“Yes, I may have influenced her career by appointing her to two state commissions when I was Assembly speaker. And I certainly helped her first race for district attorney in San Francisco.”
As a young 29-year-old working in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, Kamala Harris was gifted by her much older lover with trips to Paris and the Oscars as well as a BMW car, with that lover, a California lawmaker, reportedly jumpstarting Harris’ rise in state politics.
According to the New York Post, Harris had a relationship with Willie Brown, then 60, when he served as speaker of the California Assembly.
The San Francisco Chronicle had dubbed Harris as "the speaker’s new steady," with the relationship reportedly being well-known around town. The Los Angeles Times said that Harris was a "frequent companion" of Brown’s and stated that many around the Capitol classified Harris as "Brown’s girlfriend."
As Brown was leaving his position as California Assembly speaker in November 1994, he appointed Harris to the California Medical Assistance Commission, which paid at the time $72,000, the Los Angeles Times reported at the time. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Inflation Calculator, that salary would be around $150,000 in 2024.
Brown had also appointed Harris to the State Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, which paid $97,088 per year, a salary that equates to over $200,000 in 2024. Harris resigned from the board after six months and ahead of accepting the position on the Medical Assistance Commission.
Brown has endorsed Harris for president, and in a 2019 piece for the Chronicle titled "Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. So what?" Brown stated, "Yes, I may have influenced her career by appointing her to two state commissions when I was Assembly speaker. And I certainly helped her first race for district attorney in San Francisco." Brown also served as mayor of San Francisco between 1996 and 2004.
Harris was elected San Francisco district attorney in 2003, and in 2010 was elected state attorney general. She was reelected to the position in 2014, and left the office in 2017 to become a US junior senator from California.
Journalist Dean Morain wrote in the 2021 book Kamala’s Way: An American Life, "Over the course of the relationship, Brown gave Harris a BMW, she traveled with him to Paris, attended the Academy Awards." On one occasion, Brown took Harris on a business trip to Boston where Brown was meeting with Donald Trump.
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