San Fran poli

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"Influential California politician Willie Brown inserted himself into Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign this week, penning an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle detailing his romantic relationship with her in the 1990s. The relationship was never a secret, but the public acknowledgement ignited new criticisms of Harris. Commentators began to imply she benefitted professionally from the personal relationship, possibly even only getting to where she is today because of their liaison.

Willie Brown was a fixture in California politics for years, serving as speaker of the state assembly for 15 years, and known as something of an unofficial deal-maker and influencer. He first met Harris in 1994, when she was an assistant district attorney in Alameda County. He was 60 years old at the time, and had been estranged from his wife, Blanche Brown, since 1981.

In his capacity as speaker, Brown appointed Harris to two political positions. The first was a six-month appointment to the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board; the second was a role on the Medical Assistance Commission, a body tasked with negotiating contracts to control Medi-Cal costs. At the time, Brown had a reputation for filling many openings with his personal associates and inner circle; when Harris vacated the Appeals Board gig, he replaced her with his longtime buddy Philip S. Ryan."

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Kamala Devi Harris (/ˈkɑːmələ/ KAH-mə-lə;[2][3] born October 20, 1964)[4] is an American politician and attorney who has served as the junior United States senator from California since 2017. She is the Democratic vice presidential nominee for the 2020 election.

Born in Oakland, California, Harris graduated from Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She began her career in the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, before being recruited to the San Francisco District Attorney's Office and later the City Attorney of San Francisco's office. In 2003, she was elected district attorney of San Francisco. She was elected attorney general of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014.

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Pat Brown, Pelosi, Newsome, Getty

Attachments:

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“I certainly helped with her first race for district attorney in San Francisco,” Brown asserted in his Chronicle piece. “I have also helped the careers of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and a host of other politicians. The difference is that Harris is the only one who, after I helped her, sent word that I would be indicted if I ‘so much as jaywalked’ while she was D.A.”

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Brown was married at the time he and Harris dated, but – because he had been "estranged from his wife" Blanche Brown since 1981, according to People magazine –the relationship was not kept secret. A Sacramento Bee reporter told People that Brown "had a succession of girlfriends" and would "go to a party with his wife on one arm and his girlfriend on the other.”

A 1994 Los Angeles Times report about then-California Assembly Speaker Brown's "rush to hand out patronage jobs" described Harris as Brown's "frequent companion" and said several people referred to her as Brown's girlfriend. That report also cited a column from the Chronicle's Herb Caen that called Harris "the Speaker's new steady." When they met, she was 29 and Brown was 60

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According to Caen, the couple split up in 1995, which "flabbergasted" those "who found Kamala the perfect antidote to whatever playboy tendencies still reside in the mayor-elect's jaunty persona."

Although Brown supported Harris in her successful 2003 run for San Francisco district attorney, she tried to distance herself from him in that race, telling SF Weekly that Brown – whose career was dogged by corruption allegations – was an "albatross hanging around my neck."

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In the runoff, Harris pledged never to seek the death penalty and to prosecute three-strike offenders only in cases of violent felonies.[50] Harris ran a "forceful" campaign, assisted by former mayor Willie Brown, Senator Dianne Feinstein, writer and cartoonist Aaron McGruder,

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On November 12, 2008, Harris announced her candidacy for California attorney general. Both of California's senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, United Farm Workers cofounder Dolores Huerta, and Mayor of Los Angeles Antonio Villaraigosa all endorsed her during the primary.

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Pelosi and Getty families date back three generations. Click on image for a larger view.

In summary

As Gavin Newson becomes governor of California, he’s writing a new chapter in the saga of four intertwined San Francisco families.

Get a veteran journalist's take on what's going on in California with a weekly round-up of Dan's column every Friday.

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Gavin Newsom will be the first Democrat in more than a century to succeed another Democrat as governor and the succession also marks a big generational transition in California politics.

