Defenders of Vice President Kamala Harris often become irate when one mentions the influence former San Francisco Mayor and California political power broker Willie Brown had on her career.
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If I had to explain that away, I’d probably be pretty mad too.
Yet, the fact remains that she might not have had to work as hard as others to excel in her political career because she was romantically involved with a powerful political figure. A new report from Daily Mail revealed that after Brown, who was serving as the state’s Assembly Speaker, appointed her to the board of the Medical Assistance Commission, she missed quite a few meetings.
Harris was absent from more th an 20 percent of the meetings according to a Daily Mail review of the committee minutes. On other occasions the minutes reveal that Harris arrived after commissioners started the meetings and already conducted some of their business.
Of the 111 CMAC meetings, Harris was absent from 88 of them, making her the most absent commissioner on the board.
The job required that board members meet twice a month, as it was not a full-time position. The Commission was responsible for negotiating contracts with hospitals to limit costs paid by government funded health care.
But it still paid Harris a great deal of money, $99,000 annually, according to a report from SF Weekly. All told, Harris made more than $400,000 over the five year period she was appointed by Brown to the state positions.
Sounds like some good work, if you can get it. That’s quite a bit of cash for a job where you can miss 20 percent of meetings. Yet, Harris still claimed in 2003 that she worked hard to get where she was in her career.
Harris was fiercely defensive of her role on the boards when she campaigned for District Attorney of San Francisco, insisting she did the work despite questions about whether she had earned the position that Brown had appointed her to.
‘Whether you agree or disagree with the system, I did the work,’ she told SF Weekly magazine in a 2003 profile of her career.
‘Well, I worked,’ Harris said to journalist Joan Walsh when asked about her positions in 2003 for San Francisco City Journal magazine.
‘I’ve worked my a** off for everything I have,’ she said.
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Nevertheless, Brown himself stated in 2019 that his patronage of Harris is what allowed her to climb through the ranks. “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,” he wrote in an article.
Related: Willie Brown: My Extramarital Affair With Kamala Harris Benefited Her Politically
Of course, this was abundantly obvious from the get-go. As it turns out, dating someone like Brown can do wonders for one’s political career after all.
It is also worth noting that the incompetence Harris has displayed as vice president sheds further light on why she needed someone like Brown to elevate herself. However, there will be no Willie Brown to save her in the upcoming election.