Kamala Harris’ legislative record is full of diversity initiatives, climate bills, social justice salvos and other left-wing priorities that eventually secured her the title of Congress’ “most liberal” senator of 2019.
GovTrack, a website that tracks legislation and votes in Congress, deleted the report card that gave Harris that ranking, however. Harris, who Californians first elected to the Senate in 2016, sponsored a slate of legislation that favored far-left projects during her four years in the Senate. (RELATED: Kamala Harris’ Left-Wing Voting Record Was Only Second To Bernie Sanders In Her Final Senate Years)
A bill Harris introduced early in her congressional term was the Environmental Justice Right to Know Act of 2018. The bill addressed “pesticide and cosmetics regulation with respect to environmental justice concerns.” It specifically established Spanish translation requirements for pesticide labels.
More recently, Harris sponsored the Climate Equity Act of 2020, a bill that established a “Climate and Environmental Equity Office” and an “Office of Climate and Environmental Justice Accountability.”
Introduced the “Climate Equity Act of 2020” which establishes an office at CBO with the purpose of investigating racial climate impact of every single bill pic.twitter.com/RGKneoT9Wn
— Amalia C. Halikias (@AmaliaHalikias) July 24, 2024
Another bill she introduced in 2018 was the “Ensuring Diverse Leadership Act,” an affirmative action-style bill mandating the Federal Reserve to interview “at least one individual reflective of gender diversity and one reflective of racial or ethnic diversity.”
Introduced the “Ensuring Diverse Leadership Act,” which is a generic form of affirmative action in hiring for the Federal Reserve pic.twitter.com/PQmpF3aO9E
— Amalia C. Halikias (@AmaliaHalikias) July 24, 2024
GovTrack stopped issuing single-year report cards for lawmakers sometime between 2019 and 2021, instead opting to rank them on congressional sessions, the website’s founder Joshua Tauberer said in a statement. Tauberer said the single-year report cards were “retracted,” but Harris’ 2019 report card appeared to remain live on their website until right around the time she became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
Her 2020 card, which ranks her as the “most politically left” Democratic senator, is still available.
“I was focused on more impactful aspects of our work several years ago and not on a page that no one was looking at,” Tauberer told the Daily Caller, explaining why the report card stayed on GovTrack for so long. “When I saw earlier this week that attention was being directed to a part of our site that I had warned in 2020 was not reliable, we took the single-calendar-year statistics off the site, but we retained other nearly identical statistics.”
Literally as far left as it is possible to go!
They’re trying so hard to erase the Internet lmao.
https://t.co/jqYbA4GtIZ— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2024
In his statement, Tauberer also claimed he believed the original methodology was flawed. “I realized that the limited data available in a single year was not sufficient to create a reliable portrait of the activity of legislators, particularly given the ebbs and flows of the legislative calendar, and therefore it did not serve as a useful tool to our users and the American public.”
Tauberer also noted, however, that the distinction between the now-deleted single year report card and the still active multi-year versions are subtle.
“The difference, as I noted at the top, is whether we say Harris was the leftmost senator in 2019 or the leftmost Democrat in 2019-2020. It is the smallest of hills to die on.”
Harris now ranks as the fourth-most liberal senator on GovTrack’s updated report card, which compares her 2015-2020 legislative record to other senators’, according to Tauberer. The only lawmakers to her left on the updated report card are Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.
Democratic presidential hopefuls California Senator Kamala Harris (L) and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders speak as they arrive onstage for the fourth Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign season co-hosted by The New York Times and CNN at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio on October 15, 2019.
Harris’ policy focus on personal identity led to other bills, like the Census Equality Act, a bill she introduced in 2018 mandating the Census Bureau to collect information on Americans’ “sexual orientation and gender identity.”
In May of 2020, she introduced the COVID–19 Racial and Ethnic Disparities Task Force Act of 2020 that would “provide reports and recommendations related to racial and ethnic disparities in the COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus disease 2019) response to Congress and relevant federal agencies.”
Two months later in July, she introduced the COVID–19 Bias and Anti-Racism Training Act of 2020, a bill that required the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to “award grants to health care providers, public health departments, tribal organizations, schools for social workers and health professionals, and other nonprofit entities for bias and anti-racism training to reduce disparities in COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus disease 2019) response efforts.”
Harris also introduced the 2018 Mental Health Professionals Workforce Shortage Loan Repayment Act, which required the Health Resources and Services Administration to “establish a loan repayment program for mental health professionals who work in designated workforce shortage areas.”
