The complications start the second Air Drive Two touches down at LAX. A path of black SUVs exits the Los Angeles airport and snakes alongside the 405 Freeway, choking visitors with rolling highway closures throughout West Los Angeles because it makes its method to the tony neighborhood of Brentwood. Contained in the quiet enclave, the motorcade rolls to a cease in entrance of the house of one of many nation’s most well-known political {couples}.
In a metropolis filled with celebrities and A-listers, Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s presence is tough to flee.
On a mid-October weekend, the couple got here to city to have fun the wedding of Emhoff’s 29-year-old son, Cole Emhoff, to his longtime girlfriend, Greenley Littlejohn, 28. Two days after the marriage, the pair was snacking on guacamole, salsa and chips in a dimly lighted vinyl sales space upstairs at one in all their favourite Mexican haunts, El Cholo in Santa Monica, when Emhoff acquired a textual content message from a good friend.
The second gentleman’s buddy was simply saying hi there: He knew Emhoff was on the town as a result of he’d seen the motorcade velocity by. (A lot for sneaking into city).
“It’s simply actually an incredible factor for this city to have a vice chairman primarily based right here,” Emhoff advised The Occasions within the couple’s first joint interview since taking workplace. “It’s intense. I’m from this space and I’m like, ‘Wow.’ That is unbelievable for our neighborhood.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff are photographed in Los Angeles in November.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
For Harris, the impulse to flee Washington — the place she faces Republican scorn and criticism inside her personal occasion — for downtime at dwelling has been troublesome to fulfill over the previous couple of years. Whereas President Biden has made a close to weekly behavior of returning dwelling to neighboring Delaware, the taxpayer-funded, cross-country flight to L.A. is more durable to justify except it contains official enterprise. Harris’ journeys dwelling to L.A. are sometimes camouflaged with an occasion to have fun a neighborhood small enterprise or a cease to boost consciousness about one in all her coverage focuses comparable to Black maternal healthcare or reproductive rights. The vice chairman was additionally anchored to Washington through the first half of her time period to solid tiebreaking votes in an evenly divided Senate.
However the Brentwood dwelling, largely hid by its verdant environment, has develop into a sanctuary for one of many world’s most seen figures. The four-bedroom, 3,500-square-foot home, lower than a mile from Sundown Boulevard and roughly a 10-minute drive from the Will Rogers State Historic Park, is off-limits to reporters. In October, a bunch of protesters pulled up in vehicles outdoors to name for a cease-fire within the Israel-Hamas warfare, although Harris wasn’t there to listen to their pleas.
As vice chairman, Harris is briefed a number of instances a day, and reporters typically observe her from occasion to occasion. However at dwelling, Harris can keep away from the scrutiny to recharge, cooking and chatting along with her household as they watch from the kitchen desk.
“Ask anyone who has ever labored in D.C. — in Congress or the Senate or on the White Home — the journey from California, it’s not straightforward. It doesn’t matter in the event you’re on Air Drive Two or on a United flight,” mentioned Brian Brokaw, a former advisor to Harris. “When she’s dwelling, she needs to take pleasure in that consolation and to the extent that she sees a really small and tight circle.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, left, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff order meals at El Cholo Mexican restaurant in Santa Monica in October.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
The Vice President’s Residence on the Naval Observatory, the place she and Emhoff reside in Washington, gives some respite from the well-trodden White Home advanced the place she retains an workplace, however buddies and aides say she considers it the individuals’s home — not dwelling. Consistent with custom of her predecessors, she redecorated the Victorian mansion — including her personal Californian touches — however the residence is on “borrowed time,” mentioned Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), a detailed good friend and former advisor to Harris’ 2020 presidential marketing campaign.
“On the finish of day, house is dwelling. The mattress that hugs good is a distinct type of relaxation,” Butler advised The Occasions in an interview final summer time. “The neighborhood that embraced you and trusted you to serve them as the primary Black girl as lawyer basic, then as a U.S. senator after which as their vice chairman — that’s significant. To know that you’ll get that type of help and kindness and welcome is a spot that, you realize, if I had been her I might run to each likelihood I acquired.”
