After Kamala Harris’ campaign for president flamed out in late 2019, her California power-player ex advised against her accepting any offer to be second banana on the Democratic ticket, warning that the vice presidency would actually be the nail in the coffin to any future White House ambitions.
Former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown – now 90 – wrote an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle warning his one-time lover Harris to decline Joe Biden’s summer of 2020 offer, because ‘historically, the vice presidency has often ended up being a dead end.’
‘The glory would be short-lived, and historically, the vice presidency has often ended up being a dead end,’ Brown wrote. ‘For every George H.W. Bush, who ascended from the job to the presidency, there’s an Al Gore, who never got there.’
But as Democrats are now falling back in love with Harris out of necessity as they scramble to try and replace Biden at the top of the 2024 ticket following last week’s cringe-worthy presidential debate performance, it appears that Brown got it all wrong.
Or at least he didn’t account for opportunity knocking, because it is precisely Harris’ position as VP that, despite her polling and behind-the-scenes unpopularity, has now made her the obvious choice in the eyes of many to replace Biden.
While Biden has insisted that he is fit to stay in the race and govern should he beat Donald Trump in November, Democratic operatives have reportedly already chosen Harris, and are now even discussing who her running mate should be.
Names on the list include many governors: Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, and Tim Walz of Minnesota, CNN reported.
Additionally, Democratic operatives are circulating an anonymously written Google document titled ‘Unburdened by What Has Been: The Case for Kamala,’ which includes a plan for a Harris presidential campaign.
‘There’s one path out of this mess, and it’s Kamala,’ the document reads.
As Harris’ presidential hopes seem more likely than ever, presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has already attacked her over her romance with Brown.
In his July 4th message, Trump wrote: ‘Respects to our potentially new Democrat Challenger, Laffin’ Kamala Harris.
‘She did poorly in the Democrat Nominating process, starting out at Number Two, and ending up defeated and dropping out, even before getting to Iowa, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a ‘highly talented’ politician. Just ask her Mentor, the Great Willie Brown of San Francisco.’
Throughout her career, the vice president has been repeatedly forced to deny that her relationship with Brown – 31 years her senior – was the defining step in her political career.
The fling fizzled decades ago, but in the years since, Harris has struggled to shirk her association with Brown, whom she later described as ‘an albatross hanging around my neck.’
While their relationship has often been described as an affair, Brown was separated from his wife Blanche Vitero for more than a decade when he and Harris, 59, dated in the mid-1990s.
Their steamy past resurfaced in January 2019, when Brown published an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle with the headline, ‘Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. So what?’
Brown wrote: ‘Yes, we dated. It was more than 20 years ago.
‘And I certainly helped with her first race for district attorney in San Francisco. I have also helped the careers of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and a host of other politicians.’
Harris’ relationship with Brown, which ended in 1995, was not a secret.
On December 26, 1995, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Herb Caen wrote in his daily column that the couple had split, adding the ‘news came as a shock to many, including those who found Kamala Harris attractive, intelligent and charming.’
Brown served as San Francisco’s first black mayor from 1996 to 2004.
When they met around 1993, Brown, a noted lawyer and civil rights leader, was the speaker of the California assembly and regarded as one of the State’s most influential legislators.
He had turned 60 while Harris was 29.
Brown was notorious for his love of Jaguar sports cars, flash designer suits – a look he dubbed ‘bold conservative’ despite his liberal leanings – and for being named one of the world’s ten sexiest men by Playgirl magazine.
Bill Clinton once dubbed him ‘the real Slick Willy.’
‘The measure of his flamboyance is he’ll go to a party with his wife on one arm and his girlfriend on the other,’ James Richardson, a reporter for the Sacramento Bee told People Magazine in 1996.
Harris, meanwhile, was regarded as a diligent and able prosecutor ‘on the way up’ at the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, where she had worked for the previous three years.
As well as gifting his young squeeze a BMW car, the relationship reaped even more tangible benefits when Brown handed Harris two influential positions.
‘Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, continuing his rush to hand out patronage jobs while he retains his powerful post, has given high-paying appointments to his former law associate and a former Alameda County prosecutor who is Brown’s frequent companion,’ the Los Angeles Times noted in 1994.
‘Brown, exercising his power even as his speakership seems near an end, named attorney Kamala Harris to the California Medical Assistance Commission, a job that pays $72,000 a year.
‘Harris, a former deputy district attorney in Alameda County, was described by several people at the Capitol as Brown’s girlfriend.’
Brown also appointed Harris to the state’s Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, a lucrative position worth a further $97,088 a year, according to the same article.
Despite being dumped by Brown, Harris continued to enjoy his support when she ran for office herself, getting elected as San Francisco’s first black district attorney in 2004.
By then Brown had faced an FBI corruption investigation for allegedly handing out lucrative city contracts and appointments to friends and political allies.
His endorsement prompted accusations of cronyism, promptly denied by Harris who was dating the talk show host Montel Williams at the time.
In a 2003 interview during her campaign for San Francisco attorney general, Harris told SF Weekly that she refused ‘to design my campaign around criticizing Willie Brown for the sake of appearing to be independent when I have no doubt that I am independent of him — and that he would probably right now express some fright about the fact that he cannot control me.
‘His career is over. I will be alive and kicking for the next 40 years. I do not owe him a thing.’
Harris was elected California’s attorney general in 2010. When she ran for the Senate in 2016, Brown called on her likely opponent, Antonio Villaraigosa, to stay out of the race.
Brown and his legal wife Vitero never divorced – despite Brown having gone on to have a baby with his chief fundraiser Carolyn Carpenti in 2001.
Harris, meanwhile, has been married to entertainment lawyer Doug Emhoff since 2014.