Kamala Harris had a busy Saturday in her adopted hometown of Los Angeles this past March.
After jetting back from an event for Latino voters in Las Vegas, Harris retired to the home she shares with her husband, Doug Emhoff, in the city’s Brentwood enclave. Then it was off to an Oscar party thrown by Hollywood power agent Bryan Lourd, an exclusive invitation that allowed the vice president to mingle with media moguls (Barry Diller), celebrity CEOs ( Bob Iger ) and Academy Award winners (Julia Roberts).
A long weekend in Los Angeles—one that combines time at home, A-list socializing and a small dose of campaigning—is an itinerary Harris knows well.
Since succeeding her boss at the top of the Democratic ticket last month, the vice president has been reintroducing herself to voters . At her party’s convention in Chicago , that biographical sketch included a childhood in Berkeley, as the daughter of middle-class immigrants, and a career as a tough San Francisco prosecutor.
Yet if Harris’s path to power began in Northern California, a less-noticed element of her biography is her time in Southern California, where she has found rest, relaxation and opportunity in the boutique shopping and country club dinners of her adopted hometown. Now that she is running for president, the neighbors and friends Harris met after moving to Los Angeles one decade ago have been recast as the power brokers and donors she needs to win the White House.
Since being inaugurated as vice president, Harris has been in Los Angeles more than any other location outside of Washington, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of her daily schedules. In 2023 alone, she spent at least 59 days in the city, traveling there every month but two.
Neighbors now know when she is in town. A snaking motorcade paralyzes traffic, and Secret Service agents try to look inconspicuous as they loiter outside of the local Goop store.
Brentwood has also become a hub in Harris’s fundraising blitz. Of her six trips with Los Angeles stops so far this year, each one has included a campaign event.
President Biden sits in the sand at Rehoboth Beach. George W. Bush cleared brush at Prairie Chapel Ranch. Barack Obama vacationed in Martha’s Vineyard, his arrival requiring the installation of extra cellphone towers that ensured uninterrupted service at the beach. Donald Trump retired to his “winter White House” in Palm Beach.
Harris frequently chooses to relax much farther away from Washington, in Brentwood, a westside neighborhood where she lives with Emhoff. A few miles from the Pacific Ocean, the enclave offers the ultrawealthy a lifestyle that combines suburban serenity with the cosmopolitan perks of Los Angeles, lending it an air of Mayberry meets “Big Little Lies.”
A Harris aide said the vice president’s trips to Los Angeles are often for more than relaxation, and can include work for the Democratic Party, such as a rally she held for the city’s mayor, Karen Bass , ahead of her election in 2022. In 2023, the vice president used visits to the city to chat with WNBA player Brittney Griner after her release from a Russian prison , congratulate workers who had repaired a damaged freeway and thank local firefighters.
Harris told the California Democratic Legislative Caucus in January that she had prepared for this current sprint of 2024 campaigning by relaxing in Brentwood for an extended Christmas break.
“It’s really good to be home,” Harris said. “I, maybe with a bit of bravado, will repeat what I think we all say: So goes California, goes the nation.”
‘No public events’
Harris moved to Brentwood to live with Emhoff, whom she married in 2014 . She was hardly a notable draw in a neighborhood where Jimmy Stewart got married, Marilyn Monroe died and O.J. Simpson led police through a slow-crawl car chase. Jennifer Garner and Reese Witherspoon lived nearby.
Emhoff purchased their 3,500-square-foot house for $2.7 million after divorcing his first wife, according to real-estate records.
Passersby wouldn’t know the vice president lived there, blocks from Sunset Boulevard, if they didn’t clock the government-issued license plates on the car always parked outside. The only sound is the occasional weed wacker. The houses are close to the street and considered modest for the area, where estates can stretch beyond 10,000 square feet.
“The slums of Brentwood,” joked one neighbor, pointing up the hill to the grander homes. The street, most everyone seems to agree, isn’t designed for the traffic headaches caused by the closures enacted when Harris is in town.
“Very annoying to be their neighbor,” said one resident.
“The street’s always shut down,” said another.
“I will vote for her if she agrees to sell her house,” added a third.
They may grouse about traffic, but most Brentwood residents are Democrats. Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 each won the same share of votes in Harris’s precinct—76%.
Harris has spent major holidays there with family and shopped at the Brentwood Country Mart, an outdoor plaza that doubles as a see-and-be-seen town square, offering James Perse T-shirts and Christian Louboutin pumps. (Nancy Reagan was also known to frequent the Brentwood Country Mart on trips back to Los Angeles, noted longtime residents.)
Emhoff, called “Dougie” by Country Mart employees, shows up solo for a black coffee and an occasional bagel at the Farmshop restaurant, or a trim at Lloyd’s Barber Shop. Secret Service agents patrol the area when he is there—often undercover, noted other shoppers, and often wearing Hawaiian shirts.
“I’m not from D.C., so it’s really cool for me,” said Winston Reid, a 24-year-old who was raised down the street from Harris’s home and now works in the nearby post office. “You see celebrities here, but not politicians.”
