In campaign-style appearance at the Rosenthal Wine Tasting room June 19, Kamala Harris touts her foreclosure prevention bill and Obama healthcare act, but is lukewarm on feds’ pot shop crackdowns.
By Michael Aushenker / Special to The Malibu Times
At a June 19 gathering at the Rosenthal Wine Tasting room, California Attorney General Kamala Harris spoke in favor of universal healthcare, medicinal marijuana and laws to prevent foreclosures. Harris also praised President Barack Obama, whose re-election campaign she will co-chair.
About 100 people attended the June 19 gathering of the Pacific Palisades Democratic Club (PPDC) to hear Harris speak. Harris’ election as California attorney general remains unprecedented on many levels. On Jan. 3, 2011, the Oakland native, of mixed heritage, simultaneously became the first female attorney general in California, the first person of African-American and of Asian-American heritage to assume the post in California, and the first Indian-American to become attorney general in the United States.
As the state’s top legal eagle, Harris said she recognizes the power to convene and bring disparate people together. She talked about pushing for the California Homeowner Bill of Rights, a package of legislative bills she has sponsored that is making its way through the state capitol after months of wrangling. The bills are intended to help borrowers who are behind on their mortgage payments avoid foreclosures.
“We were hardest hit in California,” Harris said of the foreclosures that followed the 2007-2009 economic recession. Last year, 38 of the 100 most foreclosure-prone zip codes in the country were in California. Harris’ bills have not been well-received by the banking industry, which she said wants the public to buy into “false choices” about regulation.
“It’s about not accepting the false rules that we’re regulating the banks,” Harris said.
Harris then turned to one of the key issues of President Barack Obama’s first term, universal health care.
“Access to affordable health care is fundamental,” Harris said. She related a story about her dental hygienist, who became pregnant with her unemployed ex-boyfriend. According to Harris, the woman was denied a healthcare upgrade by her insurance company on the basis that she had a “pre-existing condition.”
“Not until her seventh month did she receive her first sonogram,” Harris said.
The hygienist finally found free care at a San Francisco facility. Harris chided the insurance companies for allowing such situations to happen, and suggested healthcare was a human rights issue.
“This is not about ideology,” Harris said. “This is about real people.”
When attorney generals in other states, including Virginia and Florida, challenged the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, Harris touted her action of pushing back in an amicus brief. “It’s this president, Barack Obama, who was able to accomplish what no president before him has: reform our healthcare system,” she said.
Harris, the former district attorney of San Francisco, has known Obama since even before he was a U.S. senator from Illinois. She co-chaired his California campaign in 2008. When Harris ran for the state attorney general seat, Obama endorsed her. Harris has been named a national co-chair, a largely ceremonial position, for Obama’s upcoming re-election in the fall, about which she said she feels “very confident.”
But the attorney general’s close relationship with the president has recently proven awkward on another issue: medical marijuana. Earlier this month, the U.S. Attorney General’s Office in Los Angeles filed property forfeiture lawsuits in a bid to shut down dozens of medical marijuana dispensaries across the Southland. Many did close, including both of the ones in Malibu.
Toeing a delicate line, Harris expressed mixed feelings about recent crackdowns on dispensaries, such as the two shuttered Malibu locations.
“I am absolutely in support of medical marijuana,” Harris said. “I’ve personally known people who have been sick and have been helped by it.”
With law enforcement devoted to stopping transnational gangs, Harris said she laments wasting limited resources on busting dispensaries. However, “there was a lot of confusion and chaos at one point in Los Angeles. You had more dispensaries than Starbucks.”
Harris suggested that it was a matter of proper regulation of medical marijuana dispensaries and ensuring public health.
“You don’t want bad product sold to sick people,” Harris said.
She promised protections of legitimate dispensaries are forthcoming via legislation Sen. Mark Leno is drafting, “so keep your eyes open this summer.”
PPDC board member Robyn Sidoti, whose sister has known Harris since college, helped make the attorney general’s appearance possible.
“We really believe she is one of the rising stars of the Democratic Party,” said Melissa Grant, president of PPDC. The local Democratic club will soon lease a Santa Monica storefront to serve as its Obama re-election campaign headquarters. In 2008, Malibu Democratic Club leased out space from PPDC’s Wilshire Blvd. storefront, where the chapters’ combined resources during Obama’s first presidential campaign.