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March 29, 2024

In Reno, 2020 hopeful Kamala Harris talks taxes and teachers

Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris / AP

California Sen. Kamala Harris speaks to more than 100 people who jammed the Washoe County Democratic headquarters in Reno on Tuesday, April 2, 2019, for her fist presidential campaign stop in Northern Nevada.

Updated Tuesday, April 2, 2019 | 6:53 p.m.

RENO — California Sen. Kamala Harris told Northern Nevada Democrats on Tuesday she's a fighter who can take back the White House in 2020, cut taxes for working-class Americans and give teachers their biggest pay raise in U.S. history.

Making her first campaign visit to the northern end of the early caucus state, Harris told more than 100 people who jammed the Washoe County Democratic headquarters in Reno she feels like they are her "first-cousins" because they share a state border.

"I fully, fully intend to win this election," said Harris, the first Democratic presidential candidate to visit northern Nevada this year. She held a rally in Las Vegas in early March and spoke at a conference for black women entrepreneurs.

After a 30-minute speech filled with optimism in Reno on Tuesday, Harris was asked by a man in attendance if it is possible to stay out of the political gutter in her attempt to defeat President Donald Trump next year.

"I think it is critically important that our nominee knows how to fight, and I do," the former California attorney general said. "But I also do believe this has to be — in our spirit and in our hearts and in our fists — a fight that is won out of optimism. Because this election guys as far as I'm concerned is bigger than the guy who is in the White House."

Harris' Reno debut wasn't without some conflict. She assured a Native American woman who interrupted her speech she would look into her concerns about U.S. violations of tribal treaties. She also defended her opposition to the death penalty when questioned by a Jewish American woman who said she's a strong supporter of capital punishment partly because her grandfather was killed during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.

Later Tuesday, at an education round-table at a Carson City middle school, she touted her plan to raise teachers' salaries. She has vowed to spend $315 billion over 10 years to boost teacher pay nationally by an average of $13,500.

In Nevada, her formula would result in an average raise of $15,000 for each of the state's 17,000 teachers, the equivalent of a 26 percent pay hike, according to her campaign.

Harris says her education proposal will be financed by strengthening the estate tax and closing tax loopholes that benefit the rich. She said U.S. taxpayers should look at the expense of the proposal the same way as corporate leaders who want to grow their companies.

"They don't look at it as a cost. They look at it as an investment," she said. "We are a society that says we care about education, but not so much the education of other people's children."

Harris said the U.S. Education Department under her administration would be very different than the one run now by Secretary Betsy DeVos.

"Instead of wanting to put a gun in a teacher's hand, give a teacher a raise," Harris said.

She also vowed to "vigorously defend" the right of teachers to join unions and bargain collectively.

Harris was scheduled to speak Tuesday night at a Carson City fundraiser to Battle Born Progress, an alliance of union workers, minorities and social activists in the key western swing state where Latinos make up nearly one-third of the electorate and African Americans about 10 percent.

Nevada, which elected its first Democratic governor in 20 years in November, is the only state in the nation with an overall female majority in the Legislature.

Its presidential caucuses set for Feb. 22, 2020, follow only New Hampshire and Iowa in the nominating process.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — another Democrat presidential hopeful — is expected to hold a rally Saturday in Reno.