Political charmer with a fierce work ethic built alliances with radicals and the rich

‘She burst on the scene and enchanted an element of society that would not otherwise be engaged in the district attorney’s race’

To succeed in the cut-throat politics of San Francisco requires two things: a relentless work ethic and incredible schmoozing ability. Kamala Harris has plenty of both, resulting in a spectacular rise one insider described as unmatched since Barack Obama.

“I’ve known her all my life,” says Aaron Peskin, a childhood friend and San Francisco city councillor who went to the same kindergarten and primary school as Ms Harris in the Sixties.

“We don’t always agree, we’ve had profound disagreements, but I do believe that this is a human being who can bridge multiple worlds.”

Such praise is common among the governing classes of San Francisco and its neighbouring cities, where the political spectrum runs from moderate Democrat to radical socialist, and where Ms Harris made her name by carefully weaving between the two.

Most have nothing but good things to say about her – and also describe her as a consummate politician adept at building alliances and charming big money donors. The former point would appear to be proof of the latter.

Yet Ms Harris’s time as a prosecutor, district attorney and later attorney general of California has embittered many on the Left, including leaders of the Black Lives Matter protests that have raged across the state.

For them, she stands accused of about the worst possible charge during this reckoning with America’s ugly history of police racism and brutality: being a “cop”.

Based on past showing, those are cracks that Donald Trump will eagerly try to exploit. Ms Harris was born in

Oakland in 1964, a city with a strong black community widely known as the birthplace of the Black Panthers, and went to school in neighbouring Berkeley, famous for its starring role in the Sixties student movement. Mr Peskin describes their neighbourhood as a “polyglot, hugely diverse milieu where notions of racism and sexism did not exist” and where families strove for and achieved the American Dream.

But Ms Harris’s childhood was not untouched by America’s divisions. She was ferried to her 95-per cent white school as part of the US’S controversial “bussing” programme, designed to end desegregation. Berkeley was the first city to join voluntarily.

That history provided one of the Democratic primary’s most dramatic moments when she confronted Joe Biden over his historic opposition to the scheme.

It was there, too, that her meteoric career began: as a lawyer prosecuting in Alameda County, which includes Berkeley and Oakland.

She had a vision of how criminal justice had to change even then, according to John Whitehurst, an Oakland-based Democratic political consultant who first met her in the year 2000.

“Because she’s so well-connected, everyone assumes that she was a creature of politics,” he says. “[But] not a political hack that ended up being district attorney. She used politics to achieve her goal in law enforcement.”

In 1990, she became Alameda’s assistant district attorney, and in 1994, fell into the orbit of Willie Brown, the legendary California state assemblyman.

Often called the “Ayatollah of the Assembly” – albeit most often by himself – his powerful political machine was the making of Gavin

Newsom, California’s current governor.

To truly advance, however, Ms Harris had to cross the towering Bay Bridge to San Francisco.

When she ran for district attorney there in 2003, she was an outside third place, facing an incumbent, Terence Hallinan, whose family had helped run the city for 50 years. Worse, he had been the one to headhunt her in the first place.

Her platform combined Left-wing ideas (eschewing the death penalty, defending medical marijuana, declining to pursue jail time for marijuana possession offences) with tough rhetoric on violent crime. Mr Whitehurst describes it as a Tony Blair-esque “third way”.

The campaign was acrimonious, but she won, becoming the golden city’s first black chief prosecutor.

The victories continued from there: in 2011, she rose to become the attorney general of California, before finally becoming a senator in the national Congress in 2017.

Colleagues from that time describe her as meticulous and detail-oriented.

Lenore Anderson, who joined her office in 2008 as chief of policy, says Ms Harris had “very high standards.”

And as for Ms Harris’s other great skill, schmoozing the rich, she cut her teeth in the historical centre for the old money of America’s West Coast: the Haas family, the Shorensteins, the De Youngs, the Gettys, the Swigs, and so on, all live in San Francisco.

“She burst on the scene, and absolutely enchanted an element of San Francisco society that would not otherwise be engaged in something like the district attorney’s race,” says Dale Carlson, a veteran San Francisco PR man and lobbyist.

“The financial support that they have provided to her has been quite exceptional.”