By Tim Redmond
The San Francisco district attorney is running for attorney general. Statewide candidates, especially Democrats, tend to get hammered as “soft on crime” if they so much as utter of word against locking up more prisoners and killing more murderers.
So on the surface, it doesn’t make much political sense for Kamala Harris to announce that she won’t seek the death penalty in a high-profile (and particularly nasty) murder.
She still insists that, while she personally opposes the death penalty, she looks at every case individually. But right now, she’s doing the right thing, and refusing to go against what she knows is the right position on the issue. And she’s going to take some political heat for it.
In the end, though, it’s not going to cost her the job. If anything, in a race and a season when everyone is going to be pandering and trying to make cheap political points, she’s going to look good.
At least I hope so.