If Harris wins, she will lean heavily on these Democrats in Congress.

WASHINGTON – Democratic Party Candidate Kamala Harris elected president, she will soon be trying to cut deals with her former colleagues on Capitol Hill.

Harris spent four years In the US Senate he represents California, the most populous state in the country. Former Senate colleagues and new House supporters told USA TODAY that although her time in Congress was short, she has strong connections there that will be critical to advancing her legislative agenda in a political environment where she just won Donald Trump but can still count on facing tough Republican opposition.

Harris Star rose in the Senate as a lawmaker willing to flaunt her prosecutorial skills: She went viral in 2018 when she questioned current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings.

Then-President Trump said she was “extremely nasty” at the time. And an excerpt from that conversation has become an oft-quoted piece of the campaign trail for pro-abortion rights Democrats this cycle: Harris asks Kavanaugh can he name “any laws that give the government the power to make decisions regarding a man’s body.”

Harris returned to the Senate relatively often in the first two years of the Biden administration, when the chamber was evenly divided. casting vote more often than any other vice president in American history.

Since launching her presidential campaign this summer, she has recruited a legion of House members as surrogates, recruiting lawmakers who considered themselves kept at arm’s length Biden’s election campaign and who didn’t find Harris how easy it is to get there when she was a senator.

Harris has decades of experience working with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, as well as a long-standing relationship with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, formed first through the Congressional Black Caucus. Jeffries, also a New Yorker, is in a strong position to become House speaker if Democrats retake control of the chamber next year and will remain minority leader if the GOP emerges victorious.

Even if Democrats win both chambers, Harris will still have some obstacles to achieving big goals. The legislation would have to clear a 60-vote threshold set by opponents who are threatening to use the Senate filibuster – although Harris also said during the campaign that she would support historical change in procedure which allow exceptions for key issues such as abortion rights. If Republicans win either chamber, as they expect in the Senate, she will have to make deals to pass substantive legislation and will likely face aggressive oversight from conservative lawmakers as well as obstacles to confirming her appointees to Cabinet positions. . and fill judicial vacancies.

Harris’ current boss, President Joe Biden, can be described as the creator of the Senate – and he certainly is. used his long career in the upper house while living in the White House. Harris’ allies say she will bring a new perspective and a fresh approach to dealing with Congress.

Allies of the Senate

Some of Harris’ most trusted Democratic partners entered the Senate in 2017, the same year she did so: Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire.

Cortez Masto and Harris developed an old friendship when they were both attorneys general. Pair sued major banks after the 2008 financial crisis and won a $20 billion settlement.

“Then we just got to know each other, started to trust each other as each other,” said Cortez Masto, who regularly filled in for Harris on the campaign trail and helped vet her potential vice presidential running mates.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., with whom Harris served on the Judiciary Committee, is often cited as one of her closest allies on the Hill, as is Senate President pro tempore and Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat. Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, and Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut.

Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla, who served as California’s secretary of state while Harris was in the Senate and who replaced her when she became vice president, remains a good friend, as does Sen. LaFonza Butler, who was a political adviser to Harris’ 2019 campaign. but who will leave the House in November after refusing to run for a full term in the Senate.

And if she wins her hotly contested race for the Senate seat representing Maryland against former Gov. Larry Hogan, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks will bring to the chamber a friendship with Harris that started 14 years ago when Harris was San Francisco’s district attorney. Harris called Alsobrooks to congratulate her on winning the underdog race for Maryland State’s Attorney in Prince George’s County.

Harris remains on good terms with Schumer, who made an exception to help her get a seat on the Judiciary Select Committee, even though the panel also included another California senator, the late Dianne Feinstein. That allowed Harris to benefit from her experience as a prosecutor during the fight over Trump’s possible first-term Supreme Court nominees..

While vice president, Harris also maintained contact with Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who was the top Democrat on the panel when Harris served on it.

“I think she will come away with an appreciation for the fact that you need to work with Congress,” the Virginia Democrat said. “She will come with a relationship, but also with a willingness to roll up her sleeves.”

Warner said she had also built positive relationships with Republicans on the committee, but said she didn’t want to “put them in a difficult position” by naming them: “They might have to say otherwise right now.”

Harris started a group GOP Campaign Surrogates and promised to appoint a Republican to her cabinet. She could find Republican allies in the Senate among moderates who did not support Trump: Sen. Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, with whom she served on the Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska; Todd Young, Republican from Indiana, and Bill Cassidy, Republican from Louisiana.

Former Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who is now Biden’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Turkey, remembers working with Harris to expand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which temporarily shields from deportation young people who were brought to the U.S. illegally while still children.

Congress still hasn’t found a solution to improve the country’s immigration system, but Flake said of Harris, “She understands that this can only happen in a bipartisan way.”

Allies at home

Harris’ list of congressional friends favors the Senate, but she still has close relationships she could draw on in the lower chamber.

She has ties to Jeffries from her time as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and if Democrats take the House and White House, they will become a historic pairing as the first Black House Speaker and first female president. Harris also maintained contact with several members of the group, including current chairman Steven Horsford, DN.V.

Harris also developed a good relationship with House Hispanic Caucus Co-Chair Nanette Barragán, D-Calif., and was the leader of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus during her time in Congress. She invited Horsford, Barragán and Rep. Judy Chu, a California Democrat and caucus chairwoman. sit in her box during her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Rising Democratic Stars Reps. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, and Nikema Williams, D-Ga., all consider Harris a mentor.

Crockett said during a speech at the Democratic National Convention that she wasn’t sure she made the right choice running for the House of Representatives when she arrived in Washington in January 2023. When she first met Harris as vice president, she said, “She saw right through me. She saw grief. I immediately started crying. And the most powerful woman in the world wiped my tears and listened.”

Harris was also longtime mentor to organizer Latifah Simon, who is all but guaranteed to win her Bay Area congressional race and head to the House of Representatives next year.

And she has chosen staffers with deep ties to the House: Her legislative director as vice president is Andy Flick, who was executive director of the centrist New Democratic Coalition, the Democratic Caucus’s most important bloc.