San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Harris, in conversation with S.F. Mayor London Breed, lurches closer to a rollout.
While Obama administration official Julian Castro launched his presidential campaign Saturday, California Sen. Kamala Harris merely lurched closer toward her rollout, as she continued her presidential non-announcement announcement tour Saturday in San Francisco.
On Tuesday, Harris told the gang on ABC’s “The View” that “I’m not ready to make my announcement” to run for president. On Thursday, she told Stephen Colbert on CBS “Late Night” that “I might” run. When asked Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” how close she was to making her decision, Harris said “I’ll make it soon.”
But not this soon. Yet her candidacy is such foregone conclusion that on Saturday, San Francisco Mayor London Breed — who interviewed Harris for an hour onstage at the Curran theater — didn’t even bother to ask her if she’s running. Instead, Breed continued the shtick.
“We are all dying to know this important question that everybody is always asking you everywhere,” Breed said to start her conversation with Harris. “Do you really walk around in those stilettos all the time?”
“It’s either these or my Chucks (Taylor shoes),” Harris said with a laugh.
Then Breed praised Harris, one of her political mentors, saying she looked “amazing on the (book) cover ...
on the cover.” The audience, the friendliest of friendly crowds, roared.
Harris is trying to gin up buzz for her candidacy and introduce herself to America by touring TV chat shows and making appearances in liberal media hubs like New York and Los Angeles in support of her memoir, “The Truths We Hold,” and a children’s book she also just wrote, “Superheroes Are Everywhere.”
The memoir is a mix of tidbits intended to humanize Harris (she teases her husband, Doug, for wearing goggles to chop onions), flash extended riffs on policy (“We should also speak truth about the racial disparities in our health care system”) and showcase the aphorisms she lives by (“If it’s worth fighting for, it’s a fight worth having”).
There will be plenty of time on the campaign to flesh that out. Saturday was all about taking some spring training batting practice with a friendly questioner lobbing softballs and a rapt audience that swooned with Harris from the moment she walked onstage to Tupac Shakur’s “California Love.” Harris, in turn, was looser than her typical appearance on “Meet the Press,” mimicking TV chef Julia Child and defending her choice of rapper Cardi B on her soon-to-be-released playlist.
President Trump wasn’t mentioned by name, but was alluded to several times. Harris said the partial government shutdown is the result of the president holding the nation “hostage over his vanity project,” a wall on the country’s southern border.
Harris said the “bloodsport” of San Francisco politics prepared her for her time as state attorney general and U.S. senator. She recalled packing her ironing board, campaign posters, flyers and duct tape and standing in front of grocery stores during her first campaign.
“An ironing board makes an incredible standing desk,” Harris said. “That’s how you campaign in San Francisco.”
“People here are informed and pay attention,” she said. “When you walk down the street, they will come up and talk with you and challenge you and require you to ask yourself a question: Am I relevant to the lives of other people?”
Harris said she is grateful that the city’s ethos encouraged political experimentation to see what programs would work — like her program as district attorney to combat elementary school truancy, an issue not often associated with prosecutors.
Too often, she said, politicians are expected to have “the plan.”
“And the problem with that is you’re supposed to defend ‘the plan’ no matter how bad ‘the plan’ is,” Harris said.
Harris compared the fight for same-sex marriage rights, which began in San Francisco shortly after she took office as district attorney in 2004, to the current political climate.
“We now are joyous for the wedding bells ringing,” Harris said. “Let’s remember we had to fight for that. It was a long, long time before it happened. But we didn’t give up.
“When we think about this moment in time, and all that is at stake, it causes us to be frustrated, if not dispirited,” Harris said. “We cannot give up. Let’s remember that.”
“The problem with that is you’re supposed to defend ‘the plan’ no matter how bad ‘the plan’ is.”
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.
Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli @sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli