Resurfaced profile reveals unknown childhood facts about Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris made quite a splash on the San Francisco gossip scene when she first arrived on the arm of State Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, but when she decided to challenge her old boss Terrence Hallinan for his job as district attorney she became the subject of glossy magazine profiles.

Journalist Joan Walsh penned a lengthy profile of Harris for San Francisco magazine titled ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ in 2003, a reference to her campaign for district attorney for the city. 

Harris, Walsh wrote at the time, was ‘glamorous,’ and ‘defiant,’ describing her as a ‘black-eyed, raven-haired, latte-skinned lawyer’ and also a ‘tough customer’ who was both ‘ribald and flirty.’

But Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, shared some of the details of Kamala’s childhood to fill out her biography.

She revealed that Harris was ‘so pigeon-toed that she wore leg braces as a preschooler and ugly orthopedic shoes for years.’ (Pigeon-toed is a condition where a child's feet point inward instead of forward.)

Walsh wrote later in life that she included the information about Harris' childhood struggles because it represented 'two hardships that undermined the image of effortless glamour the young attorney projected.'  

Read More

EXCLUSIVE
Resurfaced video comes back to haunt Kamala Harris

Kamala's mother was also fiercely defensive of Harris' dating relationship with Willie Brown. In an SF Weekly Magazine profile she defended her daughter's belonging among the rich and famous in California.

'Kamala is comfortable in all kinds of social scenes. She can pull it off in high society, too. She has the manners, the eating habits,' she said.

She also took offense to the suggestion that her daughter, 29, should not have dated the 60-year-old Brown.

'Why shouldn’t she have gone out with Willie Brown? He was a player,' she said.

Harris also defended her dating relationship with Brown, emphasizing that he was just one of many 'intelligent' men she was attracted to. 

'He has a lot of wit and humor,' she said. 'I need my mind to be engaged - I've dated a lot of intelligent men.'

'Write that down!' she encouraged Walsh.

Harris also defended her relationship with Brown in her interview with SF Weekly. 

'The networks of black lawyers in California are small. Brown and I had lots of mutual friends,' she said.

Brown, who was married at the time he met Harris but long estranged from his wife Blanche, has said that they met at a wedding of a mutual friend.

'She was presentable in a very appropriate way,' Brown said later in a podcast interview, reflecting on the first time he met her.

Brown said that Harris was the one that ended their relationship after he won his campaign for mayor of San Francisco.

"She ended it because she concluded there was no permanency in our relationship, and she was absolutely right,' he told Walsh. 'I absolutely love her, and I wish like hell I could shed that absence of permanency, but I can't. I think it's in my genes.'