Following the exciting announcement that U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris plans to enter the 2020 president race, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown has come forward to address his past relationship with the lawmaker.
“Yes, we dated. It was more than 20 years ago,” Brown wrote in his weekly column for the San Francisco Chronicle, noting that the has “been peppered with calls from the national media about my ‘relationship’ with Kamala Harris, particularly since it became obvious that she was going to run for president.”
As reported by USA Today, Brown was married at the time he and Harris dated, but their relationship was not kept secret as he had been “estranged from his wife” Blanche Brown since 1981, according to People. A Sacramento Bee reporter told the publication 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.”
Brown, 84, supported Harris in her successful 2003 run for San Francisco district attorney, noting: “Yes, I may have influenced her career by appointing her to two state commissions when I was [California] Assembly speaker. And I certainly helped with her first race for district attorney in San Francisco.
”And while he points out that he has also helped the careers of other prominent Democrats, such as U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Brown insists: “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.,” he wrote. “That’s politics for ya.”
Questions about his relationship with Harris were reignited after she announced her 2020 presidential bid on Martin Luther King Day.
Brown and Harris broke up in 1995 but remained political allies, according to the report. In Saturday’s column, Brown said Harris is “riding a buzz wave the likes of which we haven’t seen in years.”
According to FOX News, for the past decade, Brown has been romantically linked with Russian refugee and socialite, Sonya Molodetskaya. He is said to be separated from wife, whom he shares three children with. Brown also fathered a child in 2001 with his former fundraiser, Carolyn Carpeneti.
