01/28/2019 / By JD Heyes
Kamala Harris, barely into her freshman term as a U.S. Senator from California, already has higher ambitions: She wants to become president of the United States.
Harris was among the first to announce her candidacy in what is expected to be a crowded Democratic field heading into 2020 against POTUS Donald Trump, a former real estate billionaire-turned-commander-in-chief who is as reviled on the Left as his predecessor, President Obama, was reviled on the right.
But then, being ambitious is nothing new for Kamala Harris. It turns out that she was willing to do nearly anything to get her political career started many years ago, including sleeping with a married man.
According to a short article he penned for the San Francisco Chronicle, the former mayor of that city and a 30-year veteran of the California State Assembly not only “dated” Harris a few decades ago, but he also “may have influenced her career by appointing her to two state commissions when I was Assembly speaker.”
What’s more, he said, “I certainly helped her with her first race for district attorney in San Francisco.”
It was the perfect situation for both: Brown, who was able to satisfy a sexual urge (before he moved on to the next woman), and Harris, who needed Brown’s connections and political clout to get ahead.
As Politico noted:
In the mid-1990s, Harris had dated Brown, who was investigated by the FBI when he was speaker of the California Assembly and as mayor was dogged by conflict of interest, and she had benefited from his political patronage. As the speaker of the state Assembly, Brown had named Harris to well-paid posts on the California Medical Assistance Commission and Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board. As mayor of San Francisco in 2003, Brown was supportive of her district attorney campaign although they were no longer dating. Critics—including her opponents—were bemoaning cronyism at City Hall.
The San Francisco Weekly reported back in 2003, that Harris had met Brown in 1994 when she was 29 and he was 60. Their affair, which lasted from May until December of that year, would taint her politically for years to come, most notably because of Brown’s ‘connections’ to the Democratic machine in California many said he actually ran. At the time, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen introduced Harris to his readers as Brown’s “new steady,” Politico reported.
Eventually, the SF Weekly noted, “Harris dumped Brown” because he was “a notorious womanizer” — which suggested he had a long and well-established reputation in political circles that she no doubt was aware of. (Related: Kamala Harris caught in blatant LIE about school desegregation… do liberals just fabricate everything?)
To be fair, Harris isn’t the only current Democratic political leader in California who owes Brown’s political machine. Current Gov. Gavin Newsom rose through the ranks of state politics owing to the former Assembly speaker’s patronage. Indeed, even California politicians on the federal level — including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and former Sen. Barbara Boxer, whom Harris replaced — all owe Brown as well, Politico noted.
But it was Harris who received the lion’s share of criticism from state leaders during those early years. When Brown supported her bid for district attorney in San Fran in 2003, many worried because of her history with him she would let Mayor Brown’s corruption go unpunished.
“At the time, anyone associated with Willie Brown was seen as part of the Brown-Burton machine,” noted Jeff Adachi, the city’s public defender, in reference to John Burton, a former congressman and state Senate president, Politico noted. “Is there a machine? Yep. Was that machine in control of San Francisco politics for many years? Yeah, it was.”
He would go on to say that criticism of Harris as somehow being unqualified wasn’t justified because she had ‘worked her way up’ the ladder. But again, obviously, she didn’t get there all by herself; she needed assistance — and got it — from the West Coast version of a Democrat-run Chicago political machine, which is still intact today.
In the lead-up to Harris’ campaign in 2002, Gary Delagnes, former president of the San Francisco police unit who eventually had a falling-out with her over her refusal to seek the death penalty as justice for a young cop murdered on patrol, recalled to Politico her “ruthless” nature.
“I was standing in the corner” at a party when she approached him to seek his support. “I didn’t know who she was … and she came up to me and she put her finger in my chest and she said, ‘You better endorse me, you better endorse me. You get it?’
“I never forgot it,” he told the political news site. “She’s an intelligent person. She is a — let’s see, I better pick this word carefully: Ruthless.”
Today, California bears no resemblance to the state which twice went overwhelmingly for GOP presidential icon Ronald Reagan, who also served as the state’s governor during the tumultuous 1960s. It has been completely transformed into a Democrat behemoth, where no quarter is given to political opponents and the rule of law is whatever the party says it is at the time. Incomes are high as is the state’s GDP — fifth in the world if measured alone — but so, too, are taxes, the cost of living, poverty, and homelessness.
This is the system from which Kamala Harris emerged. And now she wants to bring this system of corrupt political patronage to the White House, replacing a president who got there the same way he has successfully made it through life — on his own.
Read more about Kamala Harris’ presidential bid at KamalaWatch.com.
Sources include:
Tagged Under:
affair, Barbara Boxer, California, corruption, cronyism, Democratic candidate, Democratic nomination, democratic nominee, democrats, Dianne Feinstein, Election 2020, favors, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Left-wing, lover, paramour, political favoritism, political machine, president, San Francisco, Willie Brown
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