Vice President Kamala Harris in 2019 supported a suite of left-wing causes such as cuts to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and taxpayer-funded transition surgeries.
The stances were outlined in a questionnaire from the American Civil Liberties Union but received little media attention until it resurfaced this week in a report by CNN.
Ms. Harris was running for president in the Democratic primary at the time. Beyond the questionnaire, the ACLU had volunteers question 2020 candidates about various topics, including whether they support adding a third gender to federal identification cards.
“Sure,” Ms. Harris said at the time.
The responses will reverberate as Ms. Harris tries to tack to the center to win the November election against former President Donald Trump.
Mr. Trump insists that Ms. Harris is a “radical” who will pivot back to liberal stances if she manages to win over centrist voters in swing states and take the White House.
Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, recently said he thinks Ms. Harris is being “pragmatic” and espousing centrist views to try and win the election.
In 2019, she signaled support for decriminalization of all drug possession, according to the ACLU questionnaire.
Mr. Trump recently backed decriminalizing marijuana for recreational use, downgrading the federal scheduling of the drug and passing federal banking laws to accommodate the legal marijuana trade in various states.
More notably, the questionnaire includes Ms. Harris’ stark positions on immigration and the detention of unlawful migrants.
“Our immigrant detention system is out of control, and I believe we must end the unfair incarceration of thousands of individuals, families and children,” Ms. Harris wrote at the time. “I was one of the first senators after President Trump was elected to advocate for a decrease in funding to ICE.”
She also called for reining in ICE detainers on immigrants without documentation who encounter state and local law enforcement.
By contrast, Mr. Trump has pushed for border walls and pledged a massive deportation program if he wins in November.
On transgender issues, Ms. Harris said she would support transition surgeries for individuals in prisons.
“It is important that transgender individuals who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need, which includes access to treatment associated with gender transition,” Ms. Harris wrote. “That’s why, as Attorney General, I pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates.”
Mr. Trump, by contrast, frequently criticizes Ms. Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, for his policy support for transgender issues.
As she pursues the White House this year, Ms. Harris said she moderated her views while working beside President Biden but she insisted her “values have not changed.”
The Harris campaign on Tuesday distanced Ms. Harris from her positions in the questionnaire.
“That questionnaire is not what she is proposing or running on,” said Harris communications director Michael Tyler. “You want to talk about immigration or border security, she has been very clear about what she — how she — has governed and intends to govern if she is president of the United States.”
He pointed to Ms. Harris’ support this year for a bipartisan immigration overhaul and border-security package “that Donald Trump blew up because he thought it would benefit him politically.”
“If it gets on her desk, she will sign it into law,” Mr. Tyler told Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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