Attorney General Candidates Cooley, Harris to Debate at King Hall
Republican Steve Cooley and Democrat Kamala Harris, the nominees for California attorney general, will face off Oct. 5 at the UC Davis School of Law in their first and, so far, only scheduled debate.
The session will be held from noon to 1 p.m. in the law school's new Kalmanovitz Appellate Courtroom. The candidates also will be available to answer questions afterward, along with UC Davis law professors.
Tickets are not available to the public due to limited space in the courtroom. Some public seating will be available on a first-come basis in a nearby overflow classroom, where the debate will be simulcast. The event also will be webcast live on http://www.law.ucdavis.edu/.
Cooley and Harris will field questions from a panel that will include Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Morain, Los Angeles Times reporter Jack Leonard and San Francisco Chronicle reporter Marisa Lagos. Kevin Riggs, KCRA 3's political reporter, will moderate the session.
The Sacramento Bee is co-sponsoring the debate with UC Davis School of Law.
Cooley and Harris are vying to succeed Jerry Brown, the Democratic nominee for governor, as the state's top law enforcement officer. The attorney general also heads the Department of Justice and serves as chief legal counsel in state litigation.
A Los Angeles native, Cooley obtained a bachelor's degree from California State University, Los Angeles, and a law degree from the University of Southern California Law Center. He was a reserve police officer while attending law school and later became a prosecutor in Antelope Valley.
Cooley was elected Los Angeles County district attorney in 2000 and has twice been reelected. He leads an office with an annual budget of $330 million, with more than 1,000 attorneys, nearly 300 investigators and more than 800 clerical and support personnel who prosecute 60,000 felonies and 130,000 misdemeanors annually.
Harris became the first woman elected San Francisco's district attorney in December 2003. She was re-elected to a second term in November 2007. She supervises an office with 128 attorneys and a $39.5 million budget.
An East Bay native, she attended Howard University, America's oldest historically African American university, and UC Hastings College of the Law. After law school, she served in the Alameda County District Attorney's Office from 1990 to 1998. She joined the San Francisco District Attorney's Office in 1998, where she was named managing attorney of the Career Criminal Unit.