We got this, America.

California is sending you the best possible person to weather whatever the next three-plus months hold.

Let’s be honest about Kamala Harris. We’re not giving you our most charismatic public speaker. Her sentences can be as awkward as Joe Biden’s.

We’re not giving you our most disciplined politician. She’ll crack an ill-considered joke, or make a mistake in a meeting that requires clean-up.

What we are giving you is someone who can emerge improbably triumphant from losing situations. Someone who will take more crap than anyone possibly could.

The best explanation of Kamala Harris came from a San Francisco political consultant, who compared her to Andy Dufresne, the main character of the 1994 film “The Shawshank Redemption.”

Dufresne was a falsely convicted banker who escapes Shawshank Prison through a 500-yard-long sewage pipe. “Andy Dufresne,” the consultant said, quoting a movie line, “who crawled through a river of s–t and came out clean on the other side.”

Because Americans don’t know Harris this way, they are underestimating her. Just like they underestimate California.

Contrary to the stereotypes, 21^st century California is not soft or easy. It’s a crowded, competitive place where everything — even finding an affordable place to live — is a struggle.

The real California made Harris tough. It helps that she spent her early years in the late 60s-early 70s in Berkeley and Oakland, which might be California’s toughest city. As a mixed-race kid, Harris had to learn how to fit in, at a newly integrated elementary school, and at both Hindu Temple and the 23^rd Avenue Church of God. After the divorce of her immigrant parents, she and her sister were raised almost entirely by their mother, who moved them to Montreal.

Harris attended law school not in the leafy Ivy League but at UC Hastings, in the middle of San Francisco’s Tenderloin. She worked as a prosecutor in Alameda County and then San Francisco, on the sorts of cases — sex crimes and child abuse — that harden people.

She launched her political career in the hyper-competitive political culture of San Francisco. Her first election, for San Francisco district attorney, posed the trickiest challenge in politics — beating an incumbent (who was also her boss). She won an upset victory in a three-person race.

Then Harris, still little known, ran statewide, for California attorney general — against a popular Los Angeles Republican, Steve Cooley, who had the state’s law enforcement community behind him. On election night, she appeared to have lost. But when all the votes were counted, she had squeaked through.

When a U.S. Senate seat opened in 2016, Harris was hardly the most popular Democrat in the state. But she jumped into the race early, scared off other contenders and won the seat.

Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign was a disaster. She didn’t make it to the Iowa caucuses. But even after that embarrassment, she crawled through to the vice presidency.

Reviews have been dicey — staff turnover, difficulties with immigration policy. Her polling was lower than the president’s. Until it wasn’t. Now Biden has bowed out and endorsed her.

She doesn’t have the nomination yet. She may face a contested convention. And if she earns the nod, she’ll face a former president who is ready to attack.

Democrats are worried. Because Donald Trump is a constant font of lies and accusations. His strategy, as the now imprisoned Trump advisor Steve Bannon famously said, “is to flood the zone with s–t.”

But this time, his opponent is Kamala Harris. She survived all the b.s. of California. She’s heard every disgusting sexist insult. She sloughed off slurs against two different races.

She’s about to be submerged in it all again. Because American politics is a river of you-know-what.

Which is why this is her moment.

Who better to navigate us through all the crap than Kamala Devi Harris?

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.

Originally Published: July 22, 2024 at 1:51 p.m.

Justice Edward Panelli, who rose from a hardscrabble childhood in Depression-era Santa Clara Valley to the state’s highest court, died Saturday evening in Saratoga at the age of 92.

Panelli’s illustrious legal career spans six decades, beginning as a lawyer in the 1950s, then serving as a Superior Court judge before his appointment to the California Supreme Court in 1985. After retiring, he continued to work as an arbitrator, mediator, legal scholar and educator.

Panelli’s son, Jeff, told this newspaper he would like his father to be remembered as a “hardworking and humble” man, the son of Italian immigrants.

“He was a fair, hardworking man who came from very humble roots. He always kept his immigrant roots close to his heart and kept that as the driving force in his life,” Jeff said. “English was his second language. He never forgot his community and transcended political and idiological thought with common sense. He was a common man.”

In a previous conversation, Edward Panelli talked about his understanding of the human condition and how that affected his judicial career.