A long-dominant geriatric quartet from the San Francisco Bay Area – Gov. Jerry Brown, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – has been slowly ceding power to younger political strivers.

Moreover, Newsom is succeeding someone who could be considered his quasi-uncle, since his inauguration continues the decades-long saga of four San Francisco families intertwined by blood, by marriage, by money, by culture and, of course, by politics – the Browns, the Newsoms, the Pelosis and the Gettys.

The connections date back at least 80 years, to when Jerry Brown’s father, Pat Brown, ran for San Francisco district attorney, losing in 1939 but winning in 1943, with the help of his close friend and Gavin Newsom’s grandfather, businessman William Newsom.

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Pelosi and Getty families date back three generations. Click on image for a larger view.

In summary

As Gavin Newson becomes governor of California, he’s writing a new chapter in the saga of four intertwined San Francisco families.

Get a veteran journalist's take on what's going on in California with a weekly round-up of Dan's column every Friday.

By clicking subscribe, you agree to share your email address with CalMatters to receive marketing, updates, and other emails. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

Gavin Newsom will be the first Democrat in more than a century to succeed another Democrat as governor and the succession also marks a big generational transition in California politics.

A long-dominant geriatric quartet from the San Francisco Bay Area – Gov. Jerry Brown, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – has been slowly ceding power to younger political strivers.

Moreover, Newsom is succeeding someone who could be considered his quasi-uncle, since his inauguration continues the decades-long saga of four San Francisco families intertwined by blood, by marriage, by money, by culture and, of course, by politics – the Browns, the Newsoms, the Pelosis and the Gettys.

The connections date back at least 80 years, to when Jerry Brown’s father, Pat Brown, ran for San Francisco district attorney, losing in 1939 but winning in 1943, with the help of his close friend and Gavin Newsom’s grandfather, businessman William Newsom.
Ties among the Brown, Newsom, Pelosi and Getty families date back three generations. Click on image for a larger view. Graphic for CALmatters by Nazneen Rydhan-Foster.

Fast forward two decades. Gov. Pat Brown’s administration developed Squaw Valley for the 1960s winter Olympics and afterward awarded a concession to operate it to William Newsom and his partner, John Pelosi.

One of the Pelosis’ sons, Paul, married Nancy D’Alesandro, who went into politics and has now reclaimed speakership of the House of Representatives. Another Pelosi son married William Newsom’s daughter, Barbara. Until they divorced, that made Nancy Pelosi something like an aunt by marriage to Gavin Newson (Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law was Gavin Newsom’s uncle).

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Pat Brown’s bid for a third term failed, and the Reagan administration later bought out the Newsom concession. But the Brown-Newsom connection continued as Brown’s son, Jerry, reclaimed the governorship in 1974. He appointed the younger William Newsom, a personal friend and Gavin’s father, to a Placer County judgeship in 1975 and three years later to the state Court of Appeal.

Justice Newsom, who died a few weeks ago, had been an attorney for oil magnate J. Paul Getty, most famously delivering $3 million to Italian kidnapers of Getty’s grandson in 1973. While serving on the appellate bench in the 1980s, he helped Getty’s son, Gordon, secure a change in state trust law that allowed him to claim his share of a multi-heir trust.

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Hillary Clinton


In the spring of 1971, she began dating fellow law student Bill Clinton. During the summer, she interned at the Oakland, California, law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein. The firm was well known for its support of constitutional rights, civil liberties and radical causes (two of its four partners were current or former Communist Party members);[53] Rodham worked on child custody and other cases. Clinton canceled his original summer plans and moved to live with her in California

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OAKLAND, Calif. — In a life marked largely by political caution, one entry on Senator Clinton's résumé stands out: her clerkship in 1971 at one of America's most radical law firms, Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein.

