Harris’ combative debate style will get its biggest test against Trump

Few of the people gathered in the San Francisco church knew quite what to expect from Kamala Harris.

It was 2003, and the two men she faced in her first political campaign were well-known brawlers locked in a rematch to become the city’s district attorney – one of whom was her former boss.

Harris was a little-known government lawyer who had landed in the local gossip pages for dating Willie Brown, one of the state’s most powerful politicians. The attack on her was obvious: political patronage, packaged with a whiff of sexual intrigue.

After an audience member asked about her ties to Brown, she rose from her seat at the front of the sanctuary as her two opponents, Bill Fazio and Terence Hallinan, looked on.

Harris walked behind Fazio, asking if the audience remembered how Hallinan had attacked him for being caught in a massage parlor in a 1998 raid. She walked behind Hallinan, asking if the audience remembered how Fazio had attacked him for being a “deadbeat dad” who failed to pay child support.

As faint gasps echoed across the room, Harris wrapped her punch in a gauzy pledge. Unlike her opponents, she promised that she would run a campaign based on the issues, not on negative attacks.

The crowd jumped to its feet in a standing ovation, recounted Jim Stearns, a political consultant who had helped Harris in the race.

For Stearns, the moment has come to embody what he described more than two decades later as a hallmark of Harris’ political style: Prepare, and then punch. Hard.

“She certainly understands there’s only one way to deal with someone who is attacking you, which is to hit them back harder than they’re hitting you,” Stearns said. “She’s a combination of very ferocious and very disciplined at the same time.”

That carefully combative approach will face its biggest test Tuesday, when Harris confronts Donald Trump on the debate stage. Much of her performance will depend on whether she can successfully adapt to an opponent best known for his unpredictability. During the 2020 primary debates, Harris became notably rattled after being attacked by then-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who was trailing in the polls, over her record as a prosecutor – a line of questioning for which she had prepared.

Harris has said that she expects Trump to lie about his record – and hers – and to deploy deeply personal attacks.

Some of her aides worry that an agreement between both sides to mute the microphones when a candidate is not speaking will hamper her ability to land an effective punch. But allies do not expect her to be shaken by the format or any wild accusations from Trump. Debating is one of her biggest strengths, a skill that has fueled her political ascent even amid notable public stumbles in interviews and shifting policy positions.

“She is very calm,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, who spent four years sitting next to Harris on the Senate Judiciary Committee and watching as she questioned Trump administration officials. “I don’t think that Trump will be able to intimidate her or bully her, which is his usual tactics.”

‘It’s a blood sport’

Harris forged her political rise through rhetorical combat, capturing attention with lacerating exchanges on debate stages and in congressional hearings. Her attacks are strategic and direct, with a controlled delivery – sometimes even a smile – and an instinctual sense for a news-making moment.

In 2010, she won a tough race for California attorney general after twisting a pivotal moment to her advantage in the contest’s only debate. Her piercing questioning of Trump administration appointees and officials from her perch on the Senate Judiciary Committee built her national profile. And a brutal exchange with President Joe Biden during the 2020 primary over race and his warm remembrances of segregationist senators transformed her image into one of a presidential contender.

Many of those moments were carefully planned, another feature of how Harris debates. She is known to pore over policy briefs, devote days preparing for debates and workshop attack lines far in advance.

Given her more cautious governing style and personal demeanor, Harris’ more aggressive political instincts can seem surprising, some current and former aides said.

“She is somebody who really is a warm, caring human who will call you and ask how your kids are doing by name,” said Brian Brokaw, who ran her campaign for attorney general. “At the same time, she also has the capacity to be ice-cold and do what it takes to win.”

Harris said her approach was developed during her years in politics in San Francisco, a densely packed peninsula stacked with ambitious would-be politicians and dominated by a single political party. It is a place where politics can feel like a cage match with an ocean view.

“I always start my campaigns early, and I run hard,” Harris told the New York Times in 2015. “Maybe it comes from the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco politics, where it’s not even a contact sport – it’s a blood sport. This is how I am as a candidate. This is how I run campaigns.”

Even before Harris ran for office, she was known among her colleagues in San Francisco for her assertive manner in the courtroom as a local prosecutor.

