Vice President Kamala Harris was pressed about her policy developments in her first interview since becoming the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee on Thursday, sitting next to her running mate, Tim Walz.
The highly anticipated interview with CNN’s Dana Bash came after pressure mounted for Harris to answer more questions from nonpartisan reporters and fully outline how her views differ from President Joe Biden’s. She has largely avoided doing so in the 39 days since he decided not to seek re-election and endorsed her instead.
“I think the most important and significant aspect of my policy perspective,” Harris said when asked about the evolution of her policies, “is that my values have not changed.”
However, she admitted that her experience as vice-president has led her to revise her views on certain issues.
“I believe it’s important to build consensus and find a common ground of understanding of where we can actually solve problems,” Harris added, seemingly nodding to how political realities may have influenced her positions.
Harris ran for president in 2019 on a progressive agenda, including Medicare for All, a Green New Deal and a ban on hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting natural gas and oil known as fracking. That campaign fizzled, and when Biden chose Harris as his running mate, she naturally adopted his agenda and platform.
But now that Harris herself is at the top of the ticket — and the policy landscape has changed — it’s unclear how she differs from the policies of her 2019 campaign and Biden’s, some of which are incompatible.
Harris hasn’t been interviewed or appeared at a news conference since Biden stepped aside and endorsed her, meaning the public has seen her almost exclusively through the campaign-focused lens of rallies, web videos and last week’s Democratic National Convention.
Any other modern presidential candidate in history would have given countless solo interviews during the primaries and general election, long before sitting down with their running mate for a joint interview in late summer.
But Harris has had no such luxury, given the timing of her elevation. She has had to recalibrate her policy positions and build a campaign infrastructure during the heat of a presidential election.
At the same time, Harris is attempting to pivot to the ideological center, as is common among presidential candidates ahead of the November elections.
For example, Harris told Bash that she no longer supports a ban on fracking. During her time as vice president, she has seen that the U.S. can achieve its climate goals without a ban on oil and gas extraction, a major industry in the state of Pennsylvania at issue.
“We can do it without banning fracking,” Harris said. “Actually, Dana, Dana, I cast the deciding vote that actually raised fracking rents as vice president. So I know exactly where I stand.”
Yet Harris sometimes appeared to become defensive when pressed to acknowledge that she had changed her position or when asked to comment on the evidence that had led her to change her position.
Asked whether she would stand by her 2019 support for decriminalizing illegal border crossings, Harris did not provide a direct answer but said there should be “consequences” for unauthorized border crossings and touted her experience prosecuting transnational gangs as “attorney general of a border state” in California.
Harris also said she would like to appoint a Republican to her Cabinet.
“I’ve spent my career inviting diversity of opinion. I think it’s important to have people at the table when important decisions are being made who have different perspectives and experiences,” Harris said. “And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was a Republican.”
Walz sat silently for most of the interview before being asked about his own controversies, including moments in his past when he appeared to emphasize parts of his 24 years of experience in the Army National Guard.
In a speech after a 2018 school shooting, Minnesota Governor Walz referred to the weapon used as similar to the one he carried “in the war,” even though he had never seen combat.
Walz said his wife, Gwen, an English teacher, told him “my grammar isn’t always correct,” but he largely dismissed the controversy as Republican nonsense.
“If it’s not that, if it’s an attack on my children for showing me love, or if it’s an attack on my dog — I’m not going to do that. And the one thing I will never do is belittle the service of another member in any way. I never have and I never will. I’ve been very public. I think they can see my students, my former members that I’ve served with, coming forward, and they do. They stand up for me. I certainly own up to my mistakes when I make them.”
The interview lasted just 30 minutes and could only cover a limited range of topics. Many of the tough questions for Harris and Walz remain unanswered. And it had no time to delve into the softer — but often equally compelling to voters — topics of the candidates’ personalities or their relationships with each other.
For example, there were no questions about the messy US withdrawal from Afghanistan or former President Donald Trump’s controversial visit to Arlington National Cemetery this week.
Harris has faced increasing calls from Republicans and many in the news media to answer more tough questions, and it is unlikely that this one interview will silence those who have been vocal in the run-up to the Sept. 10 debate with Trump.
“If you turn around [an interview] “When you accomplish something remarkable, you raise the stakes for yourself,” David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s former top strategist, said during a CNN panel discussion before the interview.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
