Loretta Sanchez on Friday accused state Attorney General Kamala Harris, her opponent in California’s U.S. Senate race, of failing to safeguard residents from Donald Trump’s now-defunct for-profit university, drawing a sharp rebuke from Harris’ camp.
Seizing on a story by this news organization about the $6,000 in campaign contributions Harris received from Trump and later donated to charity, Sanchez, an Orange County congresswoman, called on Harris to “immediately produce all documents regarding Trump University.”
Trump donated to several state attorneys general in recent years, including New York’s Eric Schneiderman, who filed a lawsuit against the school for ripping off students. Harris’ office has also investigated the school, but so far has not filed charges. Several Trump University students filed a still-pending civil suit six years ago, which Sanchez insisted should have been enough for Harris to have immediately rejected Trump’s donations in 2011 and 2013.
“Again, we see that Attorney General Kamala Harris fails to protect the people of California,” Sanchez said in a prepared statement. “It is shameful that she accepted campaign contributions from Donald Trump long after a federal lawsuit was filed by California consumers against Trump University in April 2010.”
Harris’ campaign shot back, pointing to a Sacramento Bee article about Sanchez siding with for-profit colleges against the Obama administration, while Harris was securing a $1.1 billion judgment from the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges.
“This is an outrageously hypocritical attack from Loretta Sanchez, one of the top congressional defenders of predatory for-profit colleges,” Harris spokesman Nathan Click said in a statement. “While Kamala Harris has been a national leader prosecuting these institutions, in Congress Sanchez received thousands in campaign contributions from predatory for-profit colleges, shilled for their campuses and even fought against rules to protect California students from the same bad actors.”
Trump’s donations to Harris attracted new attention this past week after reports surfaced that he had donated $25,000 to a group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in 2013 at the same time her office was considering joining Schneiderman’s lawsuit.
Harris continues to lead Sanchez comfortably in polls, including a survey released this past week in which 51 percent of respondents said they were leaning toward Harris, compared with 19 percent toward Sanchez. The internet poll, conducted by California Counts, a consortium of a public radio station and Sacramento State University, was conducted from Aug. 15 to 24. The poll, which was fully completed by 915 people, has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4 percentage points.