No, not me, Willie Brown dated Kamasutra Harris. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. So what? by Willie Brown Jan. 26, 2019 I’ve been peppered with calls from the national media about my “relationship” with Kamala Harris … Yes, we dated. It was more than 20 years ago. Yes, I may have influenced her career by appointing her to two state commissions when I was Assembly speaker. And I certainly helped with her first race for district attorney in San Francisco. I have also helped the careers of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and a host of other politicians. 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.

If that’s the difference, I think Speaker Pelosi, Senator Feinstein, and, especially, Governor Newsom have some explaining to do.

Pepe the Mayor

The Chronicle goes on to explain:

Two-term mayor of San Francisco, renowned speaker of the California Assembly, and widely regarded as the most influential African American politician of the late twentieth century, Willie L. Brown, Jr. has been at the center of California politics, government and civic life for four decades. His career spans the American presidency from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush, and he’s worked with every California governor from Pat Brown to Arnold Schwarzenegger. From civil rights to education reform, tax policy, economic development, health care, international trade, domestic partnerships and affirmative action, he’s left his imprimatur on every aspect of politics and public policy in the Golden State. As mayor of California’s most cosmopolitan city, he refurbished and rebuilt the nation’s busiest transit system, pioneered the use of bond measures to build affordable housing, created a model juvenile justice system, and paved the way for a second campus of UCSF to serve as the anchor of a new development that will position the city as a center for the burgeoning field of biotechnology. Today, he heads the Willie L. Brown Jr. Institute on Politics and Public Service, where he shares his knowledge and skills with a new generation of California leaders.

Usually unmentioned in tributes to Willie Brown is his alliance with the Rev. Jim Jones in 1970s San Francisco in the years leading up to the 1978 murders and suicides of 919 people at Jonestown. This may have put a crimp in Brown’s otherwise sterling career, dooming him to never represent anything larger than San Francisco, where people didn’t ask unkind questions about politicians’ buddying up with the maniacal cult leader. In San Francisco, it was understood that everybody—Willie, the sainted martyrs Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk, everybody—did favors for Jim Jones. If you weren’t there, you wouldn’t understand: it was a 1970s San Francisco Thing.

Anyway, other than helping out a future mass murdering cult leader, Brown made relatively few missteps in his long career. I’ve given Senator Harris a lot of grief over the years about how she got her start in politics, but but I suspect that the practical advice she has gotten from Mr. Brown has done her career a lot of good and, if she takes it to heart, will make her a more formidable candidate in 2020.

[Comment at Unz.com]