"The Hard Way" - The Mary Chapin Carpenter Song About Kamala Harris's Political Career

Kamala Harris is the True Meritocracy Candidate in the 2024 Presidential Race

I’ve always liked country music star Mary Chapin Carpenter’s 1993 hit, “The Hard Way”. And I have been reminded of the song by the 2024 Presidential race.

There’s a certain dismissiveness towards Kamala Harris by Republicans and other conservative social media commentators who suggest she’s been handed opportunities without having to prove herself and suggest that she’s the beneficiary of race-based and sex-based preferences (hence the term “DEI Hire”).

This is abjectly false.¹

However one feels about “Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity” (and reasonable people will reach differing conclusions on the subject),² referring to Kamala Harris as a “DEI Hire” misses the mark.

First, in most of her major educational and professional endeavors, Kamala Harris never received DEI benefits. A couple of brief examples:

1. Kamala Harris Earned her Undergraduate Degree From Howard University. Howard University is a Historically Black College or University (“HBCU”). HBCUs don’t give racial preferences to black applicants. At HBCUs, if any applicants for admission received racial preferences prior to the 2023 United States Supreme Court decisions holding affirmative action unconstitutional, they were white applicants.³ She did not get into college because of her “diversity”.

2. Kamala Harris Was Laterally Hired at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office in 1998 and Subsequently Promoted to Lead That Office’s Career Criminal Unit. Kamala Harris was hired and subsequently promoted after the California Constitution was amended to prohibit all government offices from taking race or sex into account for job applicants or promotions.⁴ Even recruitment goals or specific outreach to applicants on the basis of race or sex are completely prohibited.⁵ She was not hired or subsequently promoted because of her race or her sex.

Second, when evaluating Kamala Harris’s political career (which is why she was selected to be Joe Biden’s Vice Presidential running mate), the term “DEI Hire” makes no sense. Being a “DEI Hire” would mean that she received favoritism based on her race or her sex that enabled her to gain office. She never did.

I should perhaps state the obvious.

Calling any elected official a “DEI hire” is a rather stupid insult. Voting in elections is conducted by secret ballot.⁶ Therefore, voters are free to vote for whoever they’d like, not who they feel compelled to support out of political correctness.

We don’t (directly) restrict voting by race or sex either.⁷ We also don’t allow laws that only allow certain candidates to run for elected office depending upon their race or their sex.⁸

Moreover, every valid ballot is counted equally, without regard to race, sex, sexual orientation, or any other immutable and otherwise irrelevant factors.⁹

An elected official is someone who stands for office on their own and submits themselves to the judgment of the public. If you call that individual a “DEI Hire”, you’re not just diminishing their accomplishment, you’re also insulting the voters who decided to put them in office.

While we have Voting Rights Act-required and California Voting Rights Act-required legislative minority opportunity seats, which are drawn to enable racial minority candidates an opportunity to get elected to office, those do not limit who can run or who can vote in the elections by race.

Kamala Harris never ran for a VRA or California Voting Rights Act drawn opportunity seat. For that matter, she never ran for elected office in a jurisdiction that was majority or even plurality Black (or Indian American).

Now, there are those who acknowledge that Kamala Harris is not a “DEI Hire”. However, they still dismiss her electoral accomplishments because she is a Democrat who ran in overwhelmingly Democratic San Francisco and heavily Democratic California. Therefore, they conclude that Kamala Harris is someone who has basically had things handed to her.

I can see why someone who is unfamiliar with California politics and the constitutional structure of California government might make that assumption (and I would not deem that assumption to be “racist” or “sexist”).

However, the assumption is incorrect. And if one looks at her political rise and compares her to our first black President, Barack Obama, and our first woman Presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, it is rather striking at how far more difficult a path that Kamala Harris took in order to rise to the top.

Far from being the product of DEI, Kamala Harris represents the fundamental American ethos that advises the way to success is to dream big but put one’s head down, work hard, and play by the rules.

A look at each of her respective elections to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, the California Attorney General’s Office, and the United States Senate demonstrates just how truly accomplished she is.

A. 2003 San Francisco District Attorney’s Race

In 2003, Kamala Harris ran for office for the first time when she ran for District Attorney of San Francisco (population of between 776,733 and 805,235 people). She ran against a fellow Democrat and two-term incumbent, Terence Hallinan, and she had no benefit of a traditional party primary.

Under the California Constitution, party registration for the office she ran for is omitted for candidates.¹⁰ There is no party nomination process as political parties do not nominate candidates for District Attorney.¹¹ In 2003, not only did the San Francisco County Democratic Party not have a Democratic nominee, the party endorsed her opponent.¹²

Here’s how the system worked in 2003.¹³

All candidates ran on one non-partisan ballot in an open primary where their political party is omitted and where all voters can vote, regardless of their registered party. If no candidate won an outright majority in the first round, a general election runoff would be held between the top two finishers.

To become District Attorney, Kamala Harris had to win two separate elections.

