Vice President Kamala Harris was rated as the second most liberal senator in the 116th Congress, behind only Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, according to GovTrack.
The analysis aims to rank how partisan different senators are based on “whether they sponsor and cosponsor overlapping sets of bills and resolutions with other Members of Congress,” said GovTrack — a non-partisan organization that tracks lawmakers and their voting records. Based on this method, Harris was ranked the second most liberal member of the 116th Congress, which ran from January 3, 2019 to January 3, 2021.
One metric, which compared how many bipartisan bills each senator co-sponsored relative to how many bills they co-sponsored overall, found just 14.4% of the bills she co-sponsored were bipartisan, putting her at 97th out of all 100 senators. Moreover, during the 116th Congress, Harris had just one legislative bill she proposed be enacted into law, making her tied for 87th in that category.
Harris’ GovTrack rating runs counter to reporting that characterizes her as a middle of the road politician, with The New York Times once describing her as a “pragmatic moderate” in August 2020.
Harris has taken flack for taking a hardline stance on cannabis during her time as California’s attorney general, during which she locked up nearly 2,000 people for marijuana-related offenses, and resisted a new parole program on the grounds it would create a void in the prison labor pool.
Yet after entering the Senate, Harris announced a bill to decriminalize marijuana possession.
Harris’ policy record on healthcare reform also is mixed.
In 2017, she co-signed Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill, which aimed to abolish private insurance and create a new single-payer system with the federal government acting as the sole provider of healthcare services. In July 2019, however, she proposed her own “Medicare for All” bill which permitted private insurers to exist if they adhered to “strict Medicare requirements on costs and benefits.”
Later, as vice president, Harris went further towards the center, supporting Biden’s healthcare strategy of boosting enrollment in Medicaid and increasing price transparency on pharmaceuticals.
“Our analysis is at odds with her documented pre-Congress career of being pragmatic or moderate,” GovTrack founder, Josh Tauberer, told the Sacramento Bee in 2020, “and it remains to be seen which part of her career – her actions as a district attorney and Attorney General or her policy proposals in Congress – would be reflected greater in a Biden administration.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
