KAMALA HARRIS

Everybody will make mistakes, and for some that mistake will rise to the level of being a crime.

We don't want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful - not only to that member of the community but the entire community.

We're talking about in the Proposition 8 case fundamental rights, civil rights. I offer no apology for the position I took in Prop. 8.

Every day there are homeowners in California who will either receive relief so they can stay in their home, or will be in the foreclosure process and potentially lose their home. And that always weighed heavily on my mind.

I want to use my position of leadership to help move along at a faster pace what I believe and know the Obama administration wants to do around the urgency of climate change.

I was raised to be an independent woman, not the victim of anything.

My parents met when they were graduate students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. They were both active in the civil-rights movement.

People who work for me know that family comes first. And I'm fortunate to have a family that is very supportive of the work I do, so I don't have to live two separate lives.

I'm a career prosecutor. I have been trained, and my experience over decades, is to make decisions after a review of the evidence and the facts. And not to jump up with grand gestures before I've done that. Some might interpret that as being cautious. I would tell you that's just responsible.

We don't have to guess what Mitt Romney would have done if he were president. Because he told us. He said we should let foreclosures - and I quote - 'hit the bottom' so the market could - I quote - 'run its course.'

The bells will ring and the marriages will begin. And it's a great day in our state for equal protection under the law for all people.

What we know is smartphones are everywhere and they are rich in data. What we know is that there are apps once downloaded by the consumer that will also in turn download the consumers' contact book. Most consumers don't want that to happen and don't know it's happening.

Running for office is similar to being a trial lawyer in a very long trial. It requires adrenaline and stamina; it requires being in shape mentally and emotionally. It's a marathon.

I convened the first-ever national training conference for prosecutors on how to promote and deal with hate crime issues in terms of prosecutions and also protocol for defeating the gay panic defense.

I always start my campaigns early, and I run hard. Maybe it comes from the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco politics, where it's not even a contact sport - it's a blood sport. This is how I am as a candidate. This is how I run campaigns.

My mother had a saying: 'Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you're not the last.'

Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

To be smart on crime, we should not be in a position of constantly reacting to crime after it happens. We should be looking at preventing crime before it happens.

I believe in that old adage that 'as goes California, so goes the country.'

We need to incorporate that age-old concept of redemption into the work that we do in the criminal justice system in California.

'Getting smart on crime' does not mean reducing sentences or punishments for crimes.

I strongly believe that for serious and violent criminals, we must absolutely hold them accountable for their crimes and send them to prison.

In California, we have some of the strongest consumer protection laws in the country. While it is easy to conceive of innovation and regulation as mutually exclusive, California is proof that we can do both. We can innovate responsibly.

With the advent of DNA, we know that people have been convicted and sentenced to death who later proved not to be guilty of the crime.