Harris’s Husband Has Reservations On Her Potential Presidential Run

By Jessica Toonkel , Emily Glazer and Ken Thomas

As former Vice President Kamala Harris lays the groundwork for a potential third presidential campaign, her husband Doug Emhoff has privately told some people he would prefer she didn’t run and some donors have told her directly that a bid would be a long shot, said people familiar with the conversations.

Harris has said she is undecided on whether to launch another run for the White House, but she has taken steps that could be a precursor to such a bid, including speaking with major donors, hiring staff and traveling to battleground states to boost Democratic candidates in the November midterm elections.

Publicly, she has said she remains focused on the midterms, in which Democrats hope to win control of the House and Senate and pick up several gubernatorial seats. “I have not decided if I’m going to run again,” Harris said at a NAACP event in Michigan last month as the audience gave her a lengthy standing ovation. “I do sincerely believe ’28 won’t matter if we don’t get through ’26.”

Some people who have known and worked with Harris are skeptical she will mount another run.

A spokesman for Harris declined to comment.

Many Democrats, including some who remain close to her, think the party needs to put forward a fresh candidate in the 2028 election. Unlike in 2024, when the party coalesced around Harris in the aftermath of Biden’s exit, she is expected to face a crowded field if she were to run again.

Emhoff is among those who have shared concerns with others about another run, though people close to him expect he will support her if she decides to run.

In “107 Days,” her memoir of the 2024 campaign, Harris describes her husband as protective and supportive, noting that when she was chosen to be Biden’s running mate in 2020, “he made a huge sacrifice, gladly and without bitterness.” She wrote, “he knew it was essential that there be no appearance of conflicts of interest in our new roles. So that was his last day at his law firm.”

She writes that in October 2024, she realized that “the at-tacks on me, and the many personal assaults he’d been experiencing were finally taking a toll.” She describes an argument they had and Emhoff telling her, “We can’t turn on each other,” he said. She wrote, “With the hits coming from every direction, we had to stay united.”

Since leaving Washington, Emhoff has returned to work as an attorney in Los Angeles at white shoe law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP.

Some of Harris’s recent moves have made some donors uneasy about her intentions, some of the people said. In the weeks leading up to the midterms, Harris has appeared at private fundraisers in California including an event in Santa Monica for Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, the party’s nominee for governor of Wisconsin, and another for Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, the Democratic nominee for governor of Nevada.

She also joined a get-outthe- vote call with the Democratic National Committee recently, urging more than 2,000 volunteers listening live to knock on doors and engage with voters to flip seats in a dozen states across the country.

“Hard work is good work,” Harris said.

Doug Emhoff is among confidants who have shared concerns about Kamala Harris potentially running for president in 2028.

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