Visits dwelling steadily middle on one in all Harris’ most sacred traditions: Sunday household dinner. Harris begins planning the meal midweek, staging a choreographed unfold during which everybody has a task.
Emhoff is in control of cocktails, his son, Cole, curates the music playlist and his 24-year-old daughter, Ella, is tasked with making her signature guacamole. Cole’s new spouse, Greenley, has taken on duty for dessert. Whereas the couple host an everyday rotation of international dignitaries, lawmakers, reporters and administration officers on the Vice President’s Residence (they hosted 1000’s of individuals at almost two dozen vacation events this yr), Sunday dinner is strictly a non-public affair for Harris, who’s had the identical core group of buddies for many years. When Harris is on the town, Sunday is off-limits for journey, in keeping with an aide.
“It’s only a method to keep related, reconnect and have some sense of normalcy in a world that generally isn’t,” Emhoff mentioned. “We’re again in our metropolis, again in our dwelling. After which after all you go outdoors, and there’s all of the Secret Service and the whole lot that reminds you that it’s nonetheless a bit bit totally different.”
The visitor checklist is an everyday rotation of household — Emhoff’s dad and mom and Harris’ nieces are frequent friends — and shut buddies who reside close by or are on the town for the weekend. The group cleans up whereas cooking, utilizing “Uncle Freddy” as a shorthand for the method that Harris mentioned she picked up as a toddler when visiting her dad and mom’ shut good friend at his basement house in Harlem. Inside Uncle Freddy’s tiny kitchen, which “was the dimensions of this desk,” he would clear any utensil as quickly as he completed utilizing it, an effectivity she has inspired Cole and Ella to include into their blended household’s personal elaborate meals.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff are photographed in Los Angeles in November.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
The menu typically incorporates a dish that takes at the least 5 hours to arrange, Harris mentioned, which varies from a simmering Bolognese to a roast rooster utilizing herbs from her yard backyard.
She’s additionally tried to include her worldwide journey into the end-of-week ritual, making time to talk to resort cooks about native recipes and the place to cease to seek out elements on the best way to the airport. The day earlier than our interview, Harris chosen a recipe she picked up throughout a November 2022 go to to Bangkok for the Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation summit: a pork dish marinated in coriander root and served with lemongrass over coconut rice.
“I freaked the Secret Service out as a result of they’re type of used to going to, like, golf programs with their principal,” she mentioned, laughing on the reminiscence of directing her motorcade to a Bangkok market. “With me, they’re going to the fish market.”
If the schedule permits, Harris will cease for elements, whether or not that’s detouring to a market in Kauai, Hawaii, for a sure kind of fish or discovering the fitting spices in Bangkok, in keeping with a former Secret Service agent on her element who spoke on situation of anonymity with a purpose to focus on delicate safety data.
“We’ve acquired an entire motorcade, we’ve acquired an entire American delegation and we’ve acquired all this Thai safety and he or she’s rolling via this market to seek out these specific spices,” he recalled of Bangkok.
However she tries to return the favor by inviting the Secret Service brokers tasked with defending her contained in the Brentwood dwelling, the one outsiders seemingly allowed to puncture the sanctuary. On the Fourth of July, Harris and Emhoff grill within the yard for the brokers compelled to spend the vacation in L.A., handing out plates of sizzling canines, hamburgers, potato salad, baked beans and different barbecue favorites. In contrast to earlier White Home protectees, Harris not solely cooks the meals however serves it, the agent mentioned.
Earlier than Secret Service sweeps, safety element and motorcades, Harris and Emhoff had a routine, as a lot as a politician and an leisure lawyer may. Harris, a proud Bay Space native, completely relocated to L.A. in 2014 after marrying Emhoff. She was closing out her reelection bid for lawyer basic, a statewide marketing campaign that entailed an exhaustive journey schedule outdoors of L.A. However L.A. was a “second metropolis” to Harris, in keeping with her shut good friend Chrisette Hudlin, an Angeleno who launched her to Emhoff. Although Harris was firmly rooted in San Francisco, as lawyer basic she spent appreciable time in L.A., the place she had one other workplace. As godmother to Hudlin’s youngsters, she attended soccer video games and debates and even as soon as stood in for Hudlin at her son’s college birthday celebration.
