Key state and local measures
Including Phil Matier’s column and details on S. F. supervisors, S. F. school board and Oakland City Council races.
The rocket rise of Kamala Harris to the top tier of national politics is the latest pop in a political ride Harris wasn’t even sure she wanted to take.
It was January 2015 and Harris was in her second and final term as California attorney general when — out of the blue — U. S. Sen. Barbara Boxer put out the word to insiders that she was not going to seek reelection. At the same time, Gov. Jerry Brown was set to term out in 2018.
Harris was torn over whether to run for the Senate in 2016 or wait it out and run for governor.
She wasn’t alone. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose first run for governor withered in the face of competition from Brown, faced the same decision. Both were seen as rising Democratic Party stars and were often mentioned as possible future candidates for the White House. But they shared the same San Francisco fundraising pool and liberal voting base.
The question was: Which path would each take to avoid the possibly suicidal collision of running against each other? What followed for Harris was a game of chicken with Newsom that lasted a weekend, with both unsure which office was the better personal and political fit.
Turned out Newsom made up her mind for her when, without the two talking about it, he let her know through intermediaries that he was taking himself out of the Senate race, saying he still had “unfinished work” in California.
That left Harris with a clear path to the Senate race, but it was not necessarily the path she wanted.
Remember, in the leadup to the 2016 presidential election, the conventional wisdom was that Hillary Clinton would be the next president, meaning that all of the attention would be on the White House for the next four years. That would have made newcomer Harris have just been another junior senator in the Clinton cheering section.
But as the national vote totals rolled in on election night and Harris sailed into the Senate on a landslide win, a shocked nation watched Donald Trump pull off the upset and take the White House.
“It was supposed to be a celebration, but when we walked into the campaign party, everyone was crying,” longtime Harris friend and confidante Debbie Mesloh recalled. Undaunted, Harris took the stage, and within minutes turned the mood in the room from disbelief to defiance.
“Do we retreat or do we fight? I say we fight.” Harris told her supporters.
The video of the moment was the shot heard round the internet and social media, and instantly put rookie Harris on the map as a leader of the “the resistance.”
Within a year she was gearing up for her presidential run, a run that was launched before a hometown crowd of 20,000 in Oakland that would fizzle out before the Iowa caucuses.
“You had a very, very crowded field with a lot of very strong candidates,” said state Assembly member Buffy Wicks, who worked on both of President Barack Obama’s campaigns.
“Bernie Sanders had a massive base. Joe Biden had a massive base. Kamala had only been a senator for two years and was not that well known on the national stage,” Wicks said.
Harris was down — but not out. And once again fate intervened when former Vice President Joe Biden picked her as his running mate.
That instantly elevated Harris above all the other alsorans, It also elevated her above Newsom, who was busy back in California fighting the state’s worstever forest fires, the COVID pandemic and the possibility of a severe recession.
But with the race still up in the air late Tuesday, it was unknown whether Harris was on her way to the White House with Joe Biden. But whatever the final count, Harris should come out looking like a winner. If she’s not vice president, she could become the standardbearer on opposition to Trump for the next four years.
And in the process Harris has also solidified her California base, both for votes and fundraising.
“She performed well on the campaign. She didn’t do anything wrong, and now she is one of the bestknown Democrats out there,” San Jose State political science Professor Emeritus Larry Gerston said. “She is immediately ahead of everyone else.”
“She is the future of the party. It is as simple as that,” Wicks said.
And that’s a long way to go in such a short time.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Phil Matier appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KGOTV morning and evening news and can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7: 50 a. m. and 5: 50 p. m. Got a tip? Call 4157778815, or email pmatier@ sfchronicle. com. Twitter: @ philmatier