Can Kamala Harris repeat Obama’s success with black voters? It’s complicated

Yet interviews with more than 30 black voters and political leaders in early primary states like South Carolina and her home state, California, show that Ms. Harris faces challenges. She will have to persuade black activists skeptical of her record as a prosecutor; overcome sexism and a bias on the part of some voters that a female candidate cannot beat President Trump; and work to gain broader support from black men, who generally expressed more wariness about Ms. Harris in interviews than black women.

She would also need to win over left-leaning young black voters, some of whom were ultimately disenchanted by Mr. Obama’s presidency and may value political ideology more than racial solidarity…

“Didn’t she do the three strikes stuff?” asked Tyrone Brown, a 48-year-old Columbia, S.C., resident, as he received a haircut and a shave. He was referring to Ms. Harris’s decision not to endorse a public effort to reduce the prison population by changing California’s punitive “three strikes” sentencing law. “I don’t know, I need to see her devotion to the African-American community.”