In a year when Democrats swept statewide offices, Vice President Kamala Harris narrowly won her 2011 campaign for California attorney general. The moderate prosecutor who challenged her is now speaking out forcefully against her running for president.
“I think she is totally unqualified and her election is the worst thing that could happen to our country in my lifetime,” Steven Cooley, 77, told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview on Wednesday.
“She has extreme views that are not good for this country,” he said. “On immigration, on the economy, on law and order, crime and punishment, I could go on. I think she’s wrong on almost everything, and dangerously wrong.”
During his campaign, Cooley, then the Los Angeles district attorney, ran a TV ad strongly criticizing his San Francisco counterpart for her controversial handling of the 2004 shooting death of San Francisco police officer Isaac Espinoza.
The ad showed the officer’s mother crying and angry over Harris’ decision not to seek the death penalty against gang member David Hill, who shot the officer with an AK-47 during a traffic stop.
Steven Cooley, 77, (pictured) who challenged Kamala Harris for California attorney general in 2011, spoke out about what he thinks of her 2024 presidential bid
During their election to district attorney, Cooley revealed that Harris was “not liked by a lot of people who knew her.” (Photo: Harris boards Air Force Two on August 7)
Sticking to her campaign promise, the prosecutor announced her decision on camera just three days after the murder, without consulting or informing the victim’s family beforehand.
The late Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein received a standing ovation from law enforcement when she criticized the decision at the funeral. Cooley said that may also help explain why every law enforcement agency in the state supported him when he ran for attorney general six years later.
Cooley said “law enforcement specifically didn’t like her” during their election because she decided not to seek the death penalty for the gang member who shot and killed San Francisco police officer Isaac Espinoza (pictured).
“The police hated her because she refused to seek the death penalty for the machine gun murder of a police officer,” Cooley said.
“That was a real turn-off for the police, especially since it was common knowledge that they had made the announcement before Espinoza was buried.”
But it wasn’t just law enforcement that backed him, he stressed. Nearly every newspaper in the state backed him.
Cooley said he even got the vote of Jerry Brown, the Democratic candidate for governor, that year.
“Governor Brown, who ran for governor that year, told me he was going to vote for me,” Cooley told DailyMail.com. “I said, ‘What, why?’ and he said, ‘I don’t like Kamala Harris.’ I said, ‘OK, thanks Jerry.’”
“It’s a little strange, but also nicely said,” he continued. “She was not liked by a lot of people who knew her.”
Cooley (pictured) said nearly every newspaper in the state supported him and that he even got the votes of Jerry Brown, the Democratic candidate for governor that year.
Cooley actually had a lead on election night, but had to concede it three weeks later after Harris gained a lead thanks to provisional and mail-in votes. (Photo: Harris poses for a portrait in San Francisco on June 18, 2004)
Brown did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the deep blue state that year, most Democrats sailed to victory by 10 to 20 percentage points. Cooley led on election night but conceded three weeks later after provisional and mail-in ballots gave Harris an edge.
“She won all 58 districts on provisional votes, even in conservative districts where I won by a wide margin,” he said.
Cooley would watch in horror years later as Attorney General Harris championed Proposition 47, a bill that implemented sweeping sentencing reforms, reducing a list of crimes including shoplifting, property theft and drug possession to misdemeanors in an effort to address overcrowding in the state’s prisons.
In November, a referendum was held to overturn the 2014 law, which critics from both sides say contributed to lawlessness.
“Kamala Harris was one of the main reasons it passed overwhelmingly,” Cooley said. “She deliberately and wrongly titled Prop 47 the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act, when it had nothing to do with schools or neighborhoods or safety.
“Kamala Harris is so incompetent and weak on the issues that Trump doesn’t need to make ad hominem arguments,” Cooley said. (Photo: Donald Trump at a campaign rally on July 31)
Cooley said Trump should focus on Harris’ “screwball” vice presidential nominee Tim Walz. (Pictured: Walz and Harris hold hands at a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Aug. 7)
“The public was misled into voting for something that ultimately proved detrimental to public safety. And now the public is trying to fix it.”
“The real authors (of Proposition 47) were George Soros supporters,” he added of the progressive megadonor who has pushed soft reforms to the criminal justice system.
“They’re the ones who wrote it. Kamala Harris is very close to Soros, it turns out, and she went along with the program. And they deceived the public.”
Cooley is now giving unsolicited advice to Donald Trump in his campaign to return to the White House.
“Kamala Harris is so incompetent and weak at this point that Trump doesn’t need to engage in an ad hominem argument,” Cooley said.
“The personal attacks, nobody’s interested in that. And if we’re talking about the 2020 election, that’s old news. Just focus on her extraordinarily radical views. And I would say he should also focus on her choice for vice president now, because he looks like an idiot too.”
