Right now, Kamala Harris is on the verge of what could be a life-altering and historic moment. Some people in Joe Biden’s circle think his running-mate options are down to Harris and Susan Rice. As many have noted, with Biden’s current lead in the national polls and the swing states — and the widespread expectation that Biden would not finish his first term — Biden may well be selecting the 47th President of the United States. Few people whose presidential campaign ended before the first primary end up with such a fortuitous turn of events.
And then former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown takes to the pages of his hometown newspaper to declare, “If Joe Biden offers the vice presidential slot to Sen. Kamala Harris, my advice to her would be to politely decline. . . . Basically, no one takes the vice president seriously after election day.”
Almost every political junkie has heard the stories of Harris’ affair with Brown back in the 1990s, and how he appointed her to two state boards during their relationship. By itself, that’s unlikely to determine Biden’s running-mate selection or the 2020 presidential election. But Harris would no doubt prefer if Willie Brown simply disappeared for the next few months — or maybe forever — rather than intermittently popping up in public and weighing in on her career choices, and in the process, reminding the world of their special relationship when she was in her 30s and he was in his 60s and married.
It says quite a bit about Brown that he doesn’t have the sense to simply shut up on the topic of Kamala Harris, and writes these columns as if he’s just another retired mayor writing about just another California senator.
