Progressive Criminal Reform Groups Criticize Harris for Calling Trump a ‘Felon’ 

‘It is both harmful to us and harmful to your campaign,’ the advocacy groups wrote

Progressive criminal justice advocacy groups sent a letter to Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris Tuesday criticizing her framing Trump as a “criminal” and a “felon,” Fox News reported.

“There will be those that simplify a match-up between you and former President Trump as one between a ‘tough-on-crime’ prosecutor and a ‘criminal,'” the letter reads. “We hope you will resist this language and this framing. It is both harmful to us and harmful to your campaign.”

Along the campaign trail, Harris has painted herself as a “tough prosecutor,” saying, as a former California attorney general and Bay Area district attorney, she knows “Trump’s type,” referring to his recent felony conviction. More than 160 criminal justice advocacy groups—including The Bail Project, Beauty after Bars, and We Must Vote, Inc.—however, praised Harris’s soft-on-crime record in a letter sent Tuesday and warned her against using language that can stigmatize other individuals who have been convicted of crimes.

“Words like ‘criminal’ and ‘felon’ paint with a broad brush that stains more than 70 million Americans with criminal records including the one-in-three Black men who have felony convictions,” the letter says.

As district attorney of San Francisco, Harris made lenient plea deals for a serial domestic abuser who later murdered his girlfriend and a repeat felon who shot a newspaper editor in Harris’s hometown. She also dropped an unlicensed driving charge against an illegal immigrant who, months later, ran over an American citizen with his car. As a senator, she supported the defund the police movement in 2020 while raising money to bail violent protesters out of jail.

The progressive groups advised Harris to continue her commitment to “criminal justice reforms” and praised her previous support for their cause, which could jeopardize Harris’s appeal to moderate voters come November.

“We believe you have been and will be a criminal justice reform leader. … We were moved when, in 2019, you were the first candidate to agree to attend our criminal justice reform presidential town hall,” the letter states. “As you ramp up your campaign for President, we ask that you meet this consequential political moment with particular care and attention as it relates to conversations and commitments around criminal justice reform.”

Corrin Rankin, the vice chair of the California Republican Party, said Harris is caught between two contradicting narratives.

“She’s a walking contradiction. She blows with the political wind, so whichever way the wind is shifting, that is the direction she’s going to follow, the direction that’s going to help her career,” Rankin said to Fox News.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R.) also said that Harris’s recent choice in adding progressive Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to the Democratic ticket is a signal the campaign is doubling down on a “Democrat-socialist agenda.”