In the Biden White House, the first lady wants to keep her job as a teacher and the second gentleman plans to leave his law firm to support the vice president’s career. When it comes to political marriages, we have reached a new moment.
Doug Emhoff, the 56-year-old husband of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, will leave his private law practice on inauguration day to focus on his role in the White House, a spokesman said Tuesday. So far he has said little about how he will approach the role and is still working with the transition team on the issues he will address.
“We’ve been waiting for this kind of gender shift for decades,” said Kim Nalder, a political science professor who has focused on women and gender at California State University, Sacramento.
She added: “There is a lot of symbolism of a man walking away from his high-powered career to support his wife’s career.” Emhoff’s decision to cut ties with DLA Piper also offered early proof of how a Biden administration would avoid potential ethical issues. While Emhoff is not a lobbyist, the firm has a strong presence lobbying the federal government on behalf of clients such as Comcast, Raytheon and the government of Puerto Rico. He took a leave of absence from the firm in August when Biden chose Harris, a US senator from California, as his running mate.
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While Emhoff built a career as a high-profile entertainment lawyer in Southern California, he has been more visible to voters as Harris’s supportive husband. He quickly became friends with other political spouses in the Democratic primary, when Harris sought the party’s nomination.
“I want more women in office, and I want more partners, whoever their partner is, to support them and provide an opportunity and environment for success,” Emhoff said in an October interview with the NowThis News website. He was not available for an interview with The Associated Press.
Chasten Buttigieg, the husband of former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, said the two quickly struck up a friendship as they exchanged stories about people they were meeting and their bizarre “fish out of water” experiences as political spouses. Emhoff congratulated Chasten Buttigieg on his speeches at events and never approached him as a competitor.
“He was there for the right reasons,” Chasten Buttigieg said. “It was because he loved his wife and he thought she would make a great president.” Buttigieg, who would have also broken barriers as a male presidential spouse, said he remembered how often he was asked what title he would wear, a question that seemed frivolous. (Emhoff has not officially chosen his title. But Biden has referred to him as the “second gentleman”). Buttigieg hopes Emhoff will prosper in his new job as a civil servant.
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“You just have to be someone that people can see themselves in,” he said. “People love to chat with him and take pictures with him. He’s always full of dad jokes and he’s really charming. “Emhoff accepted his role as a political surrogate during the campaign. He will be the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president, and was a prominent link to Jewish groups and donors.
He also developed a close friendship with Jill Biden, a former second lady, and the two frequently campaigned together in states like Iowa and New Hampshire during the primaries. Jill Biden has said that she wants to continue teaching at a community college, as she did when Joe Biden was vice president.
Harris tweeted Monday a photo of her and Emhoff smiling the night Biden was announced as the winner of the election. “Meet the love of my life,” he told his 11 million followers. It was Emhoff who filmed a video of Harris calling Biden after the news of his victory, which he shared on social media.
Harris and Emhoff met in 2013 and married a year later. It was Harris’s first marriage and Emhoff’s second; her children are 20 years old and they call Harris “Momala”, a pun on her name and a Yiddish word for “mother.” The two were created by a friend, and Harris recalls the scrutiny she faced as a single woman in her 40s and her hesitancy to go public with her relationships in her memoir, “The Truths We Hold.” He first took Emhoff publicly to a speech in 2014 about a truancy initiative he had followed. His team would refer to everything that came next as AD: after Doug.
“They knew how much it made me laugh. I did it too, ”he writes.
Harris was California Attorney General at the time and Emhoff was practicing law as Managing Director of Venable LLP’s West Coast Branch, managing clients in the entertainment industry with a focus on trademark and intellectual property disputes. He had previously represented clients such as Merck, Walmart and a Fresno, California-based arms dealer – clients who today appear to be out of step with the progressive wings of the Democratic Party. When Harris began his tenure in the United States Senate in 2017, Emhoff moved to DLA Piper, which had a presence in Washington and Los Angeles, where Harris and Emhoff divided their time. More recently, he has represented clients, including a production company and a prominent winemaker.
John Bessler, the husband of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is also a lawyer, called Emhoff a “modern man” for spending time on Harris’s political career over his own.
“This is just another example of how much you support Kamala,” he said.
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