Why John Haggerty Is A Candidate For California Attorney General In2014

1. The Current Attorney General Kamala Harris Has Failed To Implement The Death Penalty: There are currently 741 persons on death row at San Quentin most of whom were convicted of murdering police officers, children, or multiple persons, often in the most violent of manners and with the most depraved of motives. Yet not a single one of them has been executed since 2006 and only 13 have been executed since the 1970’s. This tragic situation exists because liberal politicians, such as the current Attorney General Kamala Harris and Governor Jerry Brown, along with judges such as Jeremy Fogel, have persistently stalled the return of the death penalty to California by permitting multiple lawsuits and bungled bureaucratic rule-making to drag on and on and on.

Deliberately ignoring the fact that most states use a one-drug execution procedure that has already been allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court, Kamala Harris and Jerry Brown have persisted in pursuing a problematical three-drug procedure. Since both of these politicians are longstanding opponents of the death penalty one can reasonably suspect that they are trying to stall implementation of the death penalty. Whatever their motives, the results are clear: the safety of every Californian in their homes, their workplaces, and in public is severely endangered each day that California is denied the deterrent benefits of a regularly implemented death penalty.

Since 1978 Californians have repeatedly voted to implement the death penalty and hundreds of California juries have unanimously voted to send murderers to death row. In 1986 California voters even removed Chief Justice Rose Bird and two of her colleagues from the Supreme Court after those judges reversed virtually every death sentence that came before them. Before she was Attorney General, as San Francisco’s district attorney, Kamala Harris refused to seek the death penalty against: (a) the murderer of a San Francisco police officer; and (b) an illegal immigrant who murdered three people in cold blood. It should therefore come as no surprise that not a single murderer has been executed since she became California’s Attorney General in 2010.

Kamala Harris and Jerry Brown refuse to accept the fact that the death penalty is a just, effective, and necessary deterrent. The families of victims of duly convicted murderers should not have to pay one cent in taxes to keep these murderers alive. Nor should the taxpayers have to provide them with room, board, and medical care (“three hots, a cot, and a shot”) for the rest of their long lives.

Furthermore, whenever it is implemented on a regular basis, the death penalty deters murder. Most criminals, themselves, believe that the death penalty deters criminals. Organized crime, drug gangs, and other felons routinely “execute” fellow criminals who violate their “rules”. Murderers have little conscience. They only live for the “here and now” and that is the only thing which can be taken away from them. Even Democratic Senator Feinstein once recounted how, when she served on the Parole Board in the 1960’s, parole applicants often told her that they would never put bullets in their guns during a holdup because they did not want to accidentally kill the store clerk and end up on death row.

In sum, Kamala Harris’ persistent refusal to implement the death penalty and her failure to end the lawsuits that are stalling its use are gravely endangering the safety of us all. For this reason alone, Kamala Harris should be voted out of office on June 3, 2014, as Rose Bird was in 1986.Return above

2. The Current Attorney General Kamala Harris Has Deliberately Refused To Defend Our Constitution: Throughout her current term as California’s Attorney General, Kamala Harris has deliberately refused to defend our Constitution in the federal courts where it is being attacked. In 2008 California voters passed Proposition 8 as a constitutional measure to reconfirm that, under California law, marriage is the union of a man and a woman. Kamala Harris refused to defend this constitutional measure against a federal lawsuit that was brought by some same-sex couples who--disregarding the democratic processes of our state--decided to sue California and ask the federal courts to nullify Proposition 8.

There would not even be a California Attorney General if it were not for the California Constitution! The California Constitution created that office and made the Attorney General “the chief law officer of the State” whose responsibility it is “to see that the laws of the State are uniformly and adequately enforced.” (Art. V, § 13.) Upon assuming the office of Attorney General, Kamala Harris took an oath to “support and defend” our state Constitution. (Art. XX, § 3.) In addition, California Government Code § 12512 required her as Attorney General to “defend all causes to which the State, or any State officer is a party”.

Yet, Kamala Harris deliberately refused to defend our Constitution in the Proposition 8 case, claiming that, in her “opinion,” the part of our Constitution, under attack in that case, violated the federal Constitution. This was an unprecedented dereliction of duty on her part that was without merit for each of the following reasons:

First, the U.S. Supreme Court has never, to this day, held that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. Indeed, the very same U.S. Supreme Court, which five years earlier in 1967 held that interracial male-female couples had a constitutional right to marry, held, without hesitation, and on the merits, that same-sex couples do not have a right to marry. (Baker v. Nelson (1972) 409 U.S. 810.) Consequently, Ms. Harris’ “opinion” is not only unsupported by precedent, it is actually contradicted by the only precedent on point.

