Did chequered history of Kamala Harris’s husband contribute to her election loss?
Doug Emhoff would have made history as the nation’s first ever first gentleman.
But as Kamala Harris’s team lick their wounds and scrutinise their strategy in the wake of her apparent defeat to Donald Trump, one question staffers may be asking is whether her husband’s chequered past had anything to do with the loss.
Mr Emhoff, 60, attempted to paint himself as a devoted “wife guy” whose social media is inundated with romantic pictures of Ms Harris.
However, the father of two could not avoid his dirty laundry being aired in the tabloids following his wife’s nomination as presidential candidate.
He admitted that his first marriage to Kerstin Emhoff ended after he had an affair with one of his daughter’s teachers, and his cheating was repeatedly used by critics of Ms Harris as an attack line throughout the presidential race.
In a statement at the time, Mr Emhoff said: “During my first marriage, Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions. I took responsibility, and in the years since, we worked through things as a family and have come out stronger on the other side.”
Ms Harris is understood to have known about the affair before they got married in 2014, as did those responsible for vetting Ms Harris before she became Mr Biden’s running mate.
Donald Trump seized on the affair, using it as an attack line against Ms Harris at rallies and joking that she needs to keep her husband “away from the nannies” during the Al Smith dinner – a glitzy event in New York that raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities and has traditionally offered candidates from both parties the chance to trade light-hearted barbs.
Trump’s allies have also previously laid into Mr Emhoff, with theconservative commentator Megyn Kelly suggesting Ms Harris is “scared” of her husband during one of his final rallies.
Referring to a controversial Democrat advert that suggested women should keep their votes for Ms Harris private from their husbands, Ms Kelly told a crowd in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: “You see that ad they did about Trump voters trying to encourage women to lie to their husbands so that they could vote for her instead of Trump.
“That’s their version of what marriage looks like: an overbearing husband who bullies his wife into saying she voted one way, as opposed to an honest, open relationship,” she said.
“Oh wait, I’m talking about Kamala and Doug.”
Stories ‘all a distraction’
Mr Emhoff also faced other allegations about his personal life, although he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that such stories were “all a distraction.. designed to try to get us off our game”.
He was forced to deny media reports that he had hit an ex-girlfriend after a woman claiming to be his former girlfriend claimed he slapped her during a trip to the Cannes film festival in 2012.
The woman, who was described as a successful New York lawyer, claimed the pair had dated after they met on Match.com.
She criticised Mr Emhoff’s portrayal of himself as the perfect spouse, claiming it was a “completely fabricated persona”.
She told the Daily Mail: “He’s being held out to be the antithesis of who he actually is. And that is utterly shocking.”
Mr Emhoff has denied the allegations, with his spokesman telling the Semafor news website that the allegations are “untrue” and “any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false”.
There were also reports from Mr Emhoff’s former colleagues that he had been “misogynistic” and “inappropriate” with women when he worked at the law firm Venable.
His representatives did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations, the New York Post reported.
A key part of his wife’s campaign, Mr Emhoff, 60, spent the past three months doing everything from darting across the country to host rallies and fundraisers to sending out campaign emails with the subject “my wife is a badass”.
He also tried desperately to deflect some of Ms Harris’s critics, becoming the administration’s voice on combating the rise in anti-Semitism.
Mr Emhoff denounced the Oct 7 “terrorist assault” on Israel from the White House and also repeatedly addressed the issue on the campaign trail, in an attempt to appeal to Jewish people who may have felt concerned that Ms Harris would water down the administration’s support of Israel.
“She feels what you and I and Jews across America are feeling today,” he said during a campaign speech in Pittsburgh to mark the sixth anniversary of the shooting at the city’s Tree of Life synagogue, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in American history. He added: “She gets it.”
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Mr Emhoff grew up in New Jersey before relocating to the West Coast.
Mr Emhoff met Ms Harris on a blind date in 2013, a meeting the former entertainment lawyer has gushed over as “love at first sight”.
According to Ms Harris’s 2013 memoir, Mr Emhoff said at the time: “I’m too old to play games or hide the ball.
“I really like you, and I want to see if we can make this work,” he told her.
Ms Harris credits the media power couple Dana and Matt Walden with being responsible for setting her up with Mr Emhoff – but even the story of their meeting was not without controversy once Ms Harris hit the campaign trail.
The two couples’ closeness was called into question by Trump because Mrs Walden is a boss at Disney, the parent company of ABC News, which hosted the debate between Ms Harris and Trump in September.
Ms Harris and Mr Emhoff married in 2014 with the father of two by Ms Harris’s side as she campaigned to become president in 2019 and after she was selected as Mr Biden’s running mate.
Ms Harris also has a close relationship with both Mr Emhoff’s children, Ella, 25, a model and knitwear designer, and Cole, 30, a producer, who call her “Momala”.
Mr Emhoff worked as an entertainment lawyer for 30 years before giving up his career to teach at Georgetown Law School when he and his wife relocated to Washington.
While on the campaign trail this year, Mr Emhoff frequently told the story of when he missed Ms Harris’s calls after Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race because he was at a cycling class in Los Angeles.
Having left his phone in the car, Mr Emhoff saw Mr Biden’s resignation letter on a friend’s phone.
‘Devoted dad’
When he finally retrieved his mobile, it was “self-immolating with the amount of messages and calls”, Mr Emhoff said.
After he reached his wife, he said he told her: “I love you, I’m proud of you, I’m here for you, I kinda know what to do.”
It is the sort of story which Mr Emhoff, who Ms Harris calls “my Dougie”, had seemingly hoped to use to build a reputation as the “wife guy”, portraying himself as a devoted husband who was first and foremost there to cheer on Ms Harris.
His social media accounts are saturated with posts about Ms Harris.
For Ms Harris’s 60th birthday last month, he shared a montage of videos of them kissing, him handing her a rose and shielding her from the rain by carrying her umbrella.
“Happy birthday, honey. I love you so much, and I’ll always have your back”, Mr Emhoff wrote.
Mr Emhoff refers to himself as a “devoted dad” and “proud husband’ in the bio on his social media accounts.
He has his children’s initials tattooed on his left wrist because he wanted “a visceral reminder of them”.
This image of a modern husband and father may have been an attempt to convince voters they were ready for a female president. Maybe what they weren’t ready for was Mr Emhoff.