Dear Kamala Harris, don't run for office. There's a far more important job for you

San Francisco Chronicle​

14 hours ago

From: Joe Mathews
Please don't run for governor in 2026. Don't bother running for president in 2028.
Instead, take a job more important than either of those posts. It's a job that would fit you even better than the Chloé suits you wore during last year's campaign.
It's a job that doesn't exist, but one that California will need to survive this awful moment.
Madame Vice President, please use your stature to convince the state to establish the California Autonomy Authority — as an independent commission or part of the executive branch — with you as its founding director.
California needs a new agency with broad powers to defend itself against the existential threat of a criminal, authoritarian American nation-state.
President Donald Trump's regime has effectively declared war against Californians. Trump dispatched secret police to seize Californians off the streets, deployed troops to back up the secret police, canceled our environmental laws, and illegally cut off funding for vital programs.
While Trumpists attack us constantly, we Californians have no full-time body to defend ourselves in this war. Instead, our officials are forced to split their attention between governing their own jurisdictions and defending against federal attacks.
In Los Angeles, the federal secret police started arresting people before local leadership, preoccupied with fire rebuilding, knew they were there. Gov. Gavin Newsom has struggled to reconcile the monumental job of managing California's housing and climate crises with the new full-time job of fighting against the federal invasion. His shifting public stances (He's fighting Trump! He's reaching out to Trump!) and presidential ambitions sow cynicism rather than trust. Attorney General Rob Bonta is in a similar bind, juggling litigation against the U.S. with serving as the state's top law enforcement official.
We need our public officials to focus on their actual jobs. And we need someone else to take charge of protecting our democracy and defending California against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Your whole career has prepared you for this urgent assignment. Your deep experience in local law enforcement — as San Francisco district attorney — should help you convince local governments, especially local police, to collaborate in defense against Trump.
Your six years as California attorney general, representing the entirety of the state government, gave you visibility on state vulnerabilities that Trump might exploit.
Your four years in the White House as vice president taught you how intelligence agencies, departments, the military and the U.S. government respond in crises — all lessons that can be applied now in defense of California. You also built contacts across this country (from your presidential campaign) and in world capitals (from your VP travels) that could support California in this moment.
In this novel role, you'd combine your public service experiences.
For starters, this is a crime-fighting job. Trump is a convicted felon who is violating the law and the Constitution, and his administration, which embraces corruption, has likely been infiltrated by criminals or foreign enterprises seeking advantage. Using the authority's subpoena power, you should investigate and expose criminality — because the Trump-controlled U.S. Department of Justice won't. You also could identify and seek prosecution or civil remedies against masked federal agents who violate Californians' rights.
In the process, your authority would create a record of the U.S. regime's crimes to support future federal or international prosecutions, or even a truth-and-reconciliation commission.
The job would also involve policymaking. You would determine which laws or governing structures offer California and its local governments the most protection against federal attack. To do that, you might end up creating new agencies in California and possibly other allied states, to replace the federal departments Trump is dismantling.
To make this work, you must commit to a term of at least five years. That way, you can serve as the bridge between Newsom, who leaves office at the end of 2026, and the next governor — thus discouraging the Trump administration from exploiting California's transfer of power. And since your term would go to 2030, two years beyond the 2028 presidential election, you'd make clear that California won't stop defending its autonomy even after Trump is gone.
Yes, taking this new gig would mean not running for governor or president. But that's not a big sacrifice. Your donors are unenthusiastic about the governor's race, and polls show California voters are at best lukewarm about you. And the Trump people are already busy making sure the 2028 presidential election won't be free or fair. (Betting markets actually give Trump better odds of winning an unconstitutional third term than of any Democrat winning the election.)
So, stop debating between running to serve the state (in two years) or the nation (in four). Instead, and right now, start creating and leading a new authority to serve both.