The "Danger" of Harris Choosing Shapiro

Kamala Harris's prosecutorial record is worth a serious look, and compares badly to Pennsylvania's governor Josh Shapiro over Catholic priest sex abuse.

Eric Holder, the disgraced former US Attorney General who was held in contempt by Congress for covering up the “Fast and Furious” Mexican cartel gun-running scandal a decade ago, is apparently in charge of vetting presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s running mates. What could go wrong?

You’ve probably read about the list, but it seems Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Democratic US Sen. Mark Kelly are top choices. The incompetent Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, has bungled everything from responding to a train derailment in East Palestine, OH, to a failure to install more than seven or so EV charging stations from $7.5 billion being “invested” under the misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” in 2022 and still gets mentions. Talk about the Peter Principle.

I admit to knowing nothing about Democratic machinations, but that’s what Elon Musk’s X tells me. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) has reportedly pulled out of the running.

My friend Hugh Hewitt, a 20+ year radio talker whose views and analysis I’ve long respected and broadly share, thinks Shapiro is Harris’s best if not only the choice to help her win as if veep nominees electorally matter. Ultimately, with history as our guide, they tend to cost more votes than attract or don’t ultimately factor much in voters’ minds.

But, like so many others, Hugh is on board the Shapiro train for political reasons. They think he’s politically talented (true) and will help Harris carry Pennsylvania (not sure about that). They also claim, sans evidence, that Shapiro is “popular” in Pennsylvania, where he has governed as a “moderate.”

Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA) with Vice President Kamala Harris on a recent visit to Reading, Pennsylvania (Reuters photo)

The last two claims are dubious, starting with an unimpressive 48-44 approval/disapproval rating and lying to voters during his campaign about his support for “lifeline scholarships” for children trapped in failing schools. They may want to spend time talking to real Pennsylvanians, including GOP State Rep. Joseph D’Orsie. Writing for National Review, here’s some of what he said. But read the whole thing.

Another catchy slogan that Shapiro likes to pull out of his back pocket is that Pennsylvania, under his leadership, is “open for business” and “competitive as hell.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. Few states have lost more residents than Pennsylvania has in the past decade — the number is north of 250,000. In the last two years alone, 50,000 have bolted the Keystone State for greener, economically friendlier pastures. Out of the 50 states, Pennsylvania ranks 46th in domestic net migration, 42nd in economic performance, and 35th in economic outlook, according to an American Legislative Exchange Council study.

D’Orsie is correct. I’m one of those now-former Pennsylvanians who has bolted for Virginia's more tax-friendly environment, especially regarding property taxes, which I cut in half despite a nearly identical lot size and property values.

They also may want to ask Pennsylvania’s Democratic nominee for State Treasurer this fall, Erin McClelland, who doesn’t support Shapiro for veep and instead favors Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina as Harris’s running mate. She cites Shapiro’s mishandling of a sex scandal in his governor’s office.

Still, they ignore one huge issue lurking behind the choice of Shapiro, and that’s the one thing he deserves much credit for - how, as the state’s first-term Attorney General, he prosecuted the Catholic priest sex abuse scandal in the Keystone State. He’s rightfully earned plaudits for handling that scandal, which started with a grand jury investigation he inherited involving every diocese in the state except Philadelphia and Altoona-Johnstown, which had been the subject of other grand jury investigations.

The scandal and its impact were immense, and he was given the option of spiking it upon taking office. He wisely chose to pursue it aggressively. The New York Times summarizes the grand jury report:

Bishops and other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania covered up child sexual abuse by more than 300 priests over a period of 70 years, persuading victims not to report the abuse and law enforcement not to investigate it, according to a searing report issued by a grand jury on Tuesday.

The report, which covered six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses and found more than 1,000 identifiable victims, is the broadest examination yet by a government agency in the United States of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The report said there are likely thousands more victims whose records were lost or who were too afraid to come forward.

It rocked the Keystone State, where 24 percent of Pennsylvanians identify as Catholic. Shapiro is not the only prosecutor who confronted a child abuse scandal involving Catholic priests.

So did former San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris handled the Catholic priest sex scandal in San Francisco’s diocese very differently. It was the only significant jurisdiction not to indict a single priest.

According to investigative journalist and author Peter Schweizer, in his 2020 “Profiles in Corruption,” a New York Times best-seller, he mentions that Harris inherited a scathing report of Catholic priest sex abuse from her predecessor, Terrence Hallinan, for whom she once worked and headed the Career Criminal Division. In 2003, she successfully unseated Hallinan with significant fundraising and organizational help from her boyfriend, Willie Brown, the legendary former mayor of San Francisco.

This seems odd, as investigative journalist Lee Fang noted five years ago.

Fighting on behalf of victims of sexual abuse, particularly children, has been central to Harris’s political identity for the better part of three decades. Harris specialized in prosecuting sex crimes and child exploitation as a young prosecutor just out of law school. She later touted her record on child sexual abuse cases and prosecuting pedophiles in television advertisements, splashy profiles, and on the trail as she campaigned for public office.

But when it came to taking on the Catholic Church, survivors of clergy sexual abuse say that Harris turned a blind eye, refusing to take action against clergy members accused of sexually abusing children when it meant confronting one of the city’s most powerful political institutions.

It may have begun when Harris received significant campaign contributions from law firms and others connected to the San Francisco Diocese. Fang and Schweizer said she reversed course from her predecessor when she took office. Here’s Fang again:

In her seven years as district attorney, Harris’s office did not proactively assist in civil cases against clergy sex abuse and refused requests by activists and survivors to access the cache of investigative files that could have helped them secure justice, according to several victims of clergy sex abuse living in California who I spoke with.

“It went from Terence Hallinan going hundred miles an hour, full speed ahead, after the Catholic Church to Kamala Harris doing absolutely nothing and taking it backwards hundred miles an hour,” said Joey Piscitelli, a sexual assault survivor, who a jury found had been molested as a student while attending Salesian College Preparatory, a Catholic high school in Richmond, California.

This is the same Kamala Harris who, when announcing her first candidacy for President in 2019, bragged about her fighting “on behalf of survivors of sexual assault, a fight not just against predators but a fight against silence and stigma.” Schweizer documents how she criticized then-Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who, as a Miami prosecutor, went easy on the late predator Jeffrey Epstein. Acosta, who served during the Trump Administration, resigned.

Schweizer noted that the same Harris, who was a sexual crimes prosecutor early in her career, moved in the opposite direction as Hallinan and worked to cover up the records.

That’s just the opposite of what then-Attorney General and now Governor Josh Shapiro did.

Harris may have good reasons to pick Shapiro as her running mate. Comparing their records on the Catholic priest sex abuse scandal won’t be one of them. Eric Holder may have been able to brush aside his scandal in dealing with Congress, but it is unlikely to work here. Sadly, progressive Democrats are coming up with their illegitimate reason to oppose Gov. Shapiro’s selection: he’s Jewish. Anti-Semitic Democrats have taken to X (former Twitter) with the hashtag #GenocideJosh.

Republicans need not dwell on Harris’s sordid affair with Willie Brown. Her record alone is enough to define her as National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke did in December 2019 when she dropped out of the 2020 presidential race:

Everything that is wrong with American politics is summed up in Kamala Harris. She’s a weather vane. She’s dishonest. She’s a coward. She’s condescending. And she’s a phony. She’s the answer to no useful or virtuous question. Nothing good has come from her election. She has nothing of value to offer America. Goodbye. Bad luck. That’s all, folks.