"She began dating Mr. Brown, now 85, around 1994, when she was working in Alameda County and he was speaker of the California Assembly."

"He appointed her to two well-compensated state posts. He gave her a BMW. He introduced her to people worth knowing.... Ms. Harris’s allies have bristled at any suggestion that Mr. Brown powered her ascent, dismissing the charge as sexist and making clear that she was plenty capable of impressing on her own... Ms. Harris told SF Weekly in 2003 that she was so independent of Mr. Brown that he 'would probably right now express some fright about the fact that he cannot control me.' 'His career is over,' she said, as Mr. Brown’s second mayoral term wound down. 'I will be alive and kicking for the next 40 years.' But Ms. Harris also promoted Mr. Brown’s support on her fliers. And his barely hidden hand helped goose her precedent-busting fund-raising. 'He was instrumental behind the scenes,' said Mark Buell, a major Democratic donor who served as Ms. Harris’s finance chairman. 'Willie Brown told me — and I didn’t want to believe him — you have to raise $1 million to win this race. And we did.' Mr. Brown, who now writes political columns, cheekily declined to be interviewed, on the grounds that he could not assist a rival publication... Asked if Mr. Brown was a factor in the [2003] race — either as a boogeyman deployed by her rivals or as a sitting mayor with an interest in the outcome — Ms. Harris said: 'Um, I’d — you know. You can ask the pundits. I — yeah.'"

From "Kamala Harris Was Ready to Brawl From the Beginning/In her first race, she defied her old boss, a fund-raising pledge — and the implication that she owed her career to her ex-boyfriend" (NYT).

I did the math so you don't have to: In 2003, Brown was 69 and Harris was 38. And 69 divided by 2 plus 7 is 41.5.

Whatever you want to say about how Harris ascended in politics in California, you know very well what she's been doing as a presidential candidate in the past year. She's a terrible candidate. As I wrote after the last debate: "I don't understand why she's there and I don't believe she understands." Has anyone ever asked her the "Ted Kennedy" question, "Why do you want to be President of the United States?"