So what if Kamala Harris has a 'past'?

We all have pasts. I can't begin to recall all the names of men I dated in San Francisco in the eighties and nineties, let alone explain how I once ended up bicycling on a freeway en route to San Rafael. Long story.

Vice-President Harris once dated a man by the name of Willie Brown, now 90. Most of you won't have heard of him, but those of us from San Francisco, especially those of us over 40, know him very well. He was Speaker of the Assembly in California and then Mayor of San Francisco in the late 90s to early Aughts. I worked for him as a fundraiser from his law office in San Francisco. I was tasked with calling up the likes of Dianne Feinstein or Barbara Boxer and similar, raising money for his campaigns. I was good at it, if not slightly nervous whenever Willie would happen to come back into the office. One time he returned and I was sitting in his chair making my calls (this was where I had been told to go). He was more embarrassed than I, as I scuttled out of there.

The veep dated him, or so I have heard, and people on the Right want to make a fuss over this. He was/is married. He has had an open marriage*, though, with the whole of San Francisco seeing him about town with his various girlfriends. I was friends with Willie's son's girlfriend in the early 90s. That was my connection. I was never anyone's date or girlfriend, but a struggling writer who had become a fundraiser, jumping from San Francisco Ballet to a loftier sphere with Brown. I would even fall in love with Ray Charles' bassist after a fundraiser at the Fairmont, where we caught the eye of a smiling passerby named Tony Bennett.

These were the days, San Francisco in the 90s, where a Robin Williams sighting was as common as a crabcake at Fisherman's Wharf. It actually became boring to hear of yet another person saying how they had seen Robin or any other Bay Area celebrity, such as Grace Slick or Anne Lamott (who went to my mom's church in Marin). I dare say most of us were just a degree or six separated from dating Willie Brown if we dated anyone, because at that time, San Francisco felt like a very small town.

Leave the veep alone. When I worked for Willie his girlfriend was another woman, a reporter, who was both admired and widely talked about in flattering terms. The Speaker was not hiding anything, and if there was any gossip, it was from far outside Baghdad by the Bay. The late great Herb Caen, noted Chronicle columnist, would often write about Brown and his exploits, some of which were women but more likely lavish parties and events featuring the likes of Francis Ford Coppola (whom I met) and Ray Charles (see above). (One time Willie's lackeys approached me on the way out of an event and said I was invited to his suite. I demurred. To be clear: parties often went on into the night, so this may or may not have meant anything.)

If the Right wants to attack Harris because she had a relationship with a separated older Democrat in San Francisco, who may have helped her career, have at her. As we speak, the prosecutor is planning her attack on your candidate, so you best prep him for a debate performance he can't meme his way out of.

**Willie has been separated since 1982, according to Wikipedia. It is only my memory, which is hazy, which recalls his as an "open marriage". It does not matter. He was not sneaking around.