But three of those candidates — Sen. Kamala Harris, Rep. Val Demings and, most notably, Sen. Amy Klobuchar — now find their records under new scrutiny in a presidential race transformed in the wake of national outrage surrounding Monday‘s death of George Floyd under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer.
As a former Minneapolis-area prosecutor from 1996 to 2006, Klobuchar had already earned the antipathy of social-justice activists for her tough-on-crime record and history of handling police violence. But those issues are now radioactive with the caught-on-camera death of a black man at the hands of the same officer who was once probed in a police-related death while she worked as a local prosecutor.
Progressives — and right-wing trolls — have also hammered Harris, a former Democratic presidential contender herself, for her resume as a state attorney general and local prosecutor, going so far as to push a “Kamala is a cop” narrative designed to diminish and disqualify her in the eyes of the left.
Demings, who served as Orlando’s first woman police chief, oversaw a department that has had a history of criticism for using excessive force.
