The question isn’t whether Democratic presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a hard-core socialist, could have gotten where she is if she hadn’t been the mistress of Willie Brown, formerly the speaker of California’s House and mayor of San Francisco.
The question is why the media haven’t made more of it, given their obsession with Donald Trump’s sexual dalliances and alleged unethical business practices. After all, as Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff observed, the #MeToo movement is holding powerful men accountable for either forcing less powerful women to have sex, sometimes in exchange for a boost up the ladder of professional success.
Answer: She is a hard-left socialist and might well become the chosen one. So just as the media never vetted Barack Hussein Obama, it might well ignore Harris’ tawdry past.
Brown “Admits” Affair
Not that she or anyone else denies the truth. Brown penned a short squib for the San Francisco Chronicle:
I’ve been peppered with calls from the national media about my “relationship” with Kamala Harris, particularly since it became obvious that she was going to run for president. Most of them, I have not returned.
Yes, we dated. It was more than 20 years ago. Yes, I may have influenced her career by appointing her to two state commissions when I was Assembly speaker.
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.
The difference is that Harris is the only one who, after I helped her, sent word that I would be indicted if I “so much as jaywalked” while she was D.A.
That’s politics for ya.
The mayor’s honesty is refreshing, but it’s not quite the whole story, nor does it answer the question: Would Harris have succeeded so spectacularly without Brown’s help?
And help really isn’t the word for it. A similarly successful Republican woman would face the obvious question of whether she prostituted herself — whether she exchanged sex with a powerful man for money and power. Or slept her way to the top.
“In 1995, she began dating Brown, then Assembly speaker and one of the most powerful men in California politics,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Brown put Harris on the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission, part-time posts that supplemented her prosecutor’s salary with nearly $100,000 in extra annual pay.
Through five years, USA Today reported, those positions paid Harris more than $400,000. And Brown gave her a 1994 BMW, the newspaper noted.
Half-a-mil for part-time work? It’s nice work if you can get it, the question being, again, whether Harris would have gotten it if she hadn’t been the married mayor’s concubine.
#MeToo — No Questions?
Notwithstanding the obvious bad optics of the relationship — which again, would be called prostitution were a Republican woman involved — what about the #MeToo movement, which has destroyed dozens of prominent liberal men who exploited weaker women for sex or even raped them?
Wrote Mirengoff, “what Harris’ case illustrates is that women often benefit from relationships with older, powerful men like Willie Brown. Nothing could be more obvious. Yet in the #MeToo era it’s worth pointing this out.”
If Brown hadn’t endorsed Harris in the first race for district attorney, “Harris might have been disappointed that her two California commission posts didn’t yield more in the way of political opportunities.”
Then, apropos of sometimes 20-year-old #MeToo allegations, she would have been Brown’s prey — “an attractive young woman lured into a sexual relationship with an older, not particularly attractive but powerful man by the promise of benefits not conferred. That’s the stuff of #MeToo victimhood.”
Mirengoff noted the obvious: Democratic voters won’t give a hoot about Harris’ adulterous affair with Brown, and “she won’t lose the morality sweepstakes to Donald Trump.”
True, but she shouldn’t win one either, given her public adultery, which “provides insight into Harris’ character.” As do her scurrilous lies about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
But she likely will win those sweepstakes for the same reason Bill Clinton never lost the support of the leftist media or his feminist backers even after several women credibly accused him of rape: She’s a pro-abortion socialist bent on wrecking the country.
And she’s a woman of color. Thus, she is beloved of anti-Christian feminists and media.
And gets a pass on her past.
Photo: AP Images
