Now that Kamala Harris is the Democratic presidential nominee, renewed attention is being paid to the more than $1.1 million that the California Justice Department paid to settle claims with employees who alleged they were sexually harassed or retaliated against by co-workers while she was the state’s attorney general.
The payments were made from 2011 to 2017 and first came to light in 2019, when Harris was a senator from California and had announced her presidential bid for the 2020 contest. Before she was a senator, she oversaw California’s Justice Department.
Harris, a champion and supporter of the #MeToo movement, said she hadn’t know about the claims until the Los Angeles Times, which broke the story of the payments, brought attention to them.
She dropped out of the 2020 primary and went on to be Joe Biden’s running mate. After Biden dropped out of the presidential race last month, she became the Democratic nominee. If she wins the election in November, she will be the first female president of the United States.
Harris has made women’s reproductive rights one of her key issues in the contest. The overturning of Roe v. Wade proved a motivating factor for many women – and Democrats in general – to vote in the 2022 midterm elections. The party hopes it will do the same this cycle.
When the allegations came to light in 2019 the #MeToo movement was at its peak and there was a heightened awareness of harassment issues facing women in the workplace.
Harris took responsibility for the payments even though she said she hadn’t known about them.
‘As the chief executive of a department of nearly 5,000 employees, the buck stopped with me,’ she said at the time. ‘No one should face harassment or intimidation in the workplace, and victims of sexual misconduct should be listened to, believed and protected.’
The claims included allegations that DOJ employees sexually harassed and retaliated against co-workers. The incidents were said to involve inappropriate touching and cases in which workers felt uncomfortable with the comments and actions of others.
California’s former state Finance Director Mike Genest told the Los Angeles Times it was common practice in large agencies for claims to be investigated and settled by managers below the head of the agency, who may not be told.
Claims against higher-level managers might be brought to the department head’s attention, depending on how he or she wants to be kept informed, he said.
There was, however, fallout for Harris from the revelations.
One of her longtime aides had to resign after The Sacramento Bee inquired about a $400,000 harassment and retaliation settlement that resulted from when he worked for Harris at the California Department of Justice.
Larry Wallace, who served as the director of the Division of Law Enforcement under then-Attorney General Harris, was accused by his former executive assistant of ‘gender harassment’ and other demeaning behavior.
The lawsuit was filed in December 2016, when Harris was still attorney general but had won election to the Senate. It was settled in May 2017 by Xavier Becerra, who was appointed to replace her as attorney general.
Harris said she was never told about the lawsuit. Wallace resigned from Harris’ Senate office after the Sacramento Bee published its story.
When all of these revelations came to light in 2019, Harris, as senator, had positioned herself as a champion of women.
It is a position she continues to this day. Additionally, she has touted her past work as a prosecutor in her campaign speeches, noting it has prepared her for taking on Trump.
‘As many of you know, before I was elected vice president, before I was elected as a United States senator, I was elected attorney general and, before that, elected district attorney — and, before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor,’ she said at her Detroit rally on Wednesday.
‘In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, scammers who broke the rules for personal gain.
‘So, hear me Detroit when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type. I’ve been dealing with them my whole career,’ she noted.
The crowds typically go wild when Harris drops this line.
Even before she became the Democratic nominee, the Biden campaign had tasked Harris with trying to win over Republican women who may not like all of Trump’s policies and past alleged behavior.
A New York jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996. Another New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records when it came to a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign. Daniels said she had an affair with Trump, which he denied.
Harris made a national name for herself in the Senate when she objected to then-President Trump’s appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court on grounds that included allegations of sexual misconduct.
Her tough, pointed questions at Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing went viral and got play on the national news and late night talk shows.
They even got Trump’s attention. He slammed Harris as a ‘horrible’ and ‘nasty’ woman.
Additionally, the #Metoo movement was an issue in the 2020 Democratic race when Harris was running for the nomination that Joe Biden would eventually win. She would later be named his running mate.
Biden, in 2019, had been accused by several women of touching them in a way that made them uncomfortable.
Harris said she believed those women.
Biden would apologize for his actions and vowed to be more conscious in the future.
Biden, at the time, acknowledged the shifting social norms and promised to be ‘more respectful of people’s personal space.’ But he also defended his actions in what he said was comforting people.
‘I’ll be much more mindful. That is my responsibility, my responsibility, and I’ll meet it. But I’ll always believe governing, quite frankly, and life, for that matter, is about connecting, about connecting with people. That won’t change,’ Biden said in a video statement.