Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris has remained silent about whether she will vote in favor of a ballot measure focused on cracking down on drug and property crimes in California, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Harris campaign has declined to comment on how she will vote on Proposition 36, a tough-on-crime ballot initiative aimed at drug and theft offenses that would scale back Proposition 47, according to the LA Times. The state’s Proposition 47 is a measure that was introduced in 2014 which reclassified some felonies as misdemeanors, and Harris did not take a stand on Proposition 47 when she was California attorney general but did support another ballot initiative about removing money from politics, Proposition 59, according to the LA times.
The majority of California residents support implementing harsher penalties for repeat theft and drug-related offenses. About 56% of Californians agree with Proposition 36, according to a poll released in August from UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the LA Times.
California has continued to deal with various issues including crime and rising homelessness rates. Experts have called out misleading non-violent crime data released by the state.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom sent a letter addressed to Oakland city officials in July requesting that they change their policy to allow for more police chases of criminals amid high crime in the city. Crime rates have had a steep rise in Oakland over the past year, and many Oakland residents joined a gun club as a self-defense measure amid the city’s crime wave.
California retailers have called for increased penalties on property crime due to a rise in commercial robbery rates. San Francisco has had problems with traffic violations running rampant according to data that showed that the city had basically stopped enforcing its traffic laws according to municipal data analyzed by the San Francisco Chronicle in April.
Newsom has been noncommittal thus far in responding to if he would take a stance against Proposition 36 while campaigning, according to the LA Times. Newsom had previously criticized the ballot measure over possible “harms” to Latino and black communities, according to the LA Times.
Harris previously stated during her 2020 presidential campaign that she wanted to “stop criminalizing poverty,” according to a memo resurfaced by the Washington Free Beacon in July. Harris had vowed to eliminate cash bail and court-ordered fines that ‘criminalize the poor,’ according to the memo.
The Harris campaign did not immediately reply to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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