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Harris plans to campaign ‘hard’ in New Hampshire

By Kathy Cleveland - Staff Writer | Feb 20, 2019

MANCHESTER – Never once mentioning him by name, Kamala Harris drew sharp contrasts between herself and President Donald Trump during her Tuesday morning speech at Saint Anselm College.

This was the first official New Hampshire visit of the junior U.S. senator from California since January when she confirmed her campaign to run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Though some have questioned her desire to campaign in the first-in-the-nation primary state, Harris quickly dismissed this notion.

“I plan to campaign hard here,” she said and spend time with leaders “who challenge me.”

During the college’s Politics & Eggs breakfast, Harris built her talk around the idea of “truth,” which she said is essential for a trusting relationship between people and their government.

But “speaking truth can make people uncomfortable,” Harris said.

The truth about the economy is an example, she said, because some people say it is doing great, but it is not working for most people. She called for a tax break for families whose income is less than $100,000, because working and middle class families’ financial lives are precarious. Also, she said 40 percent of those in society do not have the savings to cover a $400 emergency.

“A fact in America today is that in 99 percent of the counties in the U.S., if you are a minimum wage worker working full-time, you cannot afford market rate for a one-bedroom apartment,” Harris said.

“We are not directing sufficient resources to education,” the senator said. Some teachers are working two jobs, sometimes three, and they are buying classroom supplies out of their own pocket.

Members of the public pretend to care about education, she said, “but not so much about other people’s children.”

Harris, who is 54, served as California attorney general from 2011 to 2017. She said there is a lot of room for criminal justice reform – and she called the war on drugs a failure.

The senator was in Portsmouth Monday night, where she said the rising seas of climate change are posing a serious threat.

“I grew up around people whose whole purpose was to use science to make people’s lives better,” she said.

The changing future of American jobs is another unpleasant truth this country is not facing, Harris said.

“We are in the midst of an industrial revolution, and we are not preparing the work force” to take 21st century jobs.

During a question and answer session, Harris was asked about funding infrastructure, preventing another government shutdown and immigration control.

Calling Trump’s tax cuts – “a trillion-dollar burden on the American taxpayer,” Harris said these must be repealed.

And America’s “150-year-old infrastructure” is holding back people’s productivity. Therefore, investing in roads and bridges will create jobs and offer good returns on investment.

Another critical piece of infrastructure is elections, she said, and all polling places should have paper ballots.

“Russia can’t hack pieces of paper,” Harris said.

The packed audience at The New England Council’s Politics & Eggs breakfast gave Harris a standing ovation. The biggest applause was came when she asked for better teacher compensation and also when she called Trump’s border wall a “vanity project” and an abuse of power.

“I’ve been to the border. I’ve prosecuted transnational criminal organizations. The idea that he (Trump) is trying to say that we have people that are trying to invade our country to commit mass crimes,” Harris said while shaking her head.

“It’s a crisis of his own making,” she added of Trump.

Harris supports Medicare for All, substance abuse and mental health treatment on demand, and more support for in-home medical care.

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