NEW YORK (AP) ‐ Democratic presidential candidates on Friday touted their plans on criminal justice reform, the study of reparations and other racial equality issues, highlighting the critical role black voters will play in choosing the party’s 2020 nominee.Speaking at the National Action Network’s conference in New York, California Sen. Kamala Harris pledged to double the size of the Justice Department’s civil rights division and to sign legislation creating a commission to study reparations to African Americans hurt by slavery. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also said he would sign that reparations bill, even as he emphasized the importance of a broader anti-poverty policy.
"We know that they are using the Department of Justice in a way that is about politics and not about pursuit of equality," Harris, one of two black leading candidates for the party’s nomination, told the receptive audience. Earlier on Friday, she told a radio interviewer she would be open to choosing a woman as her running mate if she wins the nomination to take on President Donald Trump.
Sanders, who fell short in his 2016 presidential bid but is a front-runner in 2020, elated the crowd by jabbing at Trump as "a racist, sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe and a religious bigot."