One partner at the firm, Doris Walker, was a Communist Party member at the time. Another partner, Robert Treuhaft, had left the party in 1958, several years after being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and labeled as one of America's most "dangerously subversive" lawyers. The Oakland-based firm was renowned for taking clients others rejected as too controversial, including Communists, draft resisters, and members of the African-American militant group known as the Black Panthers.

To this day, Mrs. Clinton's decision to work at the unabashedly left-wing firm is surprising, even shocking, to some of her former colleagues there and to those supporting her bid for the presidency. To the former first lady's enemies and political opponents, her summer at the Treuhaft firm is yet another indication that radical ideology lurks beneath the patina of moderation she has adopted in public life

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Through more than a dozen interviews, a review of law firm files and correspondence at two university archives, and an examination of previously published descriptions of Mrs. Clinton's California summer, The New York Sun has sought to compile a comprehensive account of the 23-year-old Yale law student's work for the Treuhaft firm, how she got there, and how acquaintances she made that summer surfaced from time to time as her political career unfolded.

The Sun's investigation found that:

Republican opposition researchers working for President George H.W. Bush were aware of Mrs. Clinton's tie to the Treuhaft firm in 1992, before it was widely known, and apparently chose not to exploit it. They reasoned that she was the wife of the candidate rather than the candidate herself, a reasoning that no longer applies as Mrs. Clinton seeks the Democratic presidential nomination. Lawyers involved with the firm were surprised that Republican operatives never moved to capitalize on Mrs. Clinton's connection.

An oft-repeated and published anecdote about Mrs. Clinton's involvement in the firm's plea negotiations over an armed invasion of the California Legislature by Black Panthers seems to be apocryphal, though one of the attorneys directly involved has a "very distinct" memory of Mrs. Clinton's attendance at a Panthers-related meeting.

The firm was involved in another volatile Black Panthers case the summer Mrs. Clinton worked there: the trial of Huey Newton for the 1967 killing of an Oakland police officer. Treuhaft represented a Newton associate whose role in the trial may have helped Newton win a series of mistrials and, eventually, the dismissal of all charges related to the officer's death.

Partners at the firm said it was likely Mrs. Clinton also worked on politically sensitive cases involving a Berkeley student activist denied admission to the California bar over incendiary rhetoric, Stanford physician interns fighting a loyalty oath at the Veterans Administration, and men claiming conscientious objector status to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam. Mrs. Clinton's only public recollection of her work at the Treuhaft firm is that she handled a child custody matter.

Mrs. Clinton's most vivid memories from that summer may be personal ones that have nothing to do with the law firm with which she clerked. A fellow Yale law student, President Clinton, shared the Berkeley apartment where she was staying. The pair soon got serious and would move in together when they returned to New Haven that fall.

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Mrs. Clinton's decision to work at the Treuhaft firm was rooted in the turbulence, chaos and radicalism that buffeted Yale after she entered law school there in 1969. Most campuses saw their share of foment, but Yale saw more than its share in the spring of 1970 because of the impending criminal trial in New Haven of a Black Panthers' leader, Bobby Seale, and several co-defendants, for kidnapping and murdering another member of the Panthers. Many, including Yale's president at the time, doubted that Seale and other black militants could get a fair trial. As students prepared for a national student strike on May Day 1970, a suspicious fire broke out in the basement of a Yale law library. The blaze led to a palpable fear among professors and students that institutions like Yale could be burned to the ground. Crazy talk abounded. One agitated Yale law student reportedly proposed "mass suicide" to protest injustices allegedly being perpetrated against the Panthers.

While some writers and commentators have painted Mrs. Clinton as so exercised by the Panther trial that she formed a student committee to sit in on the proceedings and report on perceived abuses, a book published last year suggests that even that modest undertaking grew out of a compromise in which law students voted not to endorse a student strike. Mrs. Clinton and another Yale law student were named as co-chairs of a committee "to monitor the trial, offer legal advice to demonstrators who got arrested, and help prevent violence at the May Day rally," according to "Murder in the Model City" by Paul Bass and Douglas Rae.