Ex-Lovers Kamala Harris and Willie Brown
http://thepeoplesrepublicofcalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/02/ex-lovers-kamala-harris-and-willie-brown.html
Meet The Ex-Lovers
Harris met Brown in 1994 when he was speaker of the state Assembly. She was 29, he was 60. (From The San Francisco Weekly News in 2003) - Willie Brown, Harris' spurned ex-lover and unsolicited political backer.>{? Hallinan and Fazio aren't attacking Harris' platform (which they both profess to generally share) or professionalism (each admits that Harris is a competent prosecutor). Rather, they are knifing her with innuendo, saying her ties to the outgoing mayor would cause her, as district attorney, to look the other way should her former beau or his political minions ever be credibly accused of committing crimes in office.
The charge that she is Brown's puppet -- that she's guilty by association with a mayor who has not been found guilty of anything -- infuriates Harris. Though in third place in recent polls, she's a political comer. She's hauling in campaign cash like there's no tomorrow.
If she can just get out from under this damn Willie Brown thing.
Harris routinely tries to distance herself from her ex-squeeze, whom she hates even talking about. The mere mention of their former liaison makes her shoulders tense, her hands clench, and her eyes narrow. "I refuse," she says vehemently, "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.
"His career is over; I will be alive and kicking for the next 40 years. I do not owe him a thing."
She acknowledges that Brown is an "albatross hanging around my neck" and fears that voters who dislike him will ignore her candidacy -- even as she dismisses such an act as irrational. "Would it make sense if you are a Martian coming to Earth that the litmus test for public office is where a candidate is in their relationship to Willie Brown?" Harris asks. "Willie Brown is not going to be around. He's gone -- hello people, move on. If there is corruption, it will be prosecuted. It's a no-brainer, but let's please move on."
She also knows there's not much she can do about it, except to keep saying that the affair is ancient history and that she is a good candidate with good ideas. But as Harris well understands, the more she tries to explain away the Willie factor, the bigger a factor he becomes.