Former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, a Republican, joins "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss his 2010 campaign for California Attorney General against then-D.A. Kamala Harris, which he lost by less than 1%, and his reaction to her ascendency to the likely 2024 Republican nomination.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me is former Los Angeles
00:07County District Attorney Steve Cooley. Steve, thank you so much for joining me.
00:12Well, happy to do so. We had a really historic 48 hours in that time. President Joe Biden dropped
00:19out of the 2024 race, and Vice President Kamala Harris is now the likely Democratic nominee.
00:26You and Vice President Kamala Harris do go way back. You ran against each other for
00:31California Attorney General back in 2010. So first, what was your reaction to this news?
00:39I think it was predictable, and I think it's unfortunate.
00:42She is wholly unqualified. She is an embarrassment to this country.
00:49Those are strong words. What makes you say them?
00:52She was a lousy District Attorney in San Francisco. She was generally an inept
00:59Attorney General, except she did, in one stroke of a pen, create criminal havoc in California
01:08by mistitling Prop 47 as the Safe Neighborhoods and Community Act, when all it did was lower
01:17penalties for serious theft offenses and take hardcore drugs from the status of being a felony
01:23to a misdemeanor. All of that, in turn, created a mess that California is in,
01:29including its homeless problem. So she is a big cause through that decision to mistitle Prop 47.
01:37She's a big cause of a lot of our problems. I understand that you were both District
01:43Attorneys at the same time, her in San Francisco, you in Los Angeles County. Can you describe what
01:49your personal relationship was like with her? What was it like working with her?
01:53Get into detail about that. I would say it was professional.
01:58As an elected District Attorney, you have to represent your office and your constituency,
02:03and you have to make things work. We were on the California District Attorney's Association
02:08together. We went to meetings together, and on one occasion, we worked on the California's
02:21version of a human trafficking law. She proposed it. We reviewed it and found that it was incredibly
02:30poorly written, that they had cut and pasted from federal law and not adapted the proposed
02:37legislation to California law. So we helped her out. My staff, very smart people, figured it out
02:45and fixed it for her. So can you describe what it was like running against Vice President Kamala
02:52Harris, then at the time you both were running for California AG? Well, I don't know if you know
02:59about the facts of that particular election, but California is a very blue state. I started out
03:07sort of in a hole in terms of the electorate. There were 20% less Republicans registered than
03:13Democrats, so she started out sort of ahead. At the end of the campaign, there had been 57 law
03:20enforcement endorsements. I got all 57. There were 18 daily newspaper endorsements. I got 17.
03:29So I really did close the gap from being in sort of a Republican hole to basically winning
03:38the night of the election. But within 1%, state law mandated that every ballot had to be counted,
03:46and they were over the next three weeks. So all the provisional votes, you know, those that are
03:51harvested and then dropped off at polling locations were counted, and she beat me by
03:580.3 tenths of 1% after they were all counted. So it was close.
04:04I want to talk about how that race really was an outlier back in 2010 because in the governor's
04:09race, Democrat Jerry Brown beat Republican Meg Whitman by 13 points. In the Senate race,
04:15Democrat Barbara Boxer beat Republican Carly Fiorina by 10 points. And in the AG race,
04:20as you said, Vice President Kamala Harris beat you by less than one percentage point. So what
04:26do you think you did and your campaign did to peel away some of that Democrat support?
04:34I think that the closeness of that campaign was partly a recognition I'd done a pretty good job
04:40as DA of LA County, even though I was Republican. And secondly, a lot of people that knew Kamala
04:46Harris did not like Kamala Harris. And that was evidenced by the newspaper endorsements,
04:55which I got 17 of 18, and law enforcement endorsements because the AG's office is
04:59considered a top law enforcement job in the state. There are 57 endorsements. I got all 57.
05:06So in a very grassroots way, people that knew her didn't like her or didn't support her. I think
05:12that's where the margin was made up. You're saying that you received a lot of support from
05:20law enforcement in this election, as we saw yesterday when she made a speech. She's portraying
05:25herself and this election versus Donald Trump as the prosecutor versus the felon. What do you make
05:31of that strategy? First of all, I don't think having watched that particular prosecution,
05:39it was a joke as a prosecution against Trump. It was made up to attack him, to hurt him,
05:46to disable him as a candidate. Put that aside. Her being a prosecutor, I think is sort of a
05:52misnomer. Yes, she was a prosecutor at the Alameda County DA's office for a while.
