Senator Kamala Harris’ choice to announce her bid for the presidency on Martin Luther Kind Day was deliberate. “He was aspirational,” Harris said during an appearance on Good Morning America. “He was aspirational like our country is aspirational. We know that we’ve not yet reached those ideals, but our strength is that we fight to reach those ideals. And that really inspires me.” Her campaign slogan likewise hints at this resolve: “For the People,” organizers told The Washington Post, is a nod to Harris rising in court during her time as a California prosecutor to say “Kamala Harris, for the people.”

Harris’ choice to lean into her prosecutorial career makes sense—it distinguishes her from the rest of the Democratic field, which already includes fellow Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, and was a key component in her campaign for office. In recent weeks, however, it’s also made her a target of criticism from the left, with some progressives criticizing her record. “If Kamala Harris wants people who care about dismantling mass incarceration and correcting miscarriages of justice to vote for her,” law professor Lara Bazleon wrote in a widely-shared New York Times op-ed last week, “she needs to radically break with her past.”

The op-ed, which cites instances in which Harris backed anti-progressive policies and upheld controversial charges, was rebutted by longtime civil rights advocate Lateefah Simon, who wrote that Harris “became a prosecutor to give the job a perspective it had sorely lacked: a voice for the voiceless and vulnerable. And that’s what she did.” But the issue has taken root in some corners of the left, where the hashtag #NeverKamala features photos of Harris with agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. With little national name recognition (a September CNN survey found that 51 percent of registered voters didn’t know who she was) the backlash to her record as a prosecutor could represent one of her biggest—or at least her earliest—struggles. In a race packed with progressive candidates, the left’s attempt to paint Harris as a “dirty cop” could single her out at a moment when the party is focused on criminal justice reform.

At the same time, Harris’s stone-faced evisceration of former attorney general Jeff Sessions is one of the things that propelled her to prominence in the first place. And her steely demeanor may be the perfect foil to an untethered Donald Trump as he flails in the face of the Russia investigation. If she hopes to win over the small faction of the left that’s in revolt, Harris will have to balance her past with the image she hopes to project. But judging from her slogan, she’s leaning into the challenge.

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