Vice President Kamala Harris is touting her experience as a “top cop” as she “prosecutes” her Republican opponents and makes the case for why she should win the November election, but critics say she is relying on an unproven legal background and that much of her success is down to connections.
Her nearly three-decade climb to the top has been riddled with setbacks, including failing the bar exam on her first try in 1989.
Civil rights lawyer Leo Terrell, who was admitted to the California bar in one shot that same year, described Harris as a political opportunist who was “in the right position, in the right place at the right time” whose calculated moves have helped her rise from district attorney to attorney general, senator, vice president and perhaps beyond.
Terrell said it was her “network” that helped Harris’ career soar: “Frankly, it’s not her academic achievements that got her where she is. It’s her network that got her to the positions of district attorney of San Francisco, attorney general of California, U.S. senator and vice president.”
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Vice President Kamala Harris’s rise to office was marked by many setbacks, including failing the bar exam the first time around in 1989. (AP Photo/Molly Gash)
Terrell added that Harris’ political rise was also aided by the mentorship of former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, with whom she had a public affair in the 1990s.
“She has no notable accomplishments or track record as a lawyer or a litigator,” Terrell said. “… My view, listening to her speak and the way she approaches social issues… I don’t think she’s an academic heavyweight. I don’t know what got her to where she is in politics. It’s purely personal connections and politics and being in the right place at the right time.”
Harris has been banking on her experience as California’s “top cop” since announcing her candidacy for president after President Biden dropped out of the race.
“As a tough prosecutor, Kamala Harris has always taken on men like Trump – rapists, con artists, fraudsters and criminals. She’s used to men like Trump and she’s used to putting them where they belong,” says a narrator in an ad supporting Harris that was released this week.
With Biden dropping out of the race, Democrats have begun pushing the argument that the election is a battle of “prosecutors versus felons,” a reference to former President Trump’s conviction in New York earlier this year.
“The contrasts in this race couldn’t be starker: a prosecutor versus a convicted felon. A defender of fundamental American freedoms versus a man who tries to take them away at every turn. Let’s get to work,” Rep. Greg Stanton, a Democrat from Arizona, wrote on X.
Obama’s aides have signaled, without saying it publicly, that the 44th president is a strong supporter of Harris.
“November 5th: Prosecutors v. Felons,” said New York Assemblyman Daniel Goldman.
Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett testified on the third day of her congressional confirmation hearings on October 14, 2020. (Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times, Pool via The Associated Press)
Harris, who turns 60 in October, spent 27 years in the law after failing the bar exam.
Harris’ gaffes made national news in 2020, when she was running for Biden’s presidential nomination while also juggling her duties as a senator, particularly her service on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she questioned President Trump’s nominee for Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“Republicans are rushing to confirm this nominee as quickly as possible because they need to appoint one more of Trump’s judges to repeal the entirety of Obamacare by November 10,” Harris said during her nomination hearing. “This is not an exaggeration or a hypothetical.”
Harris’ questions and exchanges with Coney Barrett were less fiery than her demeanor in previous hearings, such as the fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination in 2018. As the 2020 election cycle loomed over the hearings, social media commenters pointed out that Harris, then the vice presidential nominee, had failed the bar exam, while Coney Barrett had been at the top of her class while attending Notre Dame Law School.
“Kamala Harris Failed the Bar Exam the 1st Time. Amy Coney Barrett is #1 in her class,” the social media post read at the time. “I’m taking a break.”
In response to the social media comments, outlets like USA Today ran fact-checks revealing that Harris had in fact failed the bar exam on her first try, while Coney Barrett had graduated at the top of her class. Meanwhile, in a 2016 profile of Harris, The New York Times reported that Harris had failed the exam, and had recently comforted a young law student who had also failed the exam by saying, “Exams are not a measure of ability.”
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Ashley Williams, Montel Williams and Kamala Harris attend the 8th Annual Race to End Multiple Sclerosis at the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City, California on May 18, 2001. (Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
Harris eventually died a year later, and the bar admitted her to the bar in 1990, according to a Fox News Digital find on the California Bar’s website.
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Harris attended the historically black Howard University for undergrad and earned her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, which Terrell noted is a good law school and that it’s “kind of odd” that a student would fail the bar exam on the first try.
San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris walks into the courtroom on April 29, 2004. (Paul Chin/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
After passing the bar exam, she began her career as a deputy prosecutor in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office in 1990. In the late 1990s, she moved to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office as a deputy prosecutor, then moved to the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, before running for San Francisco’s top police officer in 2004. She was elected San Francisco District Attorney and served in that position for about seven years, during which time she developed a friendship with then-Illinois Senator Barack Obama and also with Representative Nancy Pelosi, who is also from California.
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San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris speaks to supporters before a press conference on Oct. 29, 2008. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Her meteoric rise in politics continued from there, winning the position of California Attorney General in 2011 while Governor Jerry Brown was leading the state, and then winning election to the Senate in 2016 after longtime Senator Barbara Boxer announced her retirement from politics.
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Biden announced that Harris would join him in the race just days after President Obama endorsed Biden as his presidential candidate in August 2020. Harris, who has been dubbed the “female Obama,” has a longstanding friendship with the 44th president and was one of the first Democrats in the nation to endorse Biden’s presidential bid. Elected President in 2008 – Ignoring Hillary Clinton and endorsing then-Illinois Senator.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama attended an event in the East Room of the White House on April 5, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“You did it, Joe,” Harris would say in a phone call with Biden after polls showed him winning.
Harris is now a leading contender for the Democratic nomination in 2024 after Biden dropped out of the race and shortly thereafter endorsed him as his running mate.
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“My first decision as the nominee of my party in 2020 was to select Kamala Harris as my vice president, and it was the best decision I ever made,” Biden said in a post on X after dropping out of the race. “Today I fully endorse and support Kamala as our party’s nominee this year. Fellow Democrats, it’s time to unite and defeat Trump. Let’s do it.”
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks alongside President Biden in the White House Rose Garden on July 26, 2021. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The 46th president had been under growing pressure from Democratic allies and legacy media to withdraw from the race since his June 27 debate with President Trump, during which he was peppered with incoherent comments, lost his train of thought and appeared more subdued than he has been at other recent public events.
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The debate rekindled concerns among conservatives and critics that Biden’s intellectual acuity was waning, while also marking the start of a push within the Democratic Party to oust him.
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Fox News Digital’s Jamie Joseph contributed to this report.