“That made the transition moderately seamless,” Hudlin mentioned of Harris’ transfer to L.A. “That was a giant resolution for her as a result of she loves San Francisco a lot. That’s the place she started her profession. [The Bay] is the place she grew up.”
Harris’ political identification is tied to the Bay Space, the place she solid a profession as San Francisco’s first Black and South Asian feminine district lawyer and first girl of coloration elected as California’s lawyer basic. Although she was residing in Brentwood, when she launched her U.S. Senate and presidential bids, she hardly ever spoke of L.A., as an alternative emphasizing her Oakland roots on the marketing campaign path.
Harris remains to be fiercely loyal to the Bay Space, however she insists she loves L.A. One of many greatest changes she needed to make was “that it’s regular in L.A. to drive inside the identical metropolis for an hour to go to a restaurant,” she mentioned.
“I needed to wrap my head round that,” she mentioned. “It took a bit adjustment.”
“However then what occurred, you turned the nook,” Emhoff interrupted.
“I turned the nook,” Harris agreed. “I do like it right here.”
Harris has internalized native frustration along with her lengthy tail of safety, typically selecting to restrict journey round L.A. whereas she’s on the town to spare drivers ready for her motorcade to cross by. In grappling along with her California cut up character, Harris mentioned she coined a time period to explain herself: “Sangeleno,” a hybrid identifier combining San Francisco and Los Angeles that doesn’t seem destined to catch on.
The pair are wistful about their life earlier than the nationwide stage, recalling reveals on the Hollywood Bowl or seeing films on the now shuttered Cinerama Dome on a Sunday afternoon. The couple would slowly make their manner again west, stopping at Huntington Meats subsequent to the Grove, the place Harris would decide up provisions for dinner, or the farmers market at Brentwood Nation Mart. Harris likes to go to Gearys, the luxurious homeware and jewellery retailer in Beverly Hills, for big day presents (she purchased Cole and Greenley’s marriage ceremony present there). Zankou Rooster holds a particular place in Emhoff’s coronary heart, whereas Harris speaks fondly of going to Guelaguetza for mole close to her workplace in Koreatown when she was lawyer basic. As a Westside leisure lawyer, Emhoff loved dinner at Toscana and Craig’s, the place he took Harris on their first date. He’s a former member of Hillcrest, a traditionally Jewish nation membership.
Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at Los Angeles Worldwide Airport for a flight again to Washington, D.C., with Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, not pictured.
SUVs arrive at Los Angeles Worldwide Airport with Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff in November.
Emhoff has tried to duplicate a few of his routine in Washington, buying and selling within the Santa Monica stairs for the Georgetown College steps made well-known by “The Exorcist.” On visits dwelling, Harris stuffs luggage filled with herbs from her backyard, doling them out to employees members and navy aides on Air Drive Two on the five-hour journey again to Washington. She additionally brings kumquats from two timber in her yard.
Harris and Emhoff agreed that Mexican meals is required consuming whereas they’re dwelling, whether or not that’s ordering takeout from Frida’s or sneaking away to El Cholo (Washington’s Mexican meals scene “is simply totally different,” Harris politely declares). Though Emhoff used to eat on the authentic El Cholo on Western Avenue as a lawyer and USC legislation scholar, he mentioned the couple have grown accustomed to going to the Santa Monica location due to its proximity to the home.
Music is their different ardour. However whereas Emhoff and Harris are solely every week aside in age (Emhoff’s birthday is Oct. 13 and Harris’ birthday is Oct. 20), they’ve vastly totally different tastes.
“I’m hip-hop, he’s Depeche Mode,” Harris mentioned as the 2 laughed.
The 2 have compromised on “chill resort foyer music” such because the English trip-hop duo Zero 7. On the April night of Prince’s demise in 2016, the 2 huddled collectively on the sofa on their again patio, dancing and speaking for 3 hours as twilight pale into the night.
