It was the first summer of the new Trump administration, and an ambitious Democratic senator was seeking bipartisan approval on an issue central to her biography.
She had her eye on a Republican senator who was eager to break with his party’s orthodoxy and who had a strong libertarian character, rooted in the rights of the individual.
And so, in the summer of 2017, a brief but meaningful political marriage was born between Kamala Harris and Rand Paul.
The work that united them: criminal justice reform.
“I approached Rand Paul early in my time in the Senate about the need to reform the American bail system. To some it’s interesting, to me it was predictable,” Harris told CNN in an interview at the time. “He said to me, ‘Kamala, Appalachia loves this because all over the country there are poor people who know the injustice of this system.’ So we found common ground.”
When Paul spoke to Jake Tapper in 2017, he was especially excited about the new senator from California, who would become Vice President of the United States just four years later.
“What’s interesting is we’re at each other’s throats and sometimes I think the media exaggerates how much we’re at each other’s throats,” the Kentucky Republican said. “We’re good friends, Kamala is new to Washington, but we immediately started talking about criminal justice reform.”
Now, in the midst of the presidential election, Paul believes the Democratic candidate has dark motives for his proposal.
“I think she was trying to change her reputation because in California she was known for locking up young black men for marijuana rather than for criminal justice reform,” Paul said in a statement to the Herald-Leader.
Yet this unlikely duo has written legislation to encourage states to reform their bail systems, which keep defendants behind bars unless they can come up with the money to release them.
The Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act sought to prioritize “individualized, pretrial assessments” that would allow for the release from custody of defendants who do not pose a flight risk or engage in further criminal conduct.
More than half of the U.S. prison population consists of inmates awaiting trial who have not yet been convicted of a crime.
Supporters said the Harris-Paul legislation would reverse the problem of mass incarceration, which has left prisons overcrowded. Paul predicted the measure could have as many as 60 votes in the Senate.
But the bill never got a hearing, let alone a vote in the Senate — a victim of timing, priorities and a lack of support from Senate leadership,
Yet during her 2019 presidential bid, Harris called Paul her candidate during a nationally televised Democratic primary debate, citing their partnership as evidence of her bipartisan credentials.
“He and I don’t agree on almost anything, but we agree on that. And after we joined forces, he said to me, ‘Kamala, you know, Appalachia loves this.’ And that really drove home the point that the vast majority of us have much more in common than what divides us,” Harris said.
When she was named Joe Biden’s running mate, she named Paul to host Andy Cohen as the Republican she had the strongest connection with.
The fracture
But the relationship between Harris and Paul was significantly damaged in 2020 when a heated debate arose over the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act.
Paul opposed legislation that would have made the brutal act of lynching a federal hate crime. He argued that specific language would have resulted in more petty crimes being characterized as lynchings, a horrific act of violence that had its roots in the Jim Crow South.
“This bill would devalue the meaning of lynching by defining it so broadly that it includes a minor bruise or abrasion,” Paul said on the Senate floor in early June 2020. “Our national history of racial terrorism demands more seriousness from us than that.”
Harris responded that it was “ridiculous” to define lynchings in the most literal sense.
“It shouldn’t take mutilation or torture to recognize a lynching when we see it and recognize it under federal law and call it what it is, which is that it is a crime that should be punished with accountability and consequences,” she said.
In 2022, Paul signed a revised version of the bill, which was eventually signed by President Biden.
But Paul is still angry about the way Harris characterized his efforts to limit the scope of the legislation.
“I was really unhappy with the way she handled that problem, and if she wanted to be part of the solution, she could have supported the necessary changes that I proposed to strengthen the law and make sure that lynchings are treated as the heinous crime that they are. I co-sponsored and voted for the new version of the law, which passed,” Paul said. “It wasn’t always easy to work with her during her career here.”
Last week, Paul sent an email headlined, “Proof Kamala Abused Her Power.”
In an accompanying video clip, Harris explains her power as a prosecutor and how she “can charge someone with a felony — the lowest possible offense … with one swipe of my pen.”
Harris’ campaign did not respond to questions about Paul’s criticism.
The Future
Harris has not prioritized criminal justice as a major campaign issue. Her campaign website briefly mentions work on “critical issues like criminal justice reform” along with “climate action, infrastructure investment and election security.”
Some observers have pointed to Harris’ choice of Tim Walz — and his advocacy for reform in Minnesota — as evidence that this would be a priority in the new Democratic administration.
But it is too early to predict how criminal justice – or any other issue – will fit into the future political matrix 80 days before the election.
“Their prior work is worth highlighting, but what happens in 2025 and beyond will depend in large part on the perceived politics after the 2024 vote,” said Douglas Berman, an expert on criminal justice and sentencing at Ohio State University.
It has not gone unnoticed by Trump’s advisers that Paul has not yet endorsed the president.
If Trump were to win another term, he certainly wouldn’t forget that Kentucky’s junior senator was on the sidelines.
That leaves the argument that Paul could wield more influence with a President Harris more motivated to reach out to GOP allies in a deeply divided Senate.
“Senator Paul and some other GOP folks have always shown interest in working across the divide on some form of criminal justice reform,” Berman said. “But the devil is always in the details, and getting from good ideas to actual laws is often the ongoing challenge.”
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is withholding support from Trump because his top adviser works for RFK Jr.
