CHICAGO — When a friend approached Kamala Harris with a suggestion that would help launch her political career, she responded with a gesture that would become her trademark.
David Chiu, San Francisco’s city attorney, was among those who nudged Harris to run for district attorney in 2003. “I called Kamala, and I said, ‘I think at some point someone’s probably going to have to run for the seat. And I think if it’s anyone in this office, it’s got to be you,’” Chiu said. “And she laughed.”
As Harris prepared to accept the Democratic nomination for president Thursday in Chicago, her giddy supporters spilled out from a California delegation breakfast at the Hyatt Regency to the hotel bar. The whole country was about to witness what some of them had known for decades — that Harris was bound for big things.
Squeezed into a booth, some of Harris’ earliest supporters in her first-ever campaign — for San Francisco district attorney — recalled the gifted young prosecutor who challenged a powerful incumbent and an underdog campaign involving ironing boards, Xerox machines, a fender-bender, and an undeniable spark that propelled her to victory against long odds.
Few could have foreseen that Harris, who went on to become California attorney general and a senator, might be president someday. But the group, which included Harris’ former campaign manager Rebecca Prozan, spokesperson Debbie Mesloh, and early supporters Heidi Sieck and Chiu, described defining moments from a 2003 DA campaign that would launch the political career of — if Democrats are so lucky — the first woman president.
“A friend of mine was like, hey, there’s this woman running for district attorney, and I laughed, because she’s running against this powerful incumbent,” recalled Sieck, a field organizer for Harris’ 2003 campaign and former chair of the San Francisco Women’s Political Committee, which endorsed her.
Before she ran for office, Harris’ courtroom skills had earned her a reputation among fellow attorneys. She specialized in sex abuse cases and was known for her gripping closing arguments, recalled Chiu. “I just watched her mesmerize the jury and mesmerize the rest of us. She was brilliant. She was tenacious.”
“[Harris] didn’t come from a wealthy family. She didn’t come from … a political dynasty. A lot of it was, ‘Who do you think you are?’”
— Debbie Mesloh, former Kamala Harris spokesperson
Then-District Attorney Terence Hallinan was political royalty — the son of famed progressive attorney Vincent Hallinan and a onetime member of the Board of Supervisors. His office was under fire for low felony conviction rates, high turnover, and allegations of sexual harassment.
In time, a group met with a prominent local political donor, Mark Buell, and Harris decided to run — despite polling that showed her barely registering among voters.
Harris was one of two attorneys who challenged Hallinan, ranking second in the primary election and beating him by a hefty margin of 56% to 44% in a runoff. At first, her candidacy — all other candidates were men — seemed like an outlier. She went on to distinguish herself as a tough but forward-thinking prosecutor who advanced a “smart on crime” credo that was novel at the time. In an appeal to progressives, her campaign highlighted her identity as a Black woman in a profession dominated by men at the highest levels.
Sieck and a friend stopped by an early Harris campaign event in a creaky Glen Park apartment with about eight people attending, she said.
“In comes this young woman, just fiery. Pantsuit, black pearls, and gets up on a crate or something,” Sieck said. “She gives this speech … I’ve never heard anything like it. She was talking about the root cause of carceral culture, how to prevent recidivism. I’d never heard anything like it. And I was all in at that moment,” she said. As a volunteer, Sieck was so determined to help Harris that when she crashed her car while campaigning, she abandoned it to walk precincts on foot.
“[Harris] didn’t come from a wealthy family. She didn’t come from … a political dynasty. A lot of it was, ‘Who do you think you are?’” Mesloh said. “And she transcended all that.”
Part of Harris’ appeal was her unusual ability to empathize with victims of violence, Prozan remembered. Many who knew Harris from her early years in San Francisco echoed those sentiments.
In an interview, San Francisco Mayor London Breed described Harris as a “compassionate, diplomatic leader” who innately understands the concerns of everyday people. Joaquín Torres, San Francisco’s assessor-recorder, recalled with emotion that Harris, while she was attorney general, showed up to his grandmother’s funeral.
“The first meeting I staffed for her — I want to say it was day one or day two — we met with Maddie Scott and a bunch of Black mothers who had lost their sons to gun violence,” Prozan said. “I listened to her talking to the victims, and I was like, she’s good.”
They left knowing that if she was elected, she was going to have their back,” Prozan said.
Harris set up her campaign headquarters in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood, which had a reputation for being unsafe. “It was a very bold statement to put it there — both politically, because you had to be concerned about getting volunteers there, but also the signal it sent about where her priorities were,” Chiu said.
Chiu, who is leading an Asian American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Men for Harris group, helped introduce her to influential leaders in the Chinese community, and Mesloh courted the press. Fiona Ma, now California state treasurer, was said to have helped build connections on the city’s west side. Harris won the support of Mark Leno, a former assemblymember, which boosted her cred in LGBTQ circles. A turning point came when the San Francisco Chronicle endorsed Harris with the headline: “Harris for Law and Order.”
From 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. each day, Prozan and Harris posted up at busy Muni stops with “an ironing board” and copies of the Chronicle editorial, Prozan said. They took bets on how quickly they’d run out and rushed to Xerox copies to hand out to voters looking for an alternative to Hallinan. She won.
As district attorney, much of the work she led was less than glamorous. For example, inside the dilapidated Hall of Justice, which over the years has been home to rats, asbestos, and sewage woes, Harris’ team set out to digitize an office “overflowing with metal file cabinets” and where laptops had been a scarce commodity, Chiu said. That laid the groundwork for what became a focus on using data in charging decisions.
Asked to describe Harris, Proznan said: “Oh, gosh. Funny. Driven. Principled. Ethical. Caring. Compassionate.”
“She’s going to reset the country,” she said.