California Attorney General Kamala Harris has a message for all those critics: She welcomes the entrance of other candidates to the 2016 Senate race, and she “absolutely” didn’t cut a deal with Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom on which one of the two would run for governor.
Harris’ nascent Senate campaign was barely public last month before supporters (namely former Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown ) were urging other candidates to steer clear of the race and critics were accusing her of trying to clear the field. On Wednesday, in what Harris said was her first interview since announcing her candidacy, the former prosecutor flatly denied accusations that she is trying to clear the field.
“I welcome, and I think it is important, that anyone who wants to be in this race if they believe that that is … where they can make a difference, I fully welcome them into the race,” she said. “And I’ll tell you … every race I have fought, at the beginning people have told me I couldn’t win, or it wasn’t my time, or some other combination of discouragement, and I have jumped into those races, because I believed I could make a difference, and so I would never stand in the way of anyone wanting to participate in this process and be a part of it.”
Harris also downplayed Wednesday’s Field Poll, which showed her nearly at the top of a long list of potential candidates — but trailing former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who hasn’t expressed any interest in the race.