First, she and other challengers had to hold the incumbent beneath 50% of the vote in the first round and secure one of the top two spots (no easy feat considering that the second place finisher from the 1999 District Attorney’s election was running and started with far better name recognition). Then, in the runoff, she had to put together a coalition to defeat the incumbent.

She did both.

She did so without any racial advantage either. Blacks accounted for no more than 6%-7.6% of San Francisco’s population.¹⁴ Indian Americans accounted for no more than 0.6%-1.6% of San Francisco’s population.¹⁵ She won because she persuaded the voters that she would do a better job than the incumbent and out-worked her opponents.

Kamala Harris did such a good job in the office of District Attorney that she literally drew no opposition when she ran for re-election in 2007.¹⁶

I contrast her first run for office with that of President Barack Obama.

When Barack Obama first ran for office in 1996, he did so in a safe Democratic State Senate seat (population between 193,739 and 210,496 people) where the primary winner was guaranteed to win the general election. He ran against an incumbent but ultimately didn’t have to face her. He successfully challenged the validity of several of her nomination petition signatures.¹⁷

Enough were disqualified that she had an insufficient number to appear on the ballot. Obama won the primary election unopposed and won an easy general election victory in a safely Democratic seat.¹⁸ It played no role but his State Senate district was majority black, a natural opportunity seat designed to ensure minority representation.

I take nothing away from President Obama’s accomplishments, intelligence, or political skill. But if you compare his first campaign for elected office to Kamala Harris’s, he had it relatively easy.

B. 2010 California Attorney General’s Race

When Kamala Harris ran for Attorney General in 2010, California still had the traditional political primary system. However, the race was not handed to her.

In the primary, she ran in a crowded field that included three members of the California State Assembly, the City Attorney of Los Angeles, and the chief counsel for Facebook, who spent $12,330,000 of his own money to win the election.¹⁹ Moreover, the California Democratic Party declined to make a formal endorsement in the primary election.²⁰ Notwithstanding the competition, she won.

In the general election, she defeated the Los Angeles County District Attorney, Steve Cooley. Granted, she was the Democratic nominee running in a Democratic state. However, as recently as the previous statewide election in 2006, Republicans had won both the Governor’s race and the Insurance Commissioner’s race by double digit margins.²¹ And 2006 had been a far better election year for Democrats than 2010.

Cooley had previously won elections three times in heavily Democratic Los Angeles County, which is more than ten times the population size of San Francisco. Thus, Cooley had a solid base of Democratic voters to draw from and by all accounts should have won (he famously thought he had).

Her victory was nothing short of impressive.

While her victory in 2010 was narrow, her 2014 victory was a 15% landslide.²² Voters were clearly pleased with her work as Attorney General.

Again, I contrast her first run for statewide office to President Obama’s first run for statewide office in Illinois.

Barack Obama made his first run for statewide office in 2004 when he ran for the United States Senate. He was initially a third candidate also-ran in a competitive primary between wealthy businessman Blair Hull (favored by DC strategists for his ability to self-fund) and State Comptroller Daniel Hynes (favored by traditional party machine bosses and labor unions).

Hull and Hynes went after each other hard in the primary. Turning off vast swaths of the Democratic Primary electorate, voters went with the third guy in the race, Barack Obama.

In a general election, Barack Obama lucked out again.

First, his Republican opponent, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race after it surfaced that he had tried to take his ex-wife Jeri, a famous actress, to sex clubs during their marriage despite her repeated opposition.²³

Then, popular Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka declined to run for the Republicans (polling showed he narrowly trailed Obama and the race might have been competitive with him as the Republican nominee).²⁴

Out of options, Republicans selected former Presidential candidate and certifiable lunatic, Alan Keyes, who did not actually live in Illinois.²⁵ Like Obama, Keyes was also black, removing the issue of race from the election.

I don’t diminish the accomplishment of Barack Obama’s election to the United States Senate. However, comparing his first election to statewide office to Kamala Harris’s, he had it far easier than she did.

C. 2016 United States Senate Race

When Kamala Harris ran for the United States Senate in 2016, this was the first open Senate seat race conducted under what is known as the top two primary. That is, all candidates run in one single primary regardless of their party.²⁶ All voters, regardless of their registered political party have the ability to vote in that primary election.²⁷

While candidates may list their registered political party on the ballot, no political party may nominate a candidate for a voter-nominated office.²⁸ Instead, whichever two candidates finish in the primary with the first and second most votes, regardless of political party, advance to the general election. Then, whichever candidate receives the most votes in the general election wins.²⁹

As a Democratic Party nominee in a traditional Democratic v. Republican race, Kamala Harris would have easily prevailed. California is a heavily Democratic state. Look no further than the 2022 U.S. Senate race in Ohio. In a state that has become heavily Republican, Republican J.D. Vance won against Democratic candidate, Tim Ryan, despite dramatically underperforming other Republicans running statewide.

For this race, Kamala Harris won the official endorsement of the Democratic Party (no easy feat as she had to win over 60% of the several thousand Democratic Party Delegates).³⁰ But under the top two primary system, Kamala Harris was not the Democratic nominee for Senate. Instead, she faced another Democrat in the general election, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-Santa Ana).