State Sen. Scott Wiener recalled working with Harris in the city attorney’s office in the early 2000s. During his first solo jury trial, he stopped into Harris’ office to ask how to handle a judge who was hazing him. She walked him through her strategy.

At the end of the conversation, she looked Wiener in the eye and offered a final piece of advice. “Don’t let her bully you,” she told him. “Stand your ground.”

‘That really takes the breath away’

Harris quickly adopted her courtroom maxim to her emerging political career. The church has no video or audio of the 2003 event where she leveled the personal attacks in her first political campaign. Fazio said he does not remember the interaction, and Hallinan died in January 2020. Both men denied the personal allegations that Harris raised that day.

But Stearns vividly recalls the moment, in part because he spent time sketching out how she should respond to possible questions about her relationship with Brown before the event.

Harris was particularly interested in understanding the implications of various tactics and how each man was likely to respond to certain lines, he said.

“We ‘war-gamed’ it out,” he recalled. “I realized that Kamala was not at all nervous about taking on these guys, but she was very careful.”

In an interview, Fazio said Harris skillfully fought her way through the entire contest, including a runoff election against Hallinan, the incumbent district attorney who had hired Harris five years earlier to lead his career-criminal unit.

When in a debate Fazio correctly accused her of overstating the number of serious felony cases she had tried in campaign literature, she quickly – and effectively – pivoted, he said.

“Leadership is working with different communities as a career prosecutor. I’ve done that, which is why I – not you – have every law enforcement organization’s endorsement,” she said in that debate.

After the contest narrowed to the runoff, Hallinan questioned whether she could be trusted to prosecute city corruption because of her relationship with Brown.

“He has an interest in having a friend in the district’s attorney office,” he said in the final debate of the election.

Harris fired back with her own promise to take on any potential bad actor, be they near or far.

“I will set up a public integrity desk,” she said, the pace of her speech accelerating, “that will be dedicated to dealing with investigating and prosecuting cases involving corruption by any public official – be it Terence Hallinan or anyone else.”

Hallinan sputtered slightly. “Best defense is a good offense, but that really takes the breath away for me,” he responded.

Eight days later, she defeated him by a double-digit margin. When she ran for re-election in 2007, after facing a steady drumbeat of criticism for declining to seek the death penalty for a man who had killed a police officer, she was unopposed.

Several years after their race, Harris called Fazio to express her condolences after his wife died in American Samoa when she choked on a piece of gum.

Her mother had recently died, Harris told him, and the two former opponents bonded over their grieving, Fazio recounted.

“I never forgot that,” said Fazio, who is now a supporter of her presidential bid. He added, “As history goes, I’m glad she won, because I like where she is right now.”

‘A clear difference between the candidates’

When it comes to politics, Harris is fond of moving with a boldness that can seem to contradict the more granular policymaking she tends to favor.

When Sen. Barbara Boxer declared that she would be retiring in 2015, opening up a Senate seat in California for the first time in nearly a quarter-century, many in the state anticipated a challenging primary contest packed with a backlog of generational talent.

Harris entered the field within days of Boxer’s announcement.

She then proceeded to dispatch her rivals with striking force, rolling out a rapid-fire release of high-profile national and local endorsements.

One by one, possible contenders – from Antonio Villaraigosa, the former Los Angeles mayor; to Tom Steyer, a billionaire environmental activist; to Gavin Newsom, then the lieutenant governor – made clear that they had no intention of jumping into the race.

“That Senate race was won in April 2015 when everyone who was looking at it said, ‘Never mind, we’re not going to run,’ ” Brokaw said. “Every day for two months, we were clearing the field whether or not people thought we could.”

When Harris reached the only debate in the race nearly 18 months later, she could score her most memorable moment by saying almost nothing.

Her opponent, Rep. Loretta Sanchez, ended her closing statement with a quick dance move. Sanchez “dabbed,” adopting an idea proposed by her makeup artist’s young daughter and doing a dance popularized by football players, rappers and teenagers.

When the moderator turned back to Harris, she paused. She sucked on her lips as her eyes widened.

Then she turned to the camera and the audience with a broad smile.

“So,” she said, with a dismissive laugh, “there’s a clear difference between the candidates in this race.”

About a month later, Trump won the White House. That same night, Harris became the newest senator elected from California.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.