GovTrack claims they “never side for or against any policy, politician, or organization” and that they don’t accept grants from partisan operations.
Tauberer does have a history of working for and with left-wing politicians and organizations, though.
He worked for DemandProgress.Org, an advocacy group co-founded by liberal politician David Segal, according to their website. He also worked under Democratic Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser as a member of her Open Government Advisory Group and contracted for the Obama-era Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) helping to build HealthData.gov, according to his LinkedIn.
Harris‘ left-wing initiatives started long before the people of California chose her as their senator. (RELATED: Harris Praised ‘Defund The Police’ Movement Right Before Joining The 2020 Biden Ticket)
Harris, as District Attorney (DA) for San Francisco, expunged drug offenses from six illegal immigrants in 2009 as part of the state’s “Back On Track” job training program for nonviolent criminals, according to SFGate.
VENICE, CA – NOVEMBER 03: San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris attends the “Choose Or Lose Your Toys” event at the Obsolete Gallery on November 3, 2009 in Venice, California. Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Obsolete
The previous year, prosecutors tightened guidelines for the program after learning one of the participants, Alexander Izaguirre, was an illegal immigrant who allegedly robbed and assaulted a woman, SFGate reported.
“This is an innovative program that has actually been proven to work, except with this one issue, which we corrected when we learned about it,” Harris said at the time. “Once Izaguirre happened, bright lights flashed, it was crystal clear when that happened, and we fixed it.”
The program allowed six illegal immigrants to graduate, despite the fact that their illegal status would not allow them to hold jobs after the fact, according to SFGate.
“A few people got in who should not have,” Harris said at the time. “We graduated them out and we reformed the criteria.”
Current Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Debra Saunders criticized Harris in 2008 for not prosecuting 21-year-old immigrant Edwin Ramos. He had racked up a variety of charges under his belt, like assault and attempted robbery of a pregnant woman. Ramos, who Saunders said was eligible to be deported after the crimes, slipped between the cracks in the sanctuary city of San Francisco before a jury convicted him of murdering Tony Bologna and his two sons in San Francisco.
Harris continued her radical legislative streak, introducing bills like the Fair Chance at Housing Act of 2019, a bill that would force public housing agencies (PHAs) to disregard the criminal background of applicants if they were deemed to be nonviolent.
Overall, Harris’ voting and political record skew highly liberal, though Tauberer cautioned that the record doesn’t tell the whole story.
“Obviously our analysis is at odds with what other serious analysis of Harris’s career has found, and I think the short answer is that both things can be true: She can both be sponsoring/co-sponsoring left-leaning legislation, something with typically little risk, while also being pragmatic when push comes to shove on risky and impactful decisions …” Tauberer said in an email.
Harris’ campaign denied that she directly donated to a Minnesota bail fund that put multiple alleged violent criminals back on the street after former President Donald Trump scrutinized her for promoting it, Washington Free Beacon (WFB) reported.
The Harris team appears to still be involved in promoting the Minnesota Freedom Fund. An ActBlue fundraising page featuring an image of Harris with the title “Kamala Harris for the People” is still active.
Harris tweeted a link to the fund in 2020.
If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota. https://t.co/t8LXowKIbw
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) June 1, 2020
While Harris’ tweet claimed the fund was “to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota” during the George Floyd riots, only a small portion of the $41 million raised, $210,000, was used for that purpose, according to the WFB.
Instead, much of the fund was used to bail out violent criminals like Christopher Boswell. The Minnesota Freedom Fund paid $350,000 to bail out Boswell, a twice convicted rapist who was charged with kidnapping, assault and sexual assault in two separate cases, according to Fox 9.
Harris, who is running for president with no primary voter approval after Biden stepped down, still trails Trump in the polls nationally despite seeing improved numbers compared to the president’s, according to the RealClearPolitics (RCP) polling average. Trump also holds leads in a majority of the significant battleground states, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia.
Republicans and Trump allies have hammered Harris on her Biden administration role overseeing the root causes of migrant overflow at the U.S. southern border. Members of the media colloquially dubbed her position as Biden’s “border czar,” a term that they have worked fervently to distance her from.
Since Biden and Harris took office, there have been more than 7.8 million encounters at the Southern Border as of May, according to the Homeland Security Committee Republicans.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated with the correct amount the Minnesota Freedom Fund reportedly paid to bail out Boswell.
