The idea that Vice President Kamala Harris is being treated in a biased manner by the media because she’s a minority and a woman holds no water, and it’s her policy, not her race or gender, that’s behind the disdain, Republican female lawmakers have said.
Last month, the New York Times reported that Mrs. Harris told colleagues privately that she thought news coverage of her would be different if she were both white and a man.
“There is nothing sexist or racist stating the fact that Kamala Harris has been an absolute disaster on every policy issue in her portfolio, especially the border crisis,” Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, told Fox News on Monday.
“There is nothing sexist or racist about the fact that if you put Kamala Harris on the congressional ballot in any district across America, she would lose because she can’t conduct a basic interview without embarrassing herself and Joe Biden,” Stefanik added.
Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, echoed her colleague’s sentiments.
“Conservative women trailblazers have been mocked and maligned by the liberal press for years. You learn to deal with it and not make excuses. When Vice President Kamala Harris took office, she knew she was charting a new path and would have to prove herself at every step along the way. She could have used her platform to protect the women and girls in Afghanistan, secure the southern border, or reduce crime in our cities. Instead, she tossed aside the historic opportunity she had been given to criticize the tough media environment conservative women have been successfully navigating for decades,” the senator said.
Blackburn emphasized that Harris’s gender “is no excuse for her disastrous performance.”
In an interview with the New York Times last month, outgoing Representative Karen Bass, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, characterized Harris’s treatment as prejudicial, particularly by conservative media.
“I know, and we all knew, that she would have a difficult time because anytime you’re a ‘first’, you do,” Bass, a Democrat from California, said. “And to be the first woman vice president, to be the first black, Asian woman, that’s a triple,” the lawmaker added, pointing to Harris’s Indian roots.
“So we knew it was going to be rough, but it has been relentless, and I think extremely unfair,” Bass said.
Conservatives aren’t the only ones to have attacked Harris on substantive matters. During the 2020 presidential primaries, Hawaii Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and other progressives slammed Harris’s record as a prosecutor in California, pointing to her ‘tough on crime’ approach which, with the aid of Joe Biden’s 1994 Crime Bill, helped lead to the incarceration of thousands of African Americans on drug use crimes and other minor offenses –such as the truancy of their children.
Last week, Axios reported on a toxic work environment in Harris’s office, saying it was causing a high turnover of staff, with people reportedly frustrated by poor leadership and seeking to leave a sinking ship before being branded a “Harris person.”
The Biden campaign selected Harris as Joe Biden’s running mate in August 2020. Before that, Harris faced off against Biden in the 2020 primaries, calling him out for alleged support for racist policies, including opposition to school busing for African American children in the 1970s. The attacks led to a brief rise in the polls for Harris, and a push by the media to paint her as a potential contender to Donald Trump. These hopes evaporated after Gabbard called Harris out on her California record. Harris dropped out of the campaign in December 2019, before any primaries or caucuses were held, and received zero delegates.