By: Samantha Michaels

As soon as President Biden handed the baton to Kamala Harris, who is now expected to clinch the Democratic nomination, her campaign team and many journalists started framing the presidential race in new terms: “the prosecutor vs. the felon.”

The slogan, which you’ve probably heard repeated ad nauseam by now, is a not-so-subtle reference to Donald Trump’s extremely long rap sheet—filled with 34 criminal convictions—and to Harris’ record of convicting law-breakers while she was San Francisco’s district attorney and then California’s attorney general.

Many former presidents started as lawyers, but Harris would be among the rare few, along with Bill Clinton, William McKinley, and Benjamin Harrison, to bring a prosecutor’s resume to the table. (Side note: It has been reported that James Polk was a county prosecutor, but Polk biographer Walter Borneman dug through his sourcing for me and could find no evidence to suggest he was.) Over the past week, we’ve heard Democratic strategists and political commentators speak on what Harris’ legal credentials could mean for the election. But I wanted to talk with a different sort of expert: those who have actually worked inside prosecutors’ offices.

Cristine Soto DeBerry was chief of staff to then-San Francisco DAs George Gascón and Chesa Boudin, just after Harris vacated that office, and now leads the Prosecutors Alliance of California. Miriam Krinsky was a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and the Mid-Atlantic and now runs Fair and Just Prosecution, which works with DAs around the country. And Jamila Hodge, who leads nonprofit Equal Justice USA, previously served as a federal prosecutor in DC and advised the Obama administration on criminal justice policies.

I called them up separately last week after Biden endorsed Harris. Here, they reflect on how Harris’ record as a chief prosecutor could help or hurt her in the race, how it could come in handy if she wins, and what her likely nomination says about these strange times we find ourselves in….