Here's where Kamala Harris stands on Big Tech, taxes, marijuana

Senator Kamala Harris became the first woman of color to be put on a presidential ticket Tuesday, after Joe Biden announced her as his Democratic vice presidential running mate. Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan breaks down where the VP pick stands on issues like cannabis regulation and taxes.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: Yesterday big news in the politics world as Joe Biden selected senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. The campaign foes turned into a running mate friends here as they combined on the ticket, yet they are still wide apart on some policy issues and maybe closer together on others.

And here to break down those is Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan. And, Alexis, I guess they're coming together. They're going to have to come together, but where do they stand apart?

ALEXIS KEENAN: They're going to have to. They're going to have to. Well, Zack, I wrote a piece today about the senator's former track record as attorney general of California. She's a longtime attorney, a longtime prosecutor, though she's been criticized for that part of her tenure for going a bit too soft on big tech.

She served as AG for about six years from 2011 to 2016, and that's a time when there was a significant rise in the amount of power that was wielded by and that is now wielded by these big tech companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, now of course the focus of multiple antitrust investigations, both from congressional lawmakers, as well as from state and local regulators.

Now Facebook, and one in particular that came during Kamala's tenure, which IPOed in 2012, if you remember, the acquisitions of both Instagram in 2012 as well as WhatsApp both under heavy scrutiny for Facebook alleged, anti-competitive behavior. Those happened during her time as AG. So that's really where the criticism comes from.

The current AG is now on board with looking into those companies, of course, has gone on with the rest of states attorneys general across the country in launching investigations, at least reportedly into Facebook and Google.

Though Senator Harris did make an about-face. In an interview with CNN she did say last year that the companies need a serious look in terms of monopolistic, perhaps, behavior and that she likened the companies to really utilities is what she said.

ZACK GUZMAN: On that front, and it's not just that. If you pair-- when you pair all their other things a very interesting article, as you wrote, and you can watch all of that, read more into Alexis' insight there, not just on taxes but also their varying stances on marijuana as well. But that'll do it here.