Kamala Harris’ mid-1990s affair at age 29 with married California politician Willie Brown, then age 60, is common knowledge. But Brown’s publicly subsidized payments to Harris have been largely ignored by national media.

Quentin Kopp, a retired judge and former State Senator and San Francisco Supervisor, details Harris’ booty from her side-hustle with Brown in an op-ed published in the San Francisco Richmond Review, a neighborhood newspaper, including:

• Brown’s appointing 29-year-old Harris to a part-time $97,000-per year position on California’s Unemployment Insurance Appeals job while being paid $100,000 per year as a full-time Alameda County employee, and
• Brown’s subsequently appointing then 30-year-old Harris to the more lucrative, also part-time California Medical Assistance Commission, where in 1998 she made $99,000 a year overseeing 15 staff members despite having no experience in the field.

Legislators are ‘special,’ by Quentin Kopp, January 5, 2019

At the time, Brown also gave Harris a new BMW.

Kopp also suggests Harris got special treatment twice for violating political campaign ethics laws:

• In 2000, Harris was investigated by the San Francisco Ethics Commission when, as a paid campaign manager for a San Francisco Supervisor’s race, she failed to comply with notification deadlines for political mailings, with no consequences.
• In 2003, Harris was charged with violating her promise to spend no more than $211,000 on her own district attorney’s campaign, but the Ethics Commission fined her a mere $34,000 rather than the maximum penalty of $275,000 and chose not to disqualify her from the race as the law permitted. (As the SFProgressive.com wrote at the time, “By law, Harris should not even be the city’s district attorney.”)

At the time, Harris called Brown “An albatross hanging around my neck” in a September 24, 2003  San Francisco Weekly article entitled “Kamala’s Karma,” adding that, “His career is over. I will be alive and kicking for the next 40 years. I do not owe him a thing.” In fact, the still-kicking, powerful Brown was the wind beneath the wings of this highly ambitious, calculating woman.

Her role model, Harris’ late mother—Indian-born Shyamala Gopalan—supported her daughter’s controversial public tryst with Brown, saying, “Why shouldn’t she have gone out with Willie Brown? He was a player. And what could Willie Brown expect from her in the future? He has not much life left.” 

It’s worth mentioning that Harris also seems to have suffered no political consequences when taxpayers in 2018 shelled out $400,000 to settle a harassment suit against a top-aide in her US Senate office.

Like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris has been feeding at the public trough her entire career. But perhaps her smartest career decision was to ride Willie Brown. As Kopp says, “Pity the poor tax payer.”