Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., began to hit the skids in her presidential bid after a biting attack by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, at the Democratic primary debate in July, the New York Times reported.
In the Detroit, Mich., debate, Harris didn’t respond sharply to an attack on her prosecutorial record from Gabbard — “even after Harris had been prepped for the topic,” the Times reporting team wrote.
"There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana," Gabbard said at the debate, Fox News noted.
Gabbard also laid into Harris for maintaining a cash bail system that disproportionately hurt poor people, accusing Harris of having kept prisoners beyond their sentence to use them as “cheap labor,” and for blocking evidence that would have “freed an innocent man from death row."
"The bottom line is, Senator Harris, when you were in a position to make a difference and impact in these people's lives, you did not," Gabbard declared.
On a conference call after the debate, several of Harris’s donors were “alarmed and urged the campaign to strike back” at Gabbard more aggressively, the Times reported, citing two unnamed sources.
And her advisers were frustrated at Harris’ perceived inability to “carry a message beyond the initial script,” the Times reported.
Though Harris tried to respond at the debate earlier this month, accusing Gabbard of spending “the course of this campaign criticizing the Democratic Party,” Gabbard hit back.
“What Senator Harris is doing, is, unfortunately, continuing to traffic in lies and smears and innuendos because she cannot challenge the substance of the argument that I’m making,” she said.
According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls for the nomination, Harris was in second place in early July, commanding an average of 15% of primary voters. Now, the average shows her with just under 4%.
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