2024 Election: Where Kamala Harris stands on California issues

SAN FRANCISCO - Kamala Harris is no stranger to California. Her career began as a prosecutor for Alameda County. The Oakland-born Harris then moved on to San Francisco where she was elected district attorney before serving as California’s attorney general. Her historic rise then sent her to Washington, D.C. to represent the state in the U.S. Senate before becoming America’s first woman vice president. 

Her truncated run for the White House began over the summer, weeks after Joe Biden’s surprising July 21 announcement that he will drop out of the presidential election. 

During the Sept. 10 debate against Donald Trump, when the former president repeatedly attacked Harris on policies tying her to the president, Harris said point-blank that she is not Joe Biden.

So where does she stand on the issues that are important to Californians? 

Housing

Harris has been an outspoken advocate for affordable housing. As president, she said she plans to make more American homeowners by providing up to $25,000 to first-time homebuyers to help them with the down payment, with more financial support for first-generation homeowners. 

The vice president has laid out a plan to build three million affordable rental units and homes during her first term if elected president. 

She promised to cut the red tape that slows down housing construction and said she would penalize entities that "hoard available homes to drive up prices for local homebuyers."  

Her campaign said she would also help keep rents within reach for Americans by signing legislation to ban new forms of price-fixing by corporate landlords. 

Abortion

Harris has made the issue of reproductive rights a central theme of her campaign. She said she and her running mate Tim Walz believe that women have the right to make decisions about their own bodies, and that the government should not tell them what to do. 

Harris said that as vice president she has worked to defend reproductive freedom and fought to  safeguard the privacy of both patients and providers.   

"As President, she will never allow a national abortion ban to become law. And when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom nationwide, she will sign it," her campaign said.

Gun control and crime

Harris said that as a prosecutor she targeted violent crime by working to get illegal guns off the streets. 

Her campaign said as president, she will ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines, require universal background checks, and support red flag laws in an effort to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. 

She also plans to invest in proven gun violence prevention programs that have helped reduce violent crime in the U.S.

Her campaign promised to invest in funding law enforcement and bolster programs to hire, train, and support officers.   

Taxes 

Harris has run a campaign that emphasizes the idea of building up the middle class, giving working families "a break." 

To that end, the vice president’s campaign said she would seek to expand the Child Tax Credit to provide a $6,000 tax cut to families with newborn children. 

She said she would also roll back Trump-era tax cuts and enact laws to ensure "no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay more in taxes," the Harris-Walz Campaign said.

As president, Harris said she would push for a 28% tax rate on long-term capital gains for those earning a million dollars a year or more.

Economy

As vice president, Harris has worked to help pass major economic legislation including the bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the American Rescue Plan, policies to help rebuild the post-COVID-19 pandemic economy and create jobs in the manufacturing and construction sectors. 

Her campaign said as president she would continue to progress the Biden-Harris Administration's efforts to strengthen and build American industries and workers, by supporting U.S. leadership in cutting edge sectors including semiconductors, artificial intelligence and clean energy. "Vice President Harris will not tolerate unfair trade practices from China or any competitor that undermines American workers," her campaign said.

She’s also an advocate of unions, and her campaign said that she will sign landmark pro-union legislation. 

On minimum wage, Harris said that she would fight to raise it, while ending the so-called federal "subminimum wage" of $2.13 for tipped workers as well as a subminimum wage for disabled workers. Harris also said she would help establish paid family and medical leave and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.      

Social Security

Harris has promised to protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare for the long-term, though her campaign did not give details and specifics on a plan. It only said it would do so "by making millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share in taxes."  

Healthcare

The vice president has promised to make affordable healthcare a right in America. She said she would strengthen the Affordable Care Act and make permanent tax credit enhancements enacted under the Biden-Harris Administration, a policy that has lowered premiums by about $800 a year for millions, according to the Harris-Walz campaign.  

The campaign also said she would build on the administration’s successes in bringing down the cost of life-saving prescription drugs, including extending for all Americans the $35 cap on insulin for Medicare beneficiaries and the $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket spending for seniors.

Harris also promised to continue to work with states to cancel medical debt for Americans. 

Immigration

The Harris-Walz campaign said it believed in tough, smart solutions to secure the border and reform what it called "our broken immigration system,"

As vice president, she supported the bipartisan border security bill, often described by advocates as being the strongest reform in decades. She accused her opponent of lobbying GOP lawmakers to kill the legislation for his political gain.

As President, she promised to bring back the bill and sign it into law. 

Harris also said that the Biden-Harris Administration has implemented policies that have brought border crossings to the lowest level in four years and seized record amounts of fentanyl, while securing funding for a significant increase in border agents. 

In addition to strong border security as part of comprehensive immigration reform, the vice president said she would also support policies for an earned pathway to U.S. citizenship.

Energy costs and climate

Harris’s campaign said that as vice president, she cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which helped lower household energy costs, create clean energy jobs while ensuring America’s energy security and independence and generate record energy production. 

The campaign said that she would continue to advance this work to find solutions to the climate crisis seeking diverse sources of energy while reducing U.S. reliance on foreign oil. 

The vice president has also vowed to protect public lands, increase resilience to climate disasters, lower household energy costs and hold polluters accountable to secure clean air and water.

Foreign policy: Israel-Gaza War / Russia Ukraine War

The vice president has been steadfast in her support for Ukraine. During her acceptance speech at Democratic National Convention on August 22, Harris pledged to continue to stand with NATO allies and continue military support for Ukraine in the more than two-and-a-half year war with Russia.

Harris has expressed her support for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has called for a ceasefire of the war in Gaza. During her speech at the DNC, she called for Israeli hostages to be released and for Israel to be secure. She also said it’s time to end the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza, so they can "realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination."

Fentanyl and opioid crisis

Her campaign said that under the Biden-Harris Administration, the Food and Drug Administration made the opioid reversal medicine naloxone (brand name Narcan) available over the counter. 

Harris said that as president, she would continue to implement policies to end the crisis including signing a bipartisan "Stop Fentanyl at the Border Act" that would fund technology to detect and intercept illicit drugs at the border.