Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 190
Trump Is Everywhere
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) “is increasingly positioning herself for a what is expected to be a crowded Democratic primary for the White House in 2020,” The Hill reports.
“The former California attorney general, who is just at the beginning of her second year in the Senate, is taking positions that could endear herself with the Democratic base while allowing her to stand out from a group of Democrats who might seek the progressive mantle.”
Politico: “Two rising stars in California are about to collide: Sen. Kamala Harris of San Francisco and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. As potential Democratic presidential candidates in 2020, the pair might soon be asking the activists and donors who have known them their entire political careers to finally choose sides. It’s a thorny dilemma for California Democrats, but one that could be commonplace over the next two years. At least eight states have multiple Democrats considering national bids, an unprecedented development that threatens to fracture the party in some of the bluest states in the nation.”
“The Democratic donor class is abuzz about Kamala Harris after the freshman California senator was feted this weekend at an event in the Hamptons surrounded by top fundraisers,” The Hill reports.
“The Bridgehampton event, where Harris mingled with top donors and supporters of Hillary Clinton, was the ultimate signal that Harris is ‘thinking much bigger’ than the Senate, one top bundler said.”
Said one fundraiser: “She’s running for president. Take it to the bank. She’s absolutely going to run.”
New York Times: “California’s very junior senator has emerged as the latest iteration of a bipartisan archetype: the Great Freshman Hope, a telegenic object of daydreaming projection — justified or not — for a party adrift and removed from executive power… Like the Senate newcomers Barack Obama or Marco Rubio before her, Ms. Harris — a 52-year-old former prosecutor with a profane streak, a lawyerly aversion to ‘false choices’ and an affection for the rapper Too Short — has insisted that national aspirations are far from her mind. Like those men, she has not exactly ruled out the possibility, either.”
“Unlike those men, she is not a man, a fact that has figured prominently in her introduction to mass audiences in a recurring (and highly rated) television series: Senate Intelligence Committee Hearing Into Possible Trump Ties to Russia. Twice recently, Ms. Harris’s pointed questions and interjections during long-winded witness testimony have prompted uncommon interruptions from Republican colleagues, John McCain of Arizona and Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the committee chairman, urging her to let the officials answer. In the outsize fallout, her supporters have questioned whether a white male senator would have been confronted the same way.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) “is using her newfound progressive stardom to raise money for her Democratic colleagues — and amplifying buzz about the California freshman as a prospect for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination in the process,” CNN reports.
“In the first six months of 2017, Harris has raised more than $600,000 for a dozen Senate colleagues — including $365,000 from small-dollar online contributions.”
“The email list Harris has used to raise the bulk of that money is 10 times the size it was at this time last year, during her Senate campaign. She’s used that list to raise money for incumbents up for re-election in the 2018 cycle, including Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.”
“What the fuck is that?”
— Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), on Pod Save America, when asked about Rep. Raul Labrador’s (R-ID) statement that “nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.”
McClatchy: “Now’s the time prospective presidential candidates start taking the subtle but crucial behind-the-scenes steps that get them noticed by the political intelligentsia, and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is quietly following the script.”
“She’s making speeches to key national constituencies. She’s due for an appearance at a Washington think-tank panel full of chattering-class presidential favorites that the national media will be reporting and analyzing, probably for days. She’s been fundraising for colleagues and making sure that she is forming relationships with key national reporters.”
“They’re all boxes that prospective presidential candidates routinely check. It’s a chance to ultimately convince insiders they’ve got the gravitas and the fundraising chops to be taken seriously.”
“Turmoil and lackluster funding in California Attorney General Kamala Harris’s (D) Senate campaign has some Democratic operatives wondering what’s gone wrong,” The Hill reports.
“Harris this week replaced campaign manager Rory Steele with Juan Rodriguez, who was serving as the campaign’s senior adviser. Harris’ team is also cutting costs to control its high rate of spending, which threatens to overtake the money flowing into the campaign account. These changes follow departures by two finance directors earlier this year.”
“Critics point to Harris’s own personality as the reason for some of the problems.”
An aide to California Attorney General Kamala Harris (D) and two others “are accused of operating a rogue police force that claimed to exist for more than 3,000 years and have jurisdiction in 33 states and Mexico,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Suspicions about the Masonic Fraternal Police Department — whose members trace their origins to the Knights Templar — were aroused when various police chiefs in Southern California received a letter in late January that announced new leadership for the group.”
Kamala Harris (D) “continues her cake-walking campaign to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, facing the slightest opposition in what promised, at first, to be an epic fight,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“While the lack of strong competition is surprising, the reasons are no mystery… Part of the explanation speaks to individual motives; each of the potential top-shelf Democratic contenders had reasons for skipping the Senate contest. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa would both rather be governor, a job that comes open after 2018, when the term-limited Jerry Brown steps aside.”
California Attorney General Kamala Harris (D) “defended her aggressive young U.S. Senate campaign, which some of her fellow Democrats have complained is aimed at keeping others, notably a Latino candidate, out of the race,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
Said Harris :”I have always entered races early and run hard, and that’s what I’ve done in this race. I make no apologies for it.”
Gavin Newsom’s decision not to run for U.S. Senate in California “capped a furious 72 hours of discussions among the would-be candidates and their advisers over whether to jump at the state’s first open Senate seat in two decades, or hold out for a shot at leading a state that is the world’s eighth-largest economy,” Politico reports.
In announcing his plans, Newsom got out ahead of Kamala Harris “who has told friends that she is also interested in the job of governor. Instead, on Tuesday, she will launch a campaign for Boxer’s seat, knowing that if she hesitated, it would appear that she was reluctant to choose the Senate over the governorship. In doing so, she will circumvent a race against Newsom; it has long been assumed that they would avoid a titanic clash that would leave one of them badly wounded, their hopes for higher office potentially derailed.”
California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris will announce tomorrow that she is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Barbara Boxer, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Said an adviser: “She’s not testing the waters. She’s charting the course. She’s in with both feet.”
The exact timing of Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) retirement announcement caught California Democrats off-guard — and launched a fluid, high-stakes decision making process by Attorney General Kamala Harris (D) and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), BuzzFeed reports.
“The situation is more fluid than it is opaque. Most expect one to run for Senate in 2016, and the other for governor in 2018, succeeding Jerry Brown. In interviews this weekend, people close to Newsom and Harris described a fast-changing, somewhat uncomfortable three-day period of deliberation in which each has sought advice and consulted family, while navigating the concentric circles of their shared political universe, of which there are plenty.”
“Still, there is no ‘deal’ between Newsom and Harris. No ‘smoke-filled room,’ no secret pact that would install one as senator and the other as governor. The two Democrats, who share a long and complicated history, have not even spoken directly since before Boxer announced her retirement, according to a person familiar with their correspondence.”
California Attorney General Kamala Harris (D) told BuzzFeed that said she was not opposed to the legalization of marijuana.
Said Harris: “I don’t have any moral opposition to it or anything like that. Half my family’s from Jamaica.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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