Second, when she refused to defend Proposition 8, Kamala Harris must have known that the U.S. Supreme Court would hold (as it ultimately did) that only she and Governor Brown had the “legal standing” to defend Proposition 8 in a federal court. She must have known this because: (a) that Court had strongly indicated in earlier cases that it applies the doctrine of “legal standing” more narrowly than the California courts do such that it would rule that the official ballot committee for Proposition 8 could not defend it; (b) the opponents of Proposition 8 strongly urged the Court to rule that way; and (c) the U.S. Supreme Court had expressly directed all of the parties to brief the subject of legal standing. Accordingly, Kamala Harris knew that her failure to defend Proposition 8 would: (a) torpedo California’s right to receive a prompt decision on the merits of its Constitution; and (b) unfairly force the defenders of Proposition 8 to fight a two-front battle where they would have to defend, not only Proposition 8, but their own legal standing at the same time.

Third, besides being completely arrogant, Kamala Harris’ assumption that she can torpedo any provision of the California Constitution by simply refusing to defend it in federal court, based solely on her “opinion” of its validity, violates our entire constitutional system. We do not allow our police officers (who are also sworn to defend our Constitution) to defend and enforce only those laws that they believe are constitutional. What is the next part of our Constitution that Kamala Harris will refuse to defend? Proposition 13? Proposition 209? Proposition 65? Will she also deny to each of those constitutional provisions their day in court? This egregious dereliction of duty on the part of Kamala Harris must not be allowed to stand.

As a result of Kamala Harris’ refusal to do her duty, our state’s Constitution was denied its “day in court” because the U.S. Supreme Court then chose not to decide Proposition 8 on its merits but, instead, left an adverse, divided, 9th Circuit federal Court of Appeal ruling stand--a truly unprecedented result. For this reason alone, Kamala Harris must be voted out of office on June 3, 2014. With both the death penalty and Proposition 8, Kamala Harris has exhibited an unmistakable, arrogant pattern of torpedoing the clearly, repeatedly, and democratically expressed constitutional will of the people of our state.Return above

3. Kamala Harris Has Been Ineffective In Protecting Californians Against Crimes of Violence and Theft: News reports in both the print and broadcast media clearly reveal that crimes of violence and theft are rapidly rising in California. More people are being killed, cheated, robbed, mugged, embezzled, burgled, assaulted, beaten, and abused in every part of our state. More and more of our cities and towns are plagued with aggressive vagrants. More and more billions of dollars are being lost to shoplifters each year.

Kamala Harris has done little, if anything, to reverse, or even stop, any of these alarming trends. Oakland, the city in which she was born and raised, is shockingly riddled with killings and lawlessness. San Francisco, the city where she was once DA, is saturated with theft, violence, and aggressive vagrancy. Recently, a vagrant repeatedly urinated on the books in the San Francisco Public Library. Yet, while Senator Feinstein at least wrote a letter to the library’s Board of Trustees complaining of this unacceptable situation, Kamala Harris did nothing.

Similarly, Kamala Harris has failed to adequately defend our state’s longstanding policy of keeping dangerous criminals incarcerated. She has failed to obtain reversals of rulings of liberal judges that are releasing tens of thousands of dangerous criminals from prison before their sentences are completed. In a similar vein, she has also failed to adequately assist federal immigration authorities in deporting dangerous criminal aliens from our state. Finally, Kamala Harris has failed to spearhead any campaigns against petty crime like the ones Mayor Giuliani so successfully waged in New York City during the 1990’s. In so many ways, Kamala Harris just does not seem to care about any of these problems or their solutions.

Whether she cares or not, Kamala Harris has not delivered any results in our state’s seemingly endless struggle against crimes of violence and theft. For this additional reason, Kamala Harris must be voted out of office in the June 3, 2014, primary election.Return above

4. Kamala Harris Is Not Enforcing The Funding Provisions Of The High Speed Rail Measure: When the people of California passed Proposition 1A in 2008 to establish a high speed rail link between the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles they included in Proposition 1A several, specific provisions which prohibited that project from proceeding if certain sources of financing were absent. Recently, in late 2013, after reviewing all of the evidence, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny ruled that the necessary financing, required by Proposition 1A, was not present such that the project could not legally proceed. Both Governor Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris are not happy with this ruling.

Judge Kenny is a respected and experienced jurist, who was appointed in 2003 by Governor Gray Davis, a Democrat and once Governor Brown’s Chief of Staff. Judge Kenny was only declaring what the financial facts plainly reveal--the numbers do not add up. Even the Legislative Analyst’s Office for the Democrat-controlled, state Legislature found that the funding plan for the high speed rail project is not in accord with the requirements of Proposition 1A.

