Vice President Kamala Harris is allegedly positioning herself as a candidate committed to enforcing law and order. Nevertheless, the wealthy contributors supporting her campaign notoriously fund initiatives aimed at diminishing law enforcement authorities’ power. Harris’ closest counselors appear to be promoting her background as a former district attorney and attorney general of California. However, several backers of her campaign have consistently resisted proposals that strengthen law enforcement agencies and sponsored groups that champion the cause of defunding the police.
The prime proponent of a plan to revolutionize the United States’ criminal justice system by promoting lenient prosecutors, George Soros, and his son Alex, have both publicly supported Harris’ bid for president. Beyond supporting the election of these reform prosecutors, Soros’ philanthropic ventures have directed millions towards groups advocating against police. In 2021 alone, the Open Society Foundations, started by George Soros and currently led by Alex Soros, granted copious amounts of money to groups calling for the defunding of the police, including the New Venture Fund for the Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability and organizations allied with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Soros has also championed endeavors in Minneapolis to dismantle its police department. In this election cycle, the Soros family’s political action committees, Democracy PAC and Democracy PAC II, have invested heavy sums towards electing Democrats, alongside making substantial donations to Democratic super PACs that helped Joe Biden secure the presidency in 2020.
Within their jurisdictions, several prosecutors backed by Soros have faced criticism from local populations due to their approach to criminal justice. Former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who benefited from Soros-affiliated group support, faced a recall in 2022. San Francisco residents reproached him for his inaction towards crimes such as burglary, motor vehicle thefts, and homicide, and for his policy on recurrent criminals who subsequently committed additional crimes. George Gascon, the Los Angeles County District Attorney whom Soros generously funded through his California Justice & Public Safety PAC, confronts a challenging upcoming re-election due to criticism regarding his handling of crime, which included decisions not to prosecute crimes like trespassing, resisting arrest, threatening criminal action, drug possession, or solicitation for prostitution.
Quinn Delaney, the head of a non-profit, and Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, are prominent Democratic donors who declared their support for Harris shortly after Biden decided against running for re-election. They joined Soros in backing the elections of Gascon and Boudin. In 2020, Delaney, along with three other donors based in California, invested heavily in the election campaigns of these two prosecutors. Hastings and his spouse, Patty Quillin, contributed $1.75 million in support of Gascon.
In 2024, Delaney made donations opposing a California ballot initiative that sought to enhance penalties for retail theft. Delaney leads the Akonadi Foundation, a non-profit based in Oakland that emphasizes ‘ending the criminalization of people of color.’ Akonadi operates a program named ‘All In For Oakland,’ which aims to eliminate police presence in schools, shut down juvenile incarceration facilities, and makes donations to Black Lives Matter-affiliated organizations.
Harris’ campaign is seemingly ready to showcase her as a law-and-order candidate. However, during her Senate tenure, Harris positioned herself more as a reformist. In an interview with ‘The View’ in 2020, Harris explained that the campaign to defund the police is about ‘reimagining how we do public safety in America.’ She emphasized that the focus should be on investing resources into public education systems in these communities, affordable housing, home ownership, access to capital for small businesses, and healthcare access, rather than increasing the police presence.
In a 2020 radio interview, Harris expressed admiration for the defund the police movement, stating that we have to ‘analyze these budgets and ascertain whether they reflect the right priorities.’
Karla Jurvetson, another California-based wealthy individual, who reportedly is endorsing Harris, was identified by a Republican strategist as ‘a major benefactor of the squad and just about all politicians on the Capitol Hill who support defunding of the police,’ attributed to her political contributions to left-wing Congress members. In the 2020 election cycle, Jurvetson was ranked the 24th highest individual contributor to the Democratic party, with a significant portion of her donation going to Harris.
Another staunch Democrat donor from California, Andrea Dew Steele, has been diligently laying foundations for Harris’s campaign, even before Biden announced his decision not to run. A personal friend of Harris, Dew Steele served on Harris’ national finance committee in 2020, and has spent weeks steering donors to Democrat-aligned groups in preparation for a potential Harris campaign. She also founded Emerge America, an entity dedicated to getting women elected at all tiers of governance.
Emerge America has supported several liberal prosecutors, such as Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton and former Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins, who received backing from Soros’ network. Also, San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott, who chose not to press charges against individuals arrested during the 2020 George Floyd protests in her city.
Prolific donor Susie Tompkins Buell, whose support for Harris has been reported by The New York Times, along with Delaney, sits on Emerge America’s advisory board. Harris’s association with the defund the police cause continues to be evident in her hiring decisions, such as hiring Brian Fallon as her campaign spokesperson, known for his ‘defund the police’ tweet in June 2020.
Throughout her career, Harris has often walked the fine line of satisfying liberal factions without antagonizing law enforcement. In 2020, prompted by her sister, Harris sought to separate herself from her history as a prosecutor. Neither Harris’s campaign nor Jurvetson responded to requests for comments on these matters from the Daily Caller News Foundation, and no responses were received from the other named donors either.