U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is most likely poised to become the Democratic presidential nominee in the November election, having received the endorsement from party heavyweights after President Joe Biden dropped out from the race last weekend. Here are her views and actions related to some key business topics.
As a candidate for California attorney general, Harris reportedly assured potential donors that she was "a capitalist.” She has generally been seen as cozy with prominent tech executives and investors, the local industry in her home Bay Area. She attended the wedding of Sean Parker, an early Facebook executive. Her brother-in-law, Tony West, is the chief legal officer for Uber.
She also accepted donations from Reid Hoffman, a prominent venture capitalist and co-founder of Linkedin, as well as billionaire John Doerr and venture capitalist Ron Conway. Big tech executives also supported her, including Sheryl Sandberg, then chief operating officer of Facebook, and Marc Benioff, the billionaire CEO of Salesforce.
As California attorney general, Harris sued eBay in 2012, alleging anticompetitive hiring practices surrounding a no-poaching agreement with Intuit that led to a nearly $4 million settlement in 2014.
One of her signature issues was curtailing the distribution of pornography on social media, particularly involving the practice of posting of explicit photos without the subject’s consent. She took credit for a pressure campaign that led to Facebook, Alphabet's Google, Microsoft and others taking measures to remove certain explicit images.
"I cannot emphasize enough how leaders in technology have stepped up,” said Harris at a news conference then. "I’m not suggesting any of them were happy to get a call from the AG saying, ‘Come in, we want to talk with you.‘ But they all did. They did.”
Harris’ climate and energy positions are similar to President Joe Biden’s. But throughout her career, she has made clear that clean energy and environmental justice are priorities.
When Biden announced Harris as his running mate in the 2020 race, he emphasized her tough stance against big oil when she served in key roles in California, noting lawsuits she had launched both as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and then as the state's attorney general until January 2017, when she became a U.S. senator. As California Attorney General, Harris won multimillion-dollar settlements with oil majors Chevron and BP over alleged pollution violations from underground fuel storage tanks.
She is a proponent of the Biden administration's strategy to expand offshore wind energy and other renewables with lease auctions and subsidies, striking a contrast with Trump, a fossil fuel booster who has criticized offshore wind and other clean energy technologies.
Last year, Harris made her debut at international climate negotiations, announcing a $3 billion commitment to the Green Climate Fund and making her first major international speech focused on climate.
As vice president, Harris has also been involved in Environmental Protection Agency policy rollouts that tackled long-standing environmental justice issues, such as a multibillion-dollar program to replace lead pipes and lead paint around the country.
Harris was known to be tough on big banks as California Attorney General. She walked away from talks in 2011 between large banks and state attorneys general over a settlement that would require lenders to help consumers hurt by home foreclosures and predatory lending practices.
Banks later more than quadrupled the money promised to help Californians reduce the amount they owed on their mortgages.
Under Harris, California launched a criminal investigation into Wells Fargo in 2016 in connection with allegations the bank opened millions of unauthorized customer accounts and credit cards.
Several major Wall Street names are reported to be supportive of Harris. Semafor reported on Sunday that several Wall Street donors said they were preparing to contribute to Harris, saying those expected to contribute included Blair Effron at Centerview, Jonathan Gray at Blackstone, Peter Orszag and Ray McGuire at Lazard and Roger Altman at Evercore.
Centerview, Lazard, Evercore and Blackstone were not immediately available for comment.
Harris has opposed health care industry consolidation over concerns bigger companies would lead to higher prices for consumers.
As California Attorney General, she successfully brought several antitrust lawsuits against drugmakers, health insurers, and hospital systems, including initiating work on a landmark case against Northern California's 24-hospital Sutter Health system that was eventually brought by her successor. She launched similar investigations into other large operators in the state. Focuses included costs of out-of-network care and mergers at many levels of the system, such as doctor groups.
She won settlements from industry heavyweights including a $23.5 million settlement with McKesson and $241 million from Quest Diagnostics in a lawsuit alleging inflated drug prices and illegal overcharges to California Medicaid system. A longtime Affordable Care Act supporter, she also recently pointed to caps on insulin prices as a sign of the Biden-Harris administration policy toward keeping health care affordable.
As vice president, Harris has been warned against the "existential” threat of artificial intelligence and warned tech execs that they have a "moral” obligation to guard against AI’s possible dangers.
She backed an AI executive order from Biden that seeks stronger protections for consumers, singling out AI-generated scam calls and the impacts of unlabeled AI-generated content.
