The 2007 murder of an Oakland journalist has become a sound bite in the presidential election, featured in a national ad blitz by Donald Trump and supporters that seeks to paint Kamala Harris as soft on crime.
Harris is expected to win California easily, so most Bay Area voters probably won’t see the pair of ads. They claim that Harris was too lenient as district attorney in San Francisco and failed 17 years ago to prevent the killing of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey.
However, a relative of Bailey’s and those familiar with the case say there’s no link between his assassination and Harris’ record as a prosecutor.
“She had nothing to do with it,” Lorelei Waqia, Bailey’s sister, who lives in Atlanta and has seen the ad, said in an interview with the Bay Area News Group.
Reached by email, a Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to the criticism, but pointed to contemporary news accounts the campaign ad used as source material. The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Bailey, an East Bay native and former Oakland Tribune reporter, was murdered in downtown Oakland as he walked to work at the Post where he was investigating a once-venerable Oakland bakery that had descended into crime and corruption.
The ads feature a mugshot of Bailey’s killer, Devaughndre Broussard, and a reenactment of his death in a hail of gunfire in downtown Oakland. They claim that Broussard should have been incarcerated at the time of Bailey’s murder for a prior assault, but Harris, as San Francisco district attorney, cut him a sweetheart deal that allowed his release.
The ads are part of Republican former President Trump’s strategy to undermine Democratic Vice President Harris’ credentials on crime with voters in the Midwest and the South, said Dan Schnur, a University of Southern California politics professor and former Republican campaign spokesperson. He said the issue of crime is one of Trump’s key strengths as a candidate.
“This isn’t the type of ad that’s going to decide the campaign,” Schnur said. “But it’s part of a broader messaging strategy, and if Trump does win, ads like this will have played a major role.”
The first ad, by the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc., landed last week on the social media platform X. The PAC has spent $275.6 million to promote Trump this election cycle. As of Oct. 9, MAGA Inc. had reserved almost $67 million in future ad buys, according to AdImpact, which analyzes political ads.
In the 30-second ad, a photo of Harris is shown alongside a photo of Broussard.
“As San Francisco DA, Kamala Harris let killers go free,” a voice says.
Another 30-second ad paid for by Trump’s campaign is more explicit. The former president posted it Monday on X.
It begins with a photo of person covered in a white sheet at a crime scene and transitions to an actor’s portrayal of Broussard firing a gun and running away.
“This is a journalist named Chauncey Bailey,” a husky voice says. “We can’t show you his face. It was blown away by this man’s 12-gauge shotgun.”
“Unfortunately, the murderer never should have been there,” the ad continues. “He should have been in jail.”
Harris was San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2010. In 2005, two years before Bailey’s murder, Broussard and a group of friends robbed and assaulted a man in San Francisco. Broussard pleaded guilty to assault and a judge sentenced him to a year in county jail and probation.
Prosecutors agreed to probation in part because Broussard was 18 years old and a first-time offender, a deputy district attorney said in 2007. After Broussard was linked to Bailey’s murder, the assaulted man’s father blamed Harris.
But as the county’s chief prosecutor, Harris wouldn’t have personally handled a case like Broussard’s, said Thomas Peele, a journalist who covered Bailey’s assassination. Peele’s book “Killing the Messenger: A Story of Radical Faith, Racism’s Backlash, and the Assassination of a Journalist” details the circumstances of Bailey’s murder.
“It was a pretty standard deal for a first time felony offender,” Peele said.
Broussard spent a year in San Francisco county jail for the 2005 assault. After his release, he fell in with Your Black Muslim Bakery, an Oakland institution that employed young men recently released from prison and put them through military-style training, Peele wrote. The bakery had modeled Black economic self-sufficiency since its founding in the 1960s and evolved into a powerful Oakland institution, with deep political connections.
By the early 2000s, its associates also had a long list of charges for sexual and violent crimes, and was described in news reports as a street gang.
Yusuf Bey IV, the operation’s chief, ordered Broussard to assassinate Bailey in 2007 for investigating the bakery’s financial issues. A jury later convicted Bey IV for ordering the killings of Bailey and two other men. Antoine Mackey also was convicted of helping Broussard carry out Bailey’s murder and that of another man, Michael Wills, the same year. Broussard, Bey IV and Mackey are still in prison.
Last year, Bey IV and Mackey filed motions to overturn their convictions for Bailey’s murder. The office of Alameda District Attorney Pam Price opposed their releases. Price is facing her own accusations of being too lenient as chief prosecutor, as she battles a high-profile recall effort bankrolled by a Piedmont hedge fund executive.
Harris has staked her campaign considerably on her record as a prosecutor, seeking to contrast herself with Trump, who was convicted of nearly three dozen felonies over hush-money payments to a porn star earlier this year.
Trump, meanwhile, has blasted Harris for disorder and crime in California. During a news conference in Los Angeles last month, he said Harris “destroyed San Francisco.”