WASHINGTON — Second gentleman Doug Emhoff has an office on the White House grounds near the room where his wife, Kamala Harris, holds roundtables and formal events. Yet seeing her during the day can sometimes be difficult.
Harris typically works out of her West Wing office, and the pair are unable to communicate using their cellphones the way they did before she became vice president.
Sometimes the couple bumps into each other in a happy accident in the hallways of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which serves as the primary workspace for most White House staff and is home to the Vice President’s Ceremonial Office. Harris also tries to stop by her husband’s office when she is on site, Emhoff aides said.
But more often than not, if Emhoff wants to have a brief conversation with Harris, he asks his staff to find out when his wife has a window of time to meet. He and his security detail then make the short walk across the narrow street that separates the building he works in from the main part of the White House complex, where the president and vice president have offices.
Life has changed dramatically for Emhoff in the nearly 13 months since Harris was sworn in as vice president. He’s not allowed to text Harris anymore. He’s unable to drive his wife to work. He cannot leave his house alone, because of security concerns, and he gave up practicing the law.
“It’s a transition for him,” said Emhoff friend and attorney David Lash. “He’s very, very dedicated, and singularly focused on helping his wife however he possibly can and helping the administration as well and as much as he possibly can.”
Emhoff is officially part of the White House, except that he is not a government employee. He does not get paid for his efforts and has limited access to government resources.
Unlike his wife, he does not have a dedicated government plane at his disposal. He can take a military aircraft to remote locations, or when time is tight, but his default is to travel commercially or with other senior administration officials such as first lady Jill Biden.
Observations of aides, friends, colleagues
In a dozen interviews, current and former aides to Harris and Emhoff, friends and former colleagues said that Emhoff, an entertainment lawyer until Harris was elected, is taking it all in stride. The California transplant has sought to establish a new identity for himself, they said, as a professor at Georgetown Law and model spouse.
“There’s a lot to do and a lot of things to balance,” said John Bessler, a law professor at the University of Baltimore who is married to Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and got to know Emhoff on the presidential campaign trail.
“Like he would with anything, he’s doing his preparation at this and trying to chart a way forward,” Bessler said.
Emhoff is still getting used to the level of fame that goes hand-in-hand with being the first male spouse of a president or vice president. Although he declined through aides to be interviewed for this article, people close to the second couple acknowledged that for Harris to achieve her political aspirations, Emhoff had to make significant personal and professional sacrifices.
Friends of Harris, 57, are sympathetic to what Emhoff, who is also 57 and has two adult children — Cole and Ella from a previous marriage — gave up to support his wife’s career.
“He is kindness personified,” said Star Jones, an attorney and media personality who has been friends with Harris for more than 30 years. “He’s a nice man who supports and loves his woman. To look at him, look at her, from a woman’s perspective, is really wonderful.”
Harris had twice been elected California attorney general when the couple met. She announced a U.S. Senate bid several months after they married in an intimate courthouse ceremony and launched her candidacy for the presidency four years after that.
Lash recalled Emhoff’s calling to postpone lunch one day, “And I read in the newspaper that on the day he and I were supposed to have lunch, he got married to the state attorney general.”
Emhoff caught a glimpse of his future as second gentleman when Harris ran for president in 2019. Friends of the pair and former aides to Harris said that in order for Emhoff to get time with his wife back then, he would travel to campaign forums and debates with the then-California senator.
The pandemic helped the couple find a more normal routine, they said, until Biden tapped Harris to be his running mate. Although he was working a heavy caseload, Emhoff, who was a partner at the global law firm DLA Piper at the time, used to drive Harris to the U.S. Capitol for votes. He would wait for her outside alongside Senate staffers and other spouses who were playing bodyman to their partners, people familiar with the arrangement said.
“He just has such a fascination about Kamala that I think is really warm. When you’re with him and you’re with them you immediately feel it,” Yasmin Nelson, a former aide to Harris, said of the dynamic.
Working at food pantries, fighting antisemitism
Emhoff’s support for his wife extended this year to his annual resolution. He said in a tweet that during a long hike, he reflected on ways he could support the country and assist Harris and her boss, President Joe Biden, with their governing efforts.
Aides to the second gentleman said he would continue to build out a unique set of issues for himself. He has volunteered at food pantries, participated in legal aid events, promoted pediatric COVID-19 vaccinations and is increasingly using his platform to speak out against antisemitism.
“His work is focused on his passion for fairness and for justice, which he shares with the vice president,” Emhoff’s chief of staff, Julie Mason, said.
The hostage crisis at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, last month marked something of a shift for Emhoff, who is the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president and has acted as emissary to the Jewish community for the White House.
“There’s a real epidemic of hate going on in our country, if not our world right now,” Emhoff said at a meeting with Jewish leaders in Wisconsin a week after the standoff. “And antisemitism is a part of that.”
Several days earlier, Emhoff helped assemble prepackaged bags of produce, toiletries and dry goods alongside AmeriCorps volunteers at a Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles food pantry.
Nancy Volpert, director of public policy & strategic initiatives at the Jewish community group, said the Colleyville crisis gave added meaning to her interaction with Emhoff and higher importance to his Jewish heritage.
“It’s a pretty huge barrier to have broken,” Volpert said. “The vice president cracked a huge glass ceiling, which as someone who’s a Californian who has watched her and been represented by her, that’s incredibly exciting. But they both made cracks in ceilings that I don’t think all of us were sure could happen.”
Emhoff’s approach to the role has largely been similar for his recent predecessors, albeit he is of a different gender, said Colleen Shogan, senior vice president at the White House Historical Association. Shogan said his religious background makes him unique, though, and his elevation of Jewish holidays represents a change in the role of the second spouse.
Vice presidential spouses have been expanding the role with increasingly public assignments since Pat Nixon held the title of second lady in the 1950s, Shogan said, and Emhoff has continued to build on that model.
Shogan said the modern iteration of the position came about after Congress made it possible in 1978 for the vice president to authorize a spouse or close family member to spend government funds, paving the way for Barbara Bush to hire a staff and put on events during her husband’s vice presidency.
Second gentleman spokesperson Katie Peters said Emhoff “is finding the areas where he can connect with communities on a personal level,” drawing on his experience as a father, a lawyer and a Jew.
“I see his background playing a role in what he’s doing now, both in terms of how he’s contributing to this role and how I think he’s going to continue to grow it,” said Mason, Emhoff’s chief of staff.
Lash said that Emhoff “feels like he’s got a lot of responsibility, not just to his wife, and not just to the administration, but to his own groundbreaking” as the first male and Jewish second spouse.
“His whole life, his faith has been very important to him, it has played a significant part in his life, and it’s only natural that it would continue to do so. Now with a lot more attention, focused on it, but I think it’s a very consistent part of his life,” Lash said.
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