Winning a general election against a candidate of the same party is one of the most difficult political feats. Because it’s not enough to be the Democrat in a safe Democratic seat or the Republican in a safe Republican seat. One has to campaign on their record and appeal to a broad swath of voters. One’s ideas and the kind of campaign run will be essential to winning.

Moreover, even among voters of a candidate’s party, the factors that help one to win a primary don’t exist. The turnout is larger, the party’s endorsements and the recommendations of party activists matter far less. Instead of politically active voters who focus on politics, a candidate has to win over the kind of voter who isn’t glued to MSNBC or FOX News but has got shit to do.

Thus, even in a safe seat, a party endorsement doesn’t guarantee victory for the candidate who has it. There have been several general elections between Democrats where the Democratic candidate endorsed by the California Democratic Party lost to their fellow Democratic opponent. Some notable examples include:

• Congressman Eric Swalwell, who won his 2012 Congressional race despite his opponent being endorsed by the California Democratic Party.

• Congresswoman Nanette Barragan, who won her 2016 Congressional race despite her opponent being endorsed by the California Democratic Party.

• Congressman Ro Khanna, who won his 2016 Congressional race despite his opponent being endorsed by the California Democratic Party.

• Senator Dianne Feinstein, who won re-election in 2018 despite her opponent being endorsed by the California Democratic Party.

Although she showed herself to be out of practice in her 2016 race, Loretta Sanchez was a formidable opponent. She had been a local Democratic hero and rising star for many years, having been the Democratic candidate to finally defeat Congressman Bob Dornan, a right wing crazy, and win in historically Republican Orange County.

She had been a prodigious fundraiser, was skilled at earning free media, and had many longtime loyal supporters. She also had the ability to transfer her large campaign warchest from her Congressional campaign to her Senate campaign.³¹ Kamala Harris had no ability to do the same with the campaign funds from her Attorney General’s race.³²

Nevertheless, running in the general election against her fellow Democrat, Harris won by over 23%.³³

Here, not only did identity politics not help her win, she likely won in spite of identity politics. First, since both general election candidates were Democratic women, Kamala Harris received no boost for her gender. Second, California’s population is 39.40% Hispanic and only 5.36% Black.³⁴ If voters had voted on the basis of racial identity, Kamala Harris would have likely lost to her Hispanic opponent.

Here, I contrast Kamala Harris’s Senate run with Hillary Clinton’s first run for U.S. Senate (and public office) in 2000, when she famously ran for U.S. Senate in New York (a state that she had never lived in) and prevailed.

There, although the seat of retiring United States Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was open, Hillary Clinton faced a primary election with only token opposition. No Democratic elected officials in heavily Democratic New York ran against her. Senator Moynihan endorsed Hillary Clinton early in the race and anointed her as his hand-picked successor. Democratic powerbrokers lined up to back Hillary.³⁵

In the general election, she faced Republican Congressman Rick Lazio, a moral crusader. Hillary won the election by a decisive 55.27%-43.01% margin. In the New York Presidential race, Democrat Al Gore defeated Republican George W. Bush by a 60.22%-35.22% margin.

Why is that significant?

Usually, the Presidential nominee has coattails and those who vote for the President will vote for down ballot candidates of the same party. In 2000, a large number of New York voters split their tickets, voting for Al Gore but also voting for Rick Lazio. However, Gore won the state so strongly that he ensured Hillary’s election even if she faltered.

Kamala Harris did not have an uncontested primary. She had an open primary where she had to secure a spot in the runoff, by no means a given. By running against another Democrat in the general election, she could not rely on any Presidential nominee to pull her in if she faltered. Coattails and partisan registration advantages don’t mean anything if your opposition is of the same political party.

Without diminishing Hillary Clinton’s accomplishment, in comparison to Kamala Harris, her election the United States Senate was far easier.

Some Final Thoughts

Love her or hate her (and everyone is welcome to their own views without being tarred or otherwise attacked), Kamala Harris is no “DEI Hire”. In fact, she’s the polar opposite.

Nothing was ever handed to her. She never received special favoritism to get ahead. There was no Democratic Party installation process for her. No benefit was given to her because of her race or her sex even if there had been those who wanted to do so.

Instead, the only things that got her ahead were her hard work, record of accomplishment in office, and persuading her fellow voters to choose her, often over fellow Democrats or against Republicans who knew how to win Democratic voters.

In the words of Mary Chapin Carpenter, everything she got in her career leading up to the Vice Presidency, “[she] got the hard way.”

1. The author of this article is an attorney licensed to practice in the State of California and the District of Columbia. This article and all of the works on this Substack page are statements of the opinions of the author, only, and do not constitute legal advice; they are not intended to be relied upon by any individual or entity in any transaction or other legal matter, past, pending, or future. A paid subscription to this Substack page supports the author’s scholarship and provides access to research that the author has compiled, but does not establish an attorney-client relationship. The author does not accept unsolicited requests for legal advice or representation, and this Substack page is not intended as legal advertising. The opinions expressed on this Substack page reflect the personal views of the author only.