“I’ve kinda seen life from the street,” Panelli told Mercury News staff writer John Hubner in a 1986 interview for West magazine. “I know when to zig and when to zag, when to duck and when not to duck. I may not be Oliver Wendell Holmes, but I know what makes people tick. I know how they hurt and why they hurt. I’ve got a much broader feel of the world than if I’d come from a cloistered or protected environment.”

Panelli brought to his career the lessons of living without much.

He was born at home in Santa Clara to Italian immigrants. Pidale Panelli wrestled 100-pound gunnysacks of prunes; Natalina Panelli toiled in the packing sheds, sometimes two shifts a day. Young Edward learned the value of his own work in a field of onions, pulling them for 40 cents an hour.

He earned a tuition scholarship to Santa Clara University in 1949 and graduated with honors. After moving on to SCU’s law school, he finished at the top of his class. His father, who was 54 when Edward was born, died 10 days after his son passed the bar exam in 1955. The new lawyer married Lorna Mondora in 1956, and they had three sons. His mother was 95 when she died in 1990.

Panelli is survived by his sons, Tom, Jeff and Mike, and three grandchildren. Panelli’s wife died in 2019.

Panelli’s mentor at the university was the Rev. Patrick Donohoe, a Jesuit political science professor. When Donohoe later became SCU president, he directed some legal work to his former student, then practicing with cousin Louis Pasquinelli. Panelli later became an SCU trustee and chairman of the board in the 1980s.

His first appointment to the bench was in 1972 by then California Governor Ronald Reagan, and he served all manner of duty in 11 years as a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge: juvenile, civil, probate, family, and criminal courts.

“When I was a juvenile judge, I used to walk out of the courtroom and go around and talk to people,” Panelli said in the 1986 interview. “People would say, ‘Gee, you don’t act like a judge.’ I’d say, ‘If I start to act like a judge, maybe somebody ought to kick me in the ass.’”

He got to use his one-on-one skills after serving on the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco. He then was appointed in San Jose by former Gov. Jerry Brown as presiding judge of the new 6th District appellate branch. In a storied settlement between litigants whose demands had been stuck for 18 months at $2 million vs. zero, Panelli managed a settlement at $665,000 in two days.

His jurisprudence changed dramatically with his next appointment in 1985.

In his eight years on the state Supreme Court, the death penalty did not define Panelli’s tenure, but it certainly dominated his first year in 1986.

Panelli had joined the court late in 1985, the first of Gov. George Deukmejian’s appointments, and he had to stand for reconfirmation the following fall. On the ballot, too, were justices Rose Bird, the chief, and Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin, as well as the court’s senior liberal, Stanley Mosk, and conservative Malcolm Lucas. Bird and the liberals had overturned numerous death penalty verdicts and were the targets of Deukmejian, a coalition of conservative politicians, and special-interest groups.

Panelli chose to distance himself from the battle — so much so that he chose to run in and complete the New York Marathon in under four hours two days before the November election. But he also acknowledged in the 1986 interview with Hubner that his tough upbringing didn’t forecast his stance:

“You would think that my background would incline me to be liberal because I’ve seen some injustices and had some economic difficulties. On the other hand, I tend to be conservative because I’ve been through it and I think, ‘By golly, if I can do it, why can’t everybody?’

“I tend to be a little bit more severe on punishment. I understand the impact environment has, but you can’t use that as an excuse. Growing up, I was always told that you are responsible for the consequences of your actions. If you break the law and get caught, you’re going to pay a price. To me, that’s how the criminal justice system works.”

He survived the 1986 vote, but Bird, Reynoso, and Cruz didn’t, and the court gradually turned into a bench full of Republicans, with Mosk still serving in his late 80s (Mosk was 86 on Sept. 4, 1998).

Panelli said friends had known for years that he would probably serve only about 20 years as a judge. He could have retired with full pension benefits in March 1993 when he was 61 but said he delayed his departure until February 1994 after Chief Justice Malcolm Lucas asked him to stay on.

He was succeeded by Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, an appellate justice who had been Justice Panelli’s senior staff attorney during his first six years on the Supreme Court.

Panelli’s tenure in the California Supreme Court marked several noteworthy majority opinions. Chief among them was the ruling that surrogate-motherhood arrangements did not exploit poor women. “A surrogate’s agreement to bear another woman’s child is a valid contract,” he wrote.

There will be a memorial open to the public on Aug. 16 at 2 p.m. at Mission Santa Clara de Asis at 2 p.m.

Staff writer Ryan Macasero contributed to this story

Originally Published: July 21, 2024 at 4:01 p.m.