Though they compromised on music, they haven’t on sports activities. She’s held onto the Golden State Warriors, whereas he’s passionate concerning the Lakers.
“There’s a number of s— speaking and gloating,” Harris mentioned.
A few of that has carried over to social media, the place they playfully wager on who has to put on the opposite crew’s jersey.
Emhoff as soon as made the error of donning Harris’ San Francisco Giants hat whereas he was on the town visiting her. The pair snapped a photograph whereas at a Giants sport that circulated on-line, a fleeting resolution that Emhoff mentioned his L.A. buddies refuse to let him neglect.
“It turned out to be eternally just like the one image of us as a pair that was used,” he mentioned.
Harris has an acute understanding of what it’s wish to reside in L.A. even when she’s 2,600 miles away. Throughout the Getty fireplace of 2019, Harris and Emhoff needed to twice evacuate their Brentwood dwelling. (That’s L.A. residing: In 1961, future President Nixon was renting a home on Bundy Avenue when a devastating fireplace swept via the Bel-Air and Brentwood neighborhoods. Nixon leapt onto the roof of his home and was photographed watering down the shingles with a backyard hose.)
Throughout the Getty fireplace, Harris was sitting in a Senate committee assembly on pure disasters when she discovered of one of many evacuations via a handed notice. She left the assembly, known as Cole, and requested him to go to the home and gather their private belongings. Harris and the youthful Emhoff had very totally different views on what is taken into account invaluable, she mentioned as she laughed (Emhoff didn’t appear to treasure images the best way she did). Three weeks after the scare, she launched a invoice within the Senate to put aside $1 billion in annual funding to assist communities with wildfire preparedness.
“It’s such a gut-wrenching feeling,” Emhoff recalled of seeing pictures of the inferno burning behind the Sundown signal alongside the 405 Freeway whereas he was away in Washington. “That’s our exit. And also you’re it in flames.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, prime proper, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff board Air Drive Two at Los Angeles Worldwide Airport in November.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
Emhoff’s brother, who just lately retired as a firefighter in Santa Cruz, was all the time on his thoughts.
“It’s a tough feeling as a result of if you’re not there, you simply wish to be there,” he added.
In Washington, Harris has tried to convey the comforts of dwelling to her sprawling residence on the Naval Observatory. She created a signature candle, scented with notes of jasmine, with Melanie Apple Fields, a candlemaker who owns Studio Metropolis-based Voyage et Cie.
Harris provides the candles as presents, emblazoned with the vice chairman’s seal in gold, to ceremonial dinner friends and to dignitaries, together with the president of El Salvador and King Abdullah II of Jordan, Apple Fields mentioned. Every candle is accompanied with a brief description of the enterprise.
“She all the time says to me, ‘I simply need you to achieve success,’” Apple Fields mentioned of her cellphone conversations with the vice chairman.
Harris first encountered Apple Fields’ candles on the Peninsula earlier than she sought out the candlemaker at her Studio Metropolis storefront. The 2 bonded over the scent each their moms wore, Nina Ricci’s L’Air du Temps, and Harris started inserting orders for batches of Apple Fields’ candles. Two weeks after the 2020 presidential election was known as for Biden, Harris phoned Apple Fields to ask her to scent the Vice President’s Residence.
She has since made 1000’s of candles for Harris, together with lotions, soaps and bubble baths which are displayed in rooms all through the Vice President’s Residence and for Harris to tackle the highway. Apple Fields produces candles for First Girl Jill Biden, who prefers the scent of gardenia, and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who known as and requested her to provide 250 candles utilizing Harris’ scent for an occasion he was internet hosting. Padilla insisted he had the vice chairman’s permission however when Apple Fields phoned Harris to test, she mentioned no. Padilla settled for one of many model’s signature scents.
When the motorcade arrives in Brentwood subsequent time Harris is on the town, she and Emhoff will most likely have some home-owner challenge to cope with: no operating sizzling water, no warmth or a damaged range, all of which occurred on latest journeys dwelling. As soon as she’s handled that, she’ll calm down — perhaps pour a glass of wine, or draw a shower — and start planning her subsequent Sunday dinner.
