The Kamala Harris Affair Rumors That Will Haunt Her Forever

It's long been rumored that former vice president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris had an affair with California politician and former mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown while he was still married. And Harris has been hard-pressed to escape quite a few scandalous rumors over the years. 

Harris' campaign manager for her 2003 race for San Francisco district attorney, Rebecca Prozan, told Politico in 2019, "No woman likes to be judged by their relationships. We want to be judged by who we are, not who we are romantically involved with." Still, Prozan conceded that going into that race, Harris was well aware that her relationship with Brown, a man more than 30 years her senior, would be "an issue" for her.

In 2003, during the height of her bid for District Attorney of San Francisco, Harris went so far as to refer to her past romantic connection to Brown as an "albatross hanging around my neck" (via SF Weekly). Despite being haunted by her past, she would not be defined by it. "I refuse 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," she declared. Say what you will about the shady side of Kamala Harris and her politics, but she knows how to handle controversy.

Let's get one thing straight: Kamala Harris was not Willie Brown's mistress. It is factual that Brown and Harris dated in the mid-1990s while he was still legally married to Blanche Vitero. It's important to note, however, that Brown and Vitero had already been legally separated for many, many years prior — and on good terms, to boot. 

In his 2008 book "Basic Brown: My Life and Our Times," Brown openly discussed the dynamics of his unconventional marriage to Vitero, writing, "I don't know whether the marriage failed and the relationship survived or vice versa, but something very valuable lasted." But that's not all. In a 1984 New York Times profile, Brown was also described as an "escort for attractive women." To put it simply, Brown had earned a reputation as something of a man about town. Harris was merely one of many women Brown dated while still legally married to Vitero. Nonetheless, it convinced some that Brown was responsible for Harris' success.

Shortly after Harris threw her hat into the 2020 United States presidential election, Brown wrote a feisty op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle titled "Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. So what?" Brown claimed that he had been inundated with calls from the media asking about his former relationship with Harris and whether or not he was partially responsible for Harris' head-turning transformation into politics. While Brown admitted that he "certainly helped with her first race for district attorney in San Francisco," he was also careful to point out that he also helped a host of other aspiring career politicians, including Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, and Dianne Feinstein.