Yet Kamala Harris was so unhappy with Judge Kenny’s ruling that she rushed to the California Supreme Court with the extraordinary request that she be excused from first having to appeal Judge Kenny’s ruling to the California Court of Appeal and have her appeal heard right away by the California Supreme Court, itself. (If only she were half as expeditious in implementing our state’s death penalty). In any event, the Supreme Court denied her strange request and, instead, directed the Court of Appeal to promptly hear and decide the case.

Proposition 1A only authorizes a responsibly funded project. Californians did not vote for another Bay Bridge boondoggle. Yet, once again, as with the death penalty and Proposition 8, Kamala Harris is blatantly disregarding the will of the people of this state by trying to force a vast, poorly financed, multi-billion dollar project down their throat. For this additional reason, Kamala Harris must be voted out of office in the June 3, 2014, primary election.Return above

5. Kamala Harris Is Undermining The Initiative Process By Writing Unfair Ballot Summaries: In 2012 the mayors of San Jose and San Diego led successful grassroots campaigns to pass local pension solvency measures by substantial margins. But two years later, when San Jose’s Mayor Chuck Reed attempted to get a statewide pension solvency initiative on the ballot, the current Attorney General Kamala Harris managed to nip his effort in the bud by her use of the power of her office to write a ballot summary for that initiative that was neither neutral nor accurate.

In her ballot summary Kamala Harris misleadingly described the initiative as one that “eliminates constitutional protections for vested pension” benefits. This was a misleading description because the California Constitution, itself, does not set forth such protections. Her ballot summary was very similar to the one that her predecessor, Jerry Brown, prepared for Proposition 8 in 2008 which said that that initiative: “Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry” even though the California Constitution has never mentioned any such right.

Mayor Reed was recently forced to withdraw his proposed initiative after Kamala Harris refused to provide it with an accurate ballot summary. Through these cynical word games Kamala Harris and Jerry Brown have repeatedly sought to deter Californians from voting in favor of important initiatives by misleading them into believing that those initiatives would drastically “eliminate constitutional rights”. Had Governor Brown not played these games with Proposition 8, that initiative would have passed with an even bigger margin than it did in 2008 (when even President Obama was against “same-sex marriage” before he was for it). Likewise, had Kamala Harris not played games with Mayor Reed’s proposed initiative, the people of California would have had a meaningful, democratic opportunity to help resolve the various pension challenges which now face our state. But Kamala Harris and her games destroyed that opportunity.

During her first term in office daily newspapers as varied in their political viewpoints as the Sacramento Bee, the Contra Costa Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Wall Street Journal have all criticized the manner in which Kamala Harris has drafted her ballot summaries. Indeed, it is plain for all to see that she does not respect the democratic processes of our state by which its people enact our Constitution. For this important, additional reason, Kamala Harris must be voted out of office in the June 3, 2014, primary election. Return above

Summary: If the current Attorney General Kamala Harris were not so derelict in her duties to implement California’s death penalty, defend California’s Constitution, combat crimes of violence and theft, enforce the financial safeguards set forth in California’s bond measures, and write accurate ballot summaries. John Haggerty would not be running for the office of California Attorney General today. But she is in dereliction of each of these vitally important duties. So John is seeking to replace her as our state’s next Attorney General on the June 3rd ballot.

As is more fully set forth on the “Who is John Haggerty?” webpage of this website, John has worked hard since 1987, both as an attorney and as a citizen, to help California and its people by: advancing veterans rights; preserving the death penalty; ending reverse discrimination in government employment; improving California’s jury instructions; supporting terms limits, expanding parental choice in education; helping protect the unborn; and upholding marriage. If California elects John Haggerty as our next Attorney General, he will be most grateful and honored to continue his career of service to this state.

As is more fully set forth on the “What Will John Do As Attorney General?” webpage of this website, John Haggerty will work hard and smart to serve the people of California on several important fronts. In addition to enforcing the death penalty, combating California’s unacceptably high levels of crime, and defending California’s Constitution, John will also energetically pursue a reduction in the unacceptably large number of illegal immigrants who are now trespassing in our state; spearhead effective statewide campaigns against shoplifting and aggressive vagrancy which are plaguing our state; work closely with all governmental agencies and the public to crack down on crime; and support the right of the people of California to form two new states--Northern California and Southern California--if they so choose.Return above

For all of these reasons, John Haggerty respectfully asks you to vote to elect him as your next Attorney General in the June 3, 2014, primary election.