Romantic relationships can be quite stressful, and it’s safe to say that running for president has the same impact. Now, combine both of these, and you can imagine how hard it has been for former Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff.
There have been innumerable rumors around their divorce, especially in light of Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign. Harris and Emhoff’s public appearances have suggested that their marriage has survived. However, Harris may have just confirmed that those divorce rumors weren’t entirely false.
Harris describes how her 60th birthday in October of that year, just before the election, was almost a breaking point. She mentions this in her memoir “107 Days,” which chronicles her 2024 presidential campaign. Harris remembers that while she and Emhoff were traveling for their campaigns, her team managed to arrange for them to both be in Philadelphia on her special day.
She had been looking forward to what Emhoff had planned, only to realize that he hadn’t planned anything, and that her subordinates had taken care of practically everything. “Storm [Harris’ social secretary] knocked on Doug’s door to ask him to choose the menu. He’d shrugged and told her to ask me. So she picked the menu herself,” Harris writes (via The List).
In her book, the former Vice President expresses sympathy for Emhoff, pointing out that he had been campaigning hard as well and that they were both exhausted by the attacks from political pundits. But it only took a couple more perceived slights on Harris’ birthday to escalate the situation because tensions were already so high.
In her memoir, Kamala Harris writes that she was, to say the least, disappointed by her husband, Doug Emhoff, on her 60th birthday. Emhoff’s own hectic schedule prevented him from making reservations for the hotel, dinner, or dessert; instead, Harris’ staff handled all of it.
Even worse, the hotel was evidently nothing to write home about, even though it was supposedly finer than some of the locations they’d typically stay while on the campaign trail. Emhoff briefly appeared to redeem himself by giving Harris a lovely piece of jewelry, from a set of two, as a birthday present.
But when Harris saw that the date engraved on the back was really their wedding anniversary rather than her birthday, her appreciation soon gave way to resentment. “He’d obviously intended to give me both pieces on our anniversary, until it occurred to him that by repurposing one piece, he could kill two birds with one stone,” Harris writes in her memoir.
When Harris went to the bathtub to relax, she discovered that the towels were across the room. Emhoff was too busy watching a baseball game to heed her cries for help. Harris had finally had enough, and they started fighting.
However, Emhoff was able to put an end to the argument by saying something that struck a chord with Harris: “We can’t turn on each other.” “With the hits coming from every direction, we had to stay united,” Harris wrote. To put things right, Emhoff penned Harris several love notes on index cards, which were then placed one by one on the pillows in the then-VP’s hotel room on the evenings when they were in different locations.
