SACRAMENTO — Former Vice President Kamala Harris took a wise step toward potentially running for governor in her first action after returning to California.
She visited wildfire victims, volunteers and firefighters in Aldadena and helped distribute free meals to people burned out of their homes.
That doesn’t mean she’s running for anything. It’s highly unlikely Harris has decided whether to seek the governorship of her native state next year when Gov. Gavin Newsom is termed out.
But she acted as a possible candidate should, conspicuously showing concern for disaster victims and demonstrating potential leadership qualities voters demand in major elected officials. Not showing up might have conveyed cold indifference.
Natural disasters can greatly benefit or gravely wound political figures — fairly and unfairly. Whether scoring political points was Harris’ intention or not, she probably benefited.
Let’s put this in perspective: Harris spent a nightmarish mid-Monday in the nation’s Capitol painfully watching President Trump being sworn into the job she had coveted and listening to an ungracious inaugural address attacking the Biden administration and even her own state.
Then she got on an airplane and flew home to Los Angeles. The last thing most people would have wanted to do immediately after landing is beeline it to a place of misery and hear victims’ sad stories.
So, give her credit for trying to comfort people while making a smart political move.
Harris has lots of critics and her public record is vulnerable to attack. But look at her potential opposition in a gubernatorial contest: It’s hardly overwhelming. If she entered the race, it’s likely that most other contenders would drop out or not even run.
She’d start far ahead because of her resume — including U.S. senator, state attorney general and San Francisco district attorney — her fundraising ability and her name familiarity.
But as I’ve previously written, Harris, 60, should run only if deep down she wants to solve California’s festering problems — with wildfire prevention high on the list.
Viewing the state Capitol as a stepping stone back to the White House could be politically fatal. Voters wouldn’t accept it.
Anyway, as leader of the planet’s fifth-largest economy, the Democrat might enjoy pushing back against Trump’s anti-California agenda.
Hopefully, Trump’s tour of Southern California’s wildfire catastrophe will evoke some compassion for victims and temper his attempt to extort unrelated water policy concessions from Newsom in exchange for federal fire aid promised by President Biden.
The president basically wants to provide less water for declining salmon and steelhead and more for exported almonds and pistachios — and is holding wildfire victims hostage unless he gets his way.
Trump needs to be clued in about California geography and its complex water system because he doesn’t seem to know California water from a sea otter.
After the fires erupted, Trump ridiculously blamed Newsom for water hydrants going dry in Pacific Palisades. In truth, there were too many blazes to extinguish and the water system couldn’t keep up, not with hurricane-force winds.
A small reservoir was empty while awaiting repairs. Blame a slow-poke local bureaucracy. But even if that reservoir had been brim full, it wouldn’t have made a huge difference in the overall tragedy.
Trump’s babble about water is so erroneous it often doesn’t make sense.
In speaking with reporters Tuesday, Trump seemed to mistakenly think that California water comes from the Pacific Northwest and that Newsom turned off the valve so none of it flows to Los Angeles. It all runs into the ocean.
In truth, more than 5 million acre-feet of water is pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta each year to the San Joaquin Valley, Central Coast and Southern California.
In his inaugural address, Trump also claimed that California leaders allowed wildfires to burn “without even a token of defense.” That would be news to the thousands of firefighters struggling to contain the blazes.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has been unfairly criticized for attending the inauguration of the Ghanaian president when the wildfires erupted. But even if she’d been driving a fire truck in the Palisades, it wouldn’t have made an iota of difference in the disaster.
She compounded her public relations problem, however, by acting like the proverbial deer in headlights immediately after returning home. Now her reelection next year is at serious risk.
It’s human nature: People — especially political adversaries — strive to find fault whenever disaster strikes. And they expect their elected leaders to lead.
Newsom has been keeping his head above water by issuing executive orders right and left and authorizing billions of state dollars in emergency relief. No TV news camera can miss him. He’s following the natural disaster playbook for politicians.
The all-time award for best disaster performance by a governor goes to Pete Wilson. After the devastating 1994 Northridge earthquake, he got L.A. freeways up and running way ahead of schedule by cutting regulatory red tape and offering performance bonuses. It helped him win reelection that year.
Pat Brown suffered the worst fallout from a disaster for a governor — unfairly. When the Watts riot erupted in 1965, he was vacationing in Greece. “Where was Pat?” became a one-liner in Ronald Reagan’s winning campaign against him the next year.
The acting governor, Lt. Gov. Glenn Anderson, hesitated in calling out the National Guard. He also lost reelection.
“In a time of crisis,” Wilson once told reporters, “it’s essential for the public to feel as much reassurance as it can that assistance is on the way. … You need to do that with great speed and with great certainty and with visibility. … You need to communicate what, in fact, is being done to alleviate their distress.”
But an elected leader should not communicate what Brown did while inspecting a horrible North Coast flood: “This is the worst disaster since I was elected governor.” Brown had a wonderful sense of self-deprecating humor and laughed about his gaffe for years.
Harris took a practice run at California disaster communication and performed smartly, keeping her political options open.
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