Kamala Harris elected San Francisco DA
S Rajagopalan
Washington, December 10
The United States now has a District Attorney of Indian stock. In a bitterly-fought election, Kamala Harris has trounced her former boss and two-term
incumbent Terrence Hallinan to become the DA of San Francisco, a coveted public office.
The 39-year-old Kamala, daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, defeated the 67-year-old Hallinan by a wider margin than what some pollsters had projected. She polled 56 per cent of the votes against Hallinan's 44 per cent.
After Bobby Jindal's narrow defeat in the Louisiana gubernatorial race, the San Francisco DA election had come to attract disproportionately large attention among the Indian Americans. But then, African-Americans also claim Kamala Harris as their own.
Kamala thanked her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, for her success. "My mother raised two daughters in Berkley, where she fought for civil rights. She raised us in an environment where women were strong and giving back to community was important," she told a jubilant crowd of her supporters.
A political novice but a protege of outgoing Mayor Willie Brown, Kamala had mounted a vigorous campaign, attacking her opponent's work record of low convictions, huge backlog of cases and strained relations with the police department. The police union had come out in full support of her candidature.
"I'm just delighted that Kamala Harris...will bring San Francisco back to real competence," Mayor Brown said as he joined Kamala's victory celebrations. Paul Grewal, president of the South Asian Bar Association
of Northern California, hailed Kamala's "historic victory".
Kamala, who will also be San Francisco's first-ever woman DA, said: "I'm optimistic and hopeful about the future. We've done a great job. I'm honoured and I don't feel entitled to it because no one's entitled to
serve in a public office -- you have to earn it."
A prosecutor in Alameda County for eight years after graduating from San Francisco's Hastings School of Law in 1990, Kamala had a two-year stint in her opponent Hallinan's team. The association came to an end in
2000.
During the campaign, Hallinan grumbled that his challenger had hijacked his agenda. "She came after my voters. She adopted my agenda -- in fact she hijacked my agenda. And it appears she did a pretty damn good
job of it," he finally conceded.
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