Kamala's Karma

Harris was so angry at Hallinan that she decided to try to knock him out of office. She has been running for DA ever since -- attending political events, helping out on other people's campaigns, serving on the boards of nonprofits that work with domestic violence victims. She's attended society bashes from Nob Hill to Hollywood -- always striving to be seen, methodically gathering support, pushing herself as an alternative to yet another duel between two political has-beens.

Stumping in the Castro, the Mission, and the Tenderloin, Harris shows real stuff as a candidate.

She listens carefully to the concerns of ordinary people. She does not patronize them or make idle promises. A cook slaving over a hot wok in a Chinese restaurant greets her with a grin. A janitor stops to chat. A clutch of black men playing dominoes in a Tenderloin park high-five her.

They want to know how she's different from Hallinan. (San Francisco's poorer neighborhoods have never gone for the conservative Fazio.) But differentiating herself politically and ideologically from Hallinan is a problem for Harris. She shares many of the famously liberal DA's views on legal and social issues, including the death penalty (against), medical marijuana (for), and the need to ramp up prosecutions of domestic violence and child sexual assault cases (strongly for).

She argues, however, that Hallinan is running his office into the ground.

"The DA's Office is a mess. It's falling apart. There's one computer for every two or three lawyers, there's no centralized database to track cases. Staff morale is low because he is failing to prosecute serious and violent crimes."

Harris attacks the incumbent for his handling of the Fajitagate case (in which Hallinan encouraged a grand jury to indict the top brass of the San Francisco Police Department for obstruction of justice without having enough evidence to prove his case) and for allowing Elbert Flowers to plea-bargain out of a stiff sentence for torturing his girlfriend in 1998. (Flowers was arrested for torturing another girlfriend last month.)

Hallinan, she adds, has an abysmal conviction rate for serious crimes. She says that before he assumed office in 1995, the District Attorney's Office won convictions in 75.5 percent of cases filed. After Hallinan took office, the conviction rate fell to 64.7 percent. "During Hallinan's first five years, 4,568 cases would have been convictions if Arlo Smith's track record had been maintained," she concludes.

Hallinan replies that the 10 percent drop in his conviction rate is due to his diversion program, which emphasizes rehabilitation over punishment. He says his attempts to prosecute top SFPD officers in Fajitagate may have failed, but they "lifted the lid off a long-simmering problem" and may lead to future reforms. He still believes command-level officers conspired to obstruct justice after three young cops were accused of beating up two men who refused to give them their steak fajitas.

The DA admits he is "not 100 percent clear" why Flowers received only a two-year prison sentence after his first offense. The victim and her lawyer, Hallinan explains, apparently prevailed on an assistant DA to give Flowers a break. "Those are hard cases," he says. "Sometimes you bite the bullet and take a chance. As this one worked out, we should not have let him out, period. He should still be in prison."

Harris also charges that federal and state law enforcement agencies have stopped bringing white-collar crime and public corruption cases to Hallinan because he is not doing his job. She promises to more vigorously investigate and prosecute city officials who break the law.

Hallinan insists he has excellent working relationships with his counterparts in Washington, D.C., and Sacramento, especially California Attorney General Bill Lockyer. In the past two years, he says, his office disposed of 11 theft cases involving city agencies or the San Francisco school district, and nine other cases are under investigation. "I'm not remiss in the prosecution of governmental corruption since her boyfriend was elected mayor of San Francisco," he says. "The situation of public corruption under Brown is discouraging to me -- it is everywhere. Her relationship to Brown would make it hard for her to prosecute."

But at least a few prominent members of the San Francisco bar view Harris as more competent than the incumbent. Among them are well-known defense lawyers Jim Brosnahan, who represented "Marin Taliban" John Walker Lindh, and John Keker, who has served on the San Francisco Police Commission.

"I like Terence Hallinan, but he has been a disaster as a DA," says Keker. "The assistant district attorneys complain that the cops bring them bad cases, the police whine that the DA doesn't prosecute. Fazio does not have the organizational capability to bring about reform. Harris is one of those once- or twice-in-a-generation politicians that does have real legal and organizational talents."

Harris also has fans among those who try to help young sex-abuse victims. She co-founded the Coalition to End the Exploitation of Kids, which provides legal and health services to sexually exploited children, including teenage prostitutes. Her partner in that project is Norma Hotaling, an ex-hooker who considers youthful prostitutes to be the victims of serial rape. Hotaling is not endorsing anyone in the DA's race, but she finds "Harris to be absolutely dedicated to ending the sexual exploitation of children, who should not be arrested but saved from the johns."