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Kamala Harris’ presidential nomination immediately reset Democrats’ relationships with US financial elites — if not the party’s approach to their businesses.
Harris came up through California’s behind-the-scenes politics of relationships and big money, rather than President Joe Biden’s small-state retail politics. She spent her time in the White House cultivating Wall Street’s big Democratic donors like Centerview’s Blair Effron, a group that had only dutifully supported Biden. But there’s “genuine enthusiasm” for the new nominee, as Liz Hoffman reported.
And her roots in California’s worlds of wealth and power are decades deep. A glance at the list of donors to her 2003 run for San Francisco district attorney reveals a remarkable network even then — the author Richard North Patterson, the future US congressman Ro Khanna, and Dana Walden, now co-chairman of Disney and a key Harris ally in Hollywood.
The central figure in the concentric circles of wealth and power around the Democratic nominee also first gave money to her in 2003: Her name appeared then as Laurene Jobs, and she was then the relatively low-profile wife of Apple’s legendary and mercurial CEO. She was “mainly a contributor” to that campaign, a person involved in the 2003 campaign recalled.
But the women grew close after Harris launched her 2010 campaign for California Attorney General. Powell Jobs, who had hired former Clinton official Stacey Rubin as a political adviser by then, hosted a fundraising luncheon for the candidate in Palo Alto in 2009, said Debbie Mesloh, who worked on that campaign.
“It was pretty clear right away that they had an affinity for each other,” Mesloh said.
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Harris and Powell Jobs began spending time together outside transactional politics, and aides fully realized how much their relationship had changed in October of 2011, when a staffer slipped a note to then-Attorney General Harris in the middle of a meeting: A close friend’s husband had just passed away. Harris rushed back to her office to call Powell Jobs.
Harris “really tried to be there for Laurene” after Steve Jobs died, Mesloh recalled.
In 2012, when the Obama administration invited Powell Jobs to the State of the Union, she brought Harris along on her private jet. (The attorney general, in the middle of tense negotiations over what would be a $20 billion settlement with big banks over the mortgage crisis, ate a hamburger at her hotel rather than attending the speech, Mesloh said.)
Powell Jobs continued to support Harris’ campaigns, and in 2013 reportedly hosted another fundraiser for Harris in her backyard in Palo Alto.
A few years later, in 2017, journalist Kara Swisher persuaded Powell Jobs — who does not particularly enjoy the spotlight — to sit for an interview at the Code Conference.
“She was nervous since it was her first big interview,” Swisher recalled. “She asked to bring a friend and it was Kamala,” then a freshman US senator.
A few years later, Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, would host Powell Jobs at the vice presidential residence in the Naval Observatory whenever she was in town, said one associate. (“She loves Doug,” they added.)
And when Harris abruptly secured the Democratic nomination, Powell Jobs made no secret of her elation.
“She’s overjoyed,” said Susie Tompkins Buell, the Esprit co-founder and major San Francisco donor who has known both for decades. (Powell Jobs and Harris, who is rather busy this week, declined through spokespeople to discuss their friendship.)
Ben’s view
Powell Jobs is one of the few people whom even a president of the United States can’t elevate. The most sought-after rewards for donors — the Court of St. James, say — would be more or less lateral moves for someone whose net worth is estimated at $15 billion. Powell Jobs, through her Emerson Collective, has spent much of her fortune promoting mainstream Democratic views on issues like immigration and climate.
But the role of “first friend,” only occasionally occupied, can also be a powerful one. Gary Ginsberg, whose book on the subject featured Bill Clinton and Vernon Jordan among others, said the role can provide a “respite from the loneliest job in the world.”
Harris’ relationship with Powell Jobs also offers a glimpse at how Harris got here, at the kind of politics she’s expertly navigated, and at the world of vast California wealth and power. With a sprawling geography and expensive media markets, California’s politics are a kind of rolling invisible primary of relationships, positioning, and fundraising. Harris rose in large part building deep relationships and boxing out opponents, a skill that became clear when she quickly locked up the presidential nomination last month. A remarkable New York Times story details Harris’ private campaign to win over the Clintons, who then rushed to endorse her at the crucial moment.
Now political aides have begun, delicately, to ask whether Harris can convert this friendship into more tangible support. Powell Jobs largely stopped contributing directly to political candidates after buying The Atlantic in 2017, to avoid appearing to compromise its independence. But in 2023 she wrote $10,000 checks to nearly every state Democratic Party, gave six-figures to the Democratic National Committee. She also made a single exception to give a maximum $6,600 direct contribution to the Democratic presidential campaign, which for some reason shows up in federal filings as a contribution to Kamala Harris alone.
Vast pools of inherited wealth aren’t America’s favorite political force, but they’re a perennial one. Donald Trump is relying this cycle on giant donations to his allies from the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Miriam Adelson, and from an heir to the Mellon banking fortune.
And Powell Jobs’ vast wealth now means she, too, is one of the few people in the world who can write a check big enough to a Harris SuperPAC to impact an American presidential race. One Emerson Collective staffer, Ben Wessel, is serving as an unpaid adviser to the main Democratic SuperPAC, Future Forward, a spokesman for the Collective confirmed.
Will Powell Jobs write her friend a check for $100 million? A spokesperson wouldn’t comment.
Correction: Harris was San Fransisco district attorney, not city attorney.
Notable
Jobs is one a group of top female donors mobilizing for Harris.
She spoke at length about her philosophy with the New York Times’ David Gelles in 2020.
Her superyacht recently got into a minor scrape with a similar vessel in Italy, Page Six reported, and this summer she purchased the most expensive home in San Francisco.