Unseen in California, anti-Harris political ads blanket swing states
SAN FRANCISCO -- The Bay Area had a very big presence in the Democratic National Convention and the region is also playing a big role in another part of the campaign, one people don't see as much of here in California. That is the ad campaign.
One example is a pro-Donald Trump campaign advertisement from the Make America Great Again PAC, that features a San Francisco crime victim. The Golden Gate Bridge is highlighted as well. The ad attacks Kamala Harris's record on crime, specifically as San Francisco District Attorney and it's getting a lot of airtime in swing states like Pennsylvania.
"I was robbed," the victim says in the ad. "They tried to run me over with the getaway car. They tried to kill me, right over here."
"Amanda's attacker was an illegal immigrant drug dealer, arrested twice before," a narrator intones.
That attack took place in Pacific Heights in July 2008. Amanda Kiefer was robbed of her purse and then run down by her attacker, a man who was in the country illegally and had two previous arrests -- one for drug dealing and another for purse snatching. It was one of several incidents that raised questions about San Francisco's sanctuary city policies. Most notable was the murder of a father and his two sons in a mistaken gang shooting. That was also 2008. The Edwin Ramos case actually prompted changes to sanctuary policies that dated back to the 1980s.
"We stopped the process of sending people out of state," Gavin Newsom said of the changes in 2008. "And we began to initiate conversations with the city attorney office. With the U.S. attorney."
KPIX political reporter Hank Plante asked Harris about the controversy that year.
"Your critics are already saying that your opposition to the death penalty is going to hurt you," Plante said. "Your support for sanctuary city is going to hurt you. What do you say?"
"I say that crime is a non-partisan issue," Harris answered. "And what most people want is they want an attorney general who will follow the rule of law."
16 years later, the issue now lands in the presidential campaign.
"Undocumented immigration is the issue that Trump wants this election to be on," said San Francisco State political science professor Jason McDaniel. "If they can tie Vice President Harris to that kind of thing then it's the kind of ad that can have an impact."
McDaniel says the specifics of the case are inevitably outweighed by the optics. The ad not only hit the immigration and crime buttons but also comes with the added bonus of including the longtime Republican nemesis that is the city of San Francisco.
"Being sort of out of control, issues of drugs, immigration, homelessness, taxes," McDaniel said. "These issues that Republicans have long wanted to highlight core democratic issues."
What is different this time around, is that San Francisco leadership is featured so prominently at the very top of the Democratic power structure.
"That would not have been the case 30 years ago," McDaniel said of the shift. "That a national electorate would have likely seen San Francisco as too extreme, too liberal and that is no longer the issue among Democrats but Republicans still see that as a vulnerability and want to highlight that."
Donald Trump, when speaking to crowds about the Harris record in San Francisco, often does so with wild inaccuracies -- for instance claiming that, as district attorney Harris "refused to arrest murderers." That's false. Ramos himself was charged and convicted of murder,
As for the attacker in the case cited in the ad, he too was convicted and, when he was, Kamala Harris lobbied for his deportation back to Honduras, which ultimately happened in 2011.