05:59Her boss then, her district attorney told me, who supported me, that she was lousy. She was
06:05kind of an F. She went to San Francisco. She was very ambitious. She wanted to have a high rank
06:11in San Francisco, even though she was relatively new over there. And Terrence Hallinan did not give
06:18her that high rank. She then decided to run against Terrence Hallinan with her dear friend
06:23Willie Brown's support, and she won that race. But as a prosecutor, I doubt if she's done
06:29more than a handful of trials. This is not a quote-unquote real prosecutor. Real prosecutors
06:34try a lot of cases, and they spend a lot of time in the courtroom learning that craft,
06:41developing their skills, and becoming better and better. She never spent that much time
06:46learning the craft or developing her skills as a prosecutor. So I think that's a term that's
06:53been used by many, such as Adam Schiff and others, that I think is a misnomer. And I think that
06:59in the future, her lack of prosecutorial skills will be demonstrated very clearly.
07:05You were her opponent, obviously, not inside of her campaign.
07:09But from your vantage point, how does she run a campaign?
07:14Well, I thought her campaign was actually pretty effective against mine. She did do,
07:21her campaign did very well when it came to social media. That was an emerging craft in politics at
07:27the time. She had a lot of support in Silicon Valley that helped her in that arena. So I
07:33thought that was something that they did very well. My campaign consultant advised, and I
07:39followed his advice, that you can't be too harsh on a female candidate, or especially a female
07:48candidate of color. So just don't be too hard, Steve. And I kind of followed that advice,
07:54which I think was good sound advice at the time. And overall, I think the reason I did as well
08:03as I did, actually winning election night, was because so many people in California knew her
08:10and didn't like her, including Governor Jerry Brown. Governor Jerry Brown told me
08:15directly, he was voting for me, because he did not like Kamala Harris.
08:21You keep bringing this up, her likability, and throughout the Biden presidency,
08:26her approval rating often trailed behind his, and it wasn't that high. What makes you say
08:32that she wasn't likable? Oh, from what I've heard from many sources, her interactions with other
08:42human beings is that she is arrogant and an elitist. And I've also heard over the years,
08:52including recently, that she blames her staff for what are oftentimes her own failings or mistakes.
09:01And that she goes through staff, more often than say the average elected official or candidate.
09:11Steve, there's less than four months between now and election day. Obviously,
09:18this election has been shaken up tremendously. What are you looking out for next?
09:22Well, I got to tell you, it's been quite a roller coaster. It was a roller coaster before
09:28the assassination attempt on President Trump. There's the Biden yes, Biden no, Biden's in,
09:36Biden's out stuff. So I think that based upon what's happened so far, I think it's almost like
09:43anything can happen, except one thing will not happen. She will not win. She will not win,
09:48because over time, she'll get more exposure, and the voting public will be able to evaluate her
10:00objectively. She's going to be scrutinized heavily. And I don't think it's going to do well
10:04for her. She did break fundraising records in the 24 hours since President Biden dropped out.
10:11What do you make of that number? Because $81 million in 24 hours, that's huge.
10:18That's huge. And she'll need every penny of it to do well in this campaign. She'll need every penny.
10:25And that's a reaction, I think, from the major Democrat donors and the diehards who really do
10:33want to defeat President Trump. I don't think it's so much just about her per se. It's about
10:39they're very committed to defeating President Trump. They don't like him for whatever their
10:44reasons are, or they perceive that they will be disadvantaged in the future if they don't have
10:48the White House connection. So I think that's what that manifests. Plus, anytime you sort of start
10:56something out, there's a bump. When you announce your candidacy, there's a bump. If you do well
11:00in a debate, there's a bump. She got a bump, a nice bump. Steve Cooley, I appreciate your time.
11:07Thank you so much for joining me today. All right. My pleasure. Thank you.