Leading up to Biden’s withdrawal from the race , prominent Democrats in Los Angeles griped over what they saw as Harris’s frequent presence here. Many trips featured “no public events,” in the language of the vice president’s official daybook, and were seen by those critics as time better spent courting voters.
When Harris returned to Los Angeles soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, a frustrated neighbor erected a sign visible from the street asking the vice president to go back to D.C. and work.
Following the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, neighbors noticed the security radius around Harris’s home grew wider, and went up earlier. A fundraiser about a month later at the nearby home of friends Cliff and Leslie Gilbert-Lurie was briefly delayed after one protester threw fake blood on the house’s driveway.
A spokesman for the Secret Service declined to comment on details of their protection of the vice president and her family, but said the agency works “closely with communities to minimize disruptions whenever possible without compromising critical safety measures.”
“We regret any inconveniences our presence may cause,” he added.
‘My hometown’
Harris referred to the Korean diaspora in the city “where I live” in a 2021 meeting with South Korea President Moon Jae-in. It again proved a point of connection when Polish President Andrzej Duda visited Washington the next year, and Harris noted, “We have a substantial Polish-American community in my hometown of Los Angeles.”
Harris’s first visit back to Brentwood as vice president was a three-day trip in February 2021, less than a month after her inauguration. In 2022, Harris began more regularly attaching visits home to work trips that took her west. Staying in a Los Angeles home vetted by the Secret Service is usually less of a headache than securing a hotel somewhere else, said members of the vice president’s advance team.
Residents by then had noticed her habits, which included dinners at the Hillcrest Country Club or El Cholo Mexican restaurant. In 2022, Harris spent at least 46 days in Los Angeles, including a week for the Summit of the Americas, her schedule shows.
In 2023, she traveled to Los Angeles almost every month, for a total of at least 59 days, slightly less than she spent traveling to other parts of the U.S., almost always on day trips that had her back in Washington by evening.
Though it is her most frequent destination outside of Washington, Harris has spent less time in Los Angeles than Biden has at his preferred respite, in the much closer state of Delaware.
Since becoming president, Biden has spent all or part of 331 days in Delaware as of Aug. 28, according to Mark Knoller, a former CBS reporter who tracks presidential travel. That is more time than Trump spent either at Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster, N.J., at the same point in his tenure (240 days) or Bush did at his ranch (254 days).
Harris is in Los Angeles enough to justify a year-round base of operations. The White House has set up such a base near her home, where government agents process secure information and maintain communications systems. Biden has a similar outpost in Rehoboth Beach.
If Harris’s home is in the slums, the house used by her team belongs somewhere else. The mansion covers more than 6,500 square feet, with eight bathrooms, five bedrooms, an indoor movie theater and an infinity pool.
It was listed for rent in April 2020 for more than $29,000 a month. Today, the home is occupied by government workers. The curtains stay drawn.
City of stars
Harris’s Los Angeles life today mixes friendship and politics. In 2022, she headlined a fundraiser at the home of friend (and Brentwood neighbor) Dana Walden , the top TV executive at Disney . This past New Year’s Eve, Harris celebrated from Los Angeles with Walden and other pals, including Ryan Murphy, the creator of “American Crime Story.”
Walden, whose circle of friends set up Harris and Emhoff on a blind date, has known the vice president for decades. But the campaign has turned the friendship into something more complicated: Walden’s job at Disney includes oversight of ABC News, which is hosting the presidential debate in September. A Disney representative said Walden manages the executives who run ABC News but isn’t involved in coverage decisions.
When he is in town on Sundays, the second gentleman tries to join friends for the 9:30 a.m. SoulCycle class taught at the company’s West Hollywood location. His preferred instructor encourages riders to pick up the speed during the screaming chorus of Alanis Morrisette’s “You Oughta Know.”
Secret Service agents stay stationed outside, across from the Equinox and next to the SunLife Organics smoothie shop. Emhoff spins from the back row, his fellow SoulCyclers say, opposite a wall reminding riders, “We inhale intention and exhale expectation.”
The couple was in town during Biden’s disastrous debate, in part to attend a weekend birthday bash for Casey Wasserman , a sports and entertainment executive and major Democratic donor. Wasserman’s party included a performance by Imagine Dragons before a crowd that included Nancy Pelosi and Jessica Alba.
Harris ended up missing the festivities. Emhoff went, and partygoers said the debate fallout dominated conversations. The next day, Harris headlined a “Pride Garden Event” at director Rob Reiner’s home that featured a three-song set by Broadway performer Idina Menzel. Harris had been scheduled to speak from notes for a brief time, but instead held court extemporaneously for nearly 30 minutes, said one attendee. She appeared more in command than he had ever previously seen her.
About three weeks later, on the Sunday when Biden announced he was ending his run for a second term, Emhoff was in West Hollywood, hanging out after class in the SoulCycle courtyard, he told attendees at a recent fundraiser. He got word that his wife was trying to reach him.
“Where the…were you?” he said Harris asked him.
The Harris campaign has held Zoom sessions with entertainment industry executives and talent representatives to line up donors and star surrogates they can call on in the weeks ahead.
A minimum of one million followers on social media is desired.
Write to Erich Schwartzel at erich.schwartzel@wsj.com
