“They’re trying to turn her into some new person that she’s not,” said Strickland, Trump’s campaign manager in Orange Country.

Harris’ allies have stressed that her support for tighter border security is not new. As attorney general, she embraced a crackdown on transnational gangs and expanded a task force designed to share intelligence on criminals moving across borders.

“She’s not ideological, and I think that’s one of her greatest strengths,” added Brokaw, her former adviser.

Homelessness: Accountability in San Francisco

Homelessness is perhaps one of Trump’s favorite anti-California targets. He has repeatedly described the state as deteriorating, calling San Francisco “slum like.”

Trump argued this summer that Newsom’s executive order ordering cities to clear more encampments was a ploy to help Harris win the election. (Newsom’s order actually came after a Supreme Court ruling allowed cities to enforce encampment bans. Cities including San Francisco have since taken a tougher approach.)

“She has destroyed California,” Trump said at a news conference in August. “San Francisco was a great city 15 years ago. Now it is considered almost unlivable.”

Democrats immediately turned their attack on Trump, pointing out that Harris and Newsom were the city’s district attorney and mayor 15 years ago.

A debate on homelessness could give Harris a chance to highlight one of her proposals to make housing more affordable: speeding up construction.

Harris embraces the policies of the Yes in My Back Yard (or YIMBY) movement, which originated in San Francisco and blames local regulations and resistance to development for the state’s affordable housing crisis.

She has pledged to stimulate the construction of 3 million new homes by helping to relax such local planning restrictions. “In many places it’s too hard to build and it’s driving up prices,” she said at a recent rally in North Carolina.

Christopher Cadelago contributed to this report.