It was the week before Labor Day in 2003 when Rebecca Prozan got a call from a tenacious 38-year-old lawyer making her first run for elected office. The lawyer had a challenge: She wanted Ms. Prozan to manage the final stretch of her campaign to defeat the sitting San Francisco district attorney. She was unknown to the public, polling in single digits. And she had just 70 days to turn it around.
“If you get me to the runoff, I can win,” Kamala Harris told her, Ms. Prozan recalled.
Ms. Prozan, fresh out of law school and planning to start a job at a firm, was doubtful about Ms. Harris’s chances. But she decided to take the risk on the scrappy prosecutor. And she watched in awe as Ms. Harris managed to persuade tens of thousands of San Franciscans to take the same risk.
Ms. Harris kept her promise and delivered a stinging upset to the incumbent, becoming the first Black district attorney in California’s history.
Two decades later, as Ms. Harris concludes another barrier-breaking run, Ms. Prozan and other aides who worked on the vice president’s first campaign say they see the same underdog grit and discipline she displayed in her inaugural race.
“She is tireless. She’s relentless,” Ms. Prozan said. “She’s a good closer.”
The parallels between Ms. Harris’s first campaign and her current one are striking, and provide insight into how she has come within touching distance of the presidency. She has employed much of the same playbook she used in her race for district attorney: building a team at a rapid pace. Exceeding fund-raising targets. Trying to appeal to a broad coalition. Energetically reaching out to voters. And, on a personal level, tapping into guidance from her mother, who died in 2009.
“She’s been here before,” said Andrea Dew Steele, who was an aide on Ms. Harris’s first campaign. “People are always underestimating her and her ability to do the hard work, and she always rises to the occasion.”
“For starters,” Ms. Dew Steele added, “she is not afraid of going against tough men.”
As was the case this year when Ms. Harris catapulted to the top of the Democratic ticket, she emerged from the shadows in the 2003 race, a contest initially between two men who had run against each other before, and whom many voters had tired of. One of them was her former boss, Terence Hallinan, a Democrat and onetime boxer nicknamed Kayo who was also known as political brawler.
As she is doing now, she pitched herself as a fresh face in the next generation of leadership. One of her most memorable campaign fliers showed the faces of all the white men who had held the office since the early 1900s with the line “It’s time for a change.” On the other side was a bright photo of her.
Ms. Harris courted powerful surrogates, and they quickly came to her aid. She invited Mark Buell, an influential Democratic donor in San Francisco, to a lunch at Balboa Cafe, a restaurant owned by Gavin Newsom, now California’s governor. Mr. Buell had taken the meeting as a courtesy, but over hamburgers, she persuaded him. He left convinced she could win.
“I was totally turned around from just being a donor to saying, ‘I could support this woman,’” said Mr. Buell, who would go on to serve as her finance chair.
In her first year, he recalled gathering her aides around a table and telling them that to make headlines, they needed to raise $100,000, back then a high mark for a district attorney’s race and a long shot for a candidate whom nobody knew.
But Mr. Buell said that “it wasn’t hard to do because people listen to her when she’d give a speech, and she had that enthusiasm, and she could talk about what the issues were, and it translated to the donors, and that ultimately translated to the voters.”
At the same time, Ms. Harris was determined to connect with voters and get in front of as many of them as possible. She did so while running what Ms. Prozan called a “ragtag” operation out of a campaign headquarters that she intentionally put on a run-down side of town, in the Bayview neighborhood, which Ms. Harris described in her 2019 memoir as “tragically invisible to the world beyond it.”
Her first piece of campaign literature, created by Ms. Dew Steele, was a one-page black-and-white biography with a summary of her positions. “In truth, I would have settled on them knowing my name,” Ms. Harris wrote.
On the campaign trail, she was often seen with an ironing board, which served as a table, with a worn-out sign duct-taped to it: “Kamala Harris, a voice for justice.”
Eventually, she upgraded to copies of her endorsement from The San Francisco Chronicle, which she stunningly secured in October 2003. The newspaper wrote that she offered “the best hope of repairing the damage inflicted on that critical city office” by her opponent.
Ms. Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, whom the vice president has often mentioned during her presidential run, was the “conscience of the campaign,” her former aides said. She would size up volunteers to determine who should be sent where, tease out which aides were there because they believed in her daughter and not simply because they wanted a résumé highlight and ensure that volunteers were stuffing envelopes properly.
Ms. Harris was an energetic campaigner, pressing her staff to reach more people as quickly as possible. She stood on the street, at bus stops, in front of grocery stores and restaurants, talking to anyone who would give her the time of day.
It was a strategy that she would come to rely on.
Ms. Prozan recalled how in November 2003, after Ms. Harris made the runoff under California’s “jungle primary” system, she urged the candidate to give her exhausted staff days off around Thanksgiving to recharge before the December election. Ms. Harris acquiesced. But Ms. Prozan got a call the night before Thanksgiving from an impatient Ms. Harris, telling her that aides could have the day off but the candidate needed to be somewhere. Soon, Ms. Harris and her ironing board were on the way to Costco, where she stood until 9 p.m.
“Once you put her in front of that voter, that voter was not walking away seriously considering her,” Ms. Prozan said. “Once you meet her, it’s over.”
Similarly, while Ms. Harris has raised more than $1 billion for her presidential bid, which has afforded her a formidable war chest, campaign officials say she has made a point to continue making stops at barber shops, music stores and bookshops.
But in a fast-paced national campaign, Ms. Harris has been better known this time around for her big, high-profile rallies. After most rallies, she goes and walks a rope line, often beelining for young children. After town-hall events, she has gone over to voters who asked her a tough question to talk face to face.
“She has been clear that she needs to look people in the eye, and not just talk about the stakes but talk about aspirations, in their own space,” said Michael Tyler, the communications director for Ms. Harris’s campaign. “It’s part and parcel for how she’s campaigned throughout her career.”
When she was hunkered down in Pittsburgh preparing for her debate against former President Donald J. Trump, she sought an escape and visited a spice store. There, she was asked what her favorite part of debate prep was. “This spice store,” she said.
As Ms. Harris faced concerns over her ability to win over Black men, she made a pitch to them directly at a barbershop during a recent trip to Pennsylvania.
Darryl Thomas, 52, the owner of the shop, PhillyCuts, said that Ms. Harris spent much of her time there discussing what Black men were looking for from their next president.
“We just had a meeting with the next president of the United States,” Mr. Thomas said.
On Monday, as Ms. Harris rallied volunteers to who were about to canvass across Scranton, Pa., she reflected on her humble political beginnings. She reminisced about posting up with her ironing board outside grocery stores where she said she said she would “require people to talk to me.”
“I will tell you, that is how I love to campaign,” she said. “I don’t do it as much anymore, obviously, but what you all are showing up to do today, and have been doing, like — let’s enjoy it.”
Ms. Harris was carried to her unlikely victory in December 2003 by a diverse coalition of Black, female and even some conservative voters — groups that she has aggressively targeted during her presidential run.
Writing about her 2004 inauguration in her memoir, she explained her success with a sentiment that has become a trademark in her 2024 stump speech.
“It was a reflection of what I’ve always believed to be true,” she wrote. “When it comes to the things that matter most, we have so much more in common than what separates us.”
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