Sen. Kamala Harris, a Democrat from California, marched in September, 2019, with supporters in Des Moines, Iowa.
Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg NewsWASHINGTON—Kamala Harris has spent her political career courting different constituencies within the Democratic Party, a balancing act that hurt her own presidential campaign but now may make her an asset as Joe Biden’s running mate.
Ms. Harris’ pick by Mr. Biden makes her the first Black woman and the first woman of Asian descent nominated for vice president by a major party. But Republican and Democratic strategists say one of the California senator’s most defining characteristics—and now a potential strength—may be that she’s hard to define: at one time a hard-charging prosecutor, and at another, a champion of progressive causes.
“She is not somebody who can easily be pigeonholed as one ideology or another,” said Brian Brokaw, who managed Ms. Harris’s successful campaigns for California attorney general in 2010 and 2014.
During the Democratic primary, Ms. Harris struggled to lay out a signature campaign message. She initially focused on taking on President Trump and even attacked Mr. Biden before switching focus to what she called kitchen-table issues such as raising teacher salaries and pay equity between men and women. She, like some other candidates, at first backed Medicare for All and then distanced herself from it.
Some Democratic primary voters, and her rivals, chided her for appearing to lack firm convictions. Her allies say it was a reflection that she isn’t ideological in her decision making process.
But Charlie Gerow, a longtime Republican strategist in Pennsylvania, where Mr. Biden has a slight edge over Mr. Trump in public polling, said Ms. Harris was “probably the safest pick among some pretty unflattering other picks.”
Mr. Gerow said that Republicans would pour over Ms. Harris’s voting record in the U.S. Senate, attacks she made against Mr. Biden during the primary, and her time as prosecutor in California. But he said the GOP currently lacked a potent overarching line of attack—such as calling Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren far to the left, or continuously pummeling former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice over the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.
He said Republicans would still hammer home the message that Ms. Harris is “on the left side of the political equation by anybody’s reckoning.”
Just minutes after Mr. Biden’s announcement Tuesday, the Trump campaign signaled that it plans to take that approach, comparing her to liberal Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Mr. Trump, fond of nicknames, tweeted out a 30-second video ad that sought to portray her as “Phony Kamala,” noting she joined Mr. Biden on the Democratic ticket after criticizing him during last year’s Democratic debates for his past policies on busing. “Kamala is in this for political convenience, it is clearly her primary motivator,” Katrina Pierson, a senior Trump adviser, said Tuesday.
Alex Conant, a former presidential campaign aide to Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), said the Trump campaign’s messaging was a continuation of their attempts to tie Mr. Biden to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
“There are things in Harris’ record and statements she made when she was running for president that will help advance that narrative,” Mr. Conant said. “That said, she’s not Elizabeth Warren or somebody who is known as part of the left wing part of the party.”
During the primary, Ms. Harris spent months on the defense over her past record as a prosecutor in California, a negative mark for progressives calling for criminal justice reform. Before arriving in the Senate, she often felt squeezed between the liberal base’s demands that she be a “progressive prosecutor” while also securing backing from police officers, people who have worked with her say. During the presidential primary, some progressive activists said she was too cozy with law enforcement.
Some Republican strategists said that her prosecutorial record would make it harder to cast Democrats as anti-law enforcement. Indeed, the Biden campaign sent out a list of her accomplishments that touted her work as the San Francisco district attorney and as California’s attorney general, showing Democrats are leaning into that part of her résumé.
“The law and order label that was somewhat toxic for [Ms. Harris] in the primary will actually make it harder to label her as threatening to the suburbs,” said John Sellek, a GOP strategist in Michigan who was an adviser to the last two Republican attorneys general in the state. “I don’t think Kamala Harris changes anything as far as Biden’s ability to win Michigan,” he said, adding that the race would remain focused on Messrs. Biden and Trump.
Mo Elleithee, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service, said data show Ms. Harris has made inroads with voters since dropping out of the presidential race, during which time she has used her experience as a prosecutor to argue for police reform.
Last October, polling jointly conducted by a Democratic and a Republican firm for Mr. Elleithee’s institute found 43% of likely voters viewed Ms. Harris unfavorably compared wi th 35% who viewed her favorably. In a survey last week, the same pollsters found the numbers had flipped.
Mr. Elleithee, a former Democratic National Committee aide, said he believes Ms. Harris’ popularity shows that the days of judging politicians on a “left-center-right spectrum” are rapidly fading. “She’s someone who can excite the base without scaring off swing-voters,” he said.
Write to Joshua Jamerson at joshua.jamerson@wsj.com and Chad Day at Chad.Day@wsj.com
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