It was opening day and, to be honest, few eyes were on Doug Emhoff.
The former entertainment lawyer was there to support his wife, Kamala Harris, the first woman, the first black American, and the first South Asian American to become vice president of the United States. He was there to celebrate the inauguration of President Joe Biden, the first non-Donald Trump president in four long years. He was there alongside the Obama luminaries to inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, and his mixed and Harris family, including their daughter Ella Emhoff in sparkling Miu Miu tweeds and the lovely grand-nieces Amara and Leela Ajagu, who wore coats matching leopard in honor of Harris and his sister Maya.
Emhoff wore an overcoat and a gray suit. Ralph Lauren, if you were wondering.
It’s okay if you weren’t. Emhoff made it clear that he feels comfortable being a supporting player; his Twitter in recent days has been full of nice messages for Harris, making Emhoff the subject of countless Jokes of “expensive wife” (Although the meme originated to describe husbands trying to gain fame by talking about their spouses, it has evolved to include guys who, like Emhoff, really like their wives).
The day before the inauguration, Emhoff wrote in GQ about the experience of joining the Biden-Harris campaign: “Practically overnight, I went from being a lawyer to being a member of a team that fights for justice and tries to turn the page in the dark chapter in our nation’s history. “
But he must have known that this day could come the moment he met the woman who is now his wife. After all, at his first meeting, Harris was already California’s attorney general and widely seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party. In fact, their marriage is a type of political marriage that Americans have never seen, at least at this level of government.
It is an example of “professionals who came together later in life and are there to support each other,” Farox Jalalzai, a political science professor who studies women leaders, told Vox.
For Emhoff, this meant researching former second ladies to find out how to approach his role. And for America, that will mean watching a professionally successful white man take a step back from his career during his peak earnings years to help his wife achieve her goals – and, at least according to her recent statements, dedicate herself public service. Doug Emhoff is not the center of attention now, and in a way, this is also important.
When they first met, Harris was already a powerful politician
Emhoff and Harris met in 2013, on a blind date by a mutual friend. Harris had worked as an attorney general for two years, after spending six as a district attorney in San Francisco. She was already well known on the national scene, discussed as a possible replacement for Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg and receiving praise from then President Barack Obama (who drew some criticism for calling her “the most beautiful attorney general”) .
Emhoff was successful in his own right, a partner at the law firm DLA Piper. His previous clients playfully included the advertising agency behind the Chihuahua Taco Bell and, less amusingly, a club owner accused of sexual assault and a company that sold AK-47s. Divorced since 2009, he had two children, Cole and Ella, then teenagers.
He must have known from the beginning that a relationship with his state’s attorney general would lead to an intense scrutiny of his personal and professional life. But on his own, he was all in.
“I didn’t want it to end,” he told CNN of the first meeting. “And then, the next morning, I changed my mind and sent her an email with my availability for the next four months, including long weekends.
The two got married in 2014 and reportedly were very happy. “Doug and Kamala together are almost cute and couples vomiting,” Cole Emhoff recently told the New York Times. “I’m like, ‘When is this going to end?'”
They are also a different type of political couple from the Obama, Bushes or Clintons, all of whom were married relatively young when the men in question were still building their political careers. (Donald and Melania Trump were married when she was 35 and he was a 59-year-old reality show host.)
The rules are changing: Michelle and Barack Obama met when she was her mentor at a law firm, and she continued her highly successful career for many years, resigning only when her husband entered the White House. Hillary Clinton, of course, became a senator and secretary of state after her husband’s presidency. Still, there is an expectation that the family life of politicians should follow a kind of 1950s model – early marriage, 2.5 children, everyone supporting the politician’s career. And this politician is usually dad.
Harris and Emhoff, by contrast, were about 50 when they got married. Harris had no children. They formed a mixed family, with children who now call her “Momala”. Both spouses kept their respective surnames.
“This is a snapshot of America,” said Jalalzai. “We don’t all look the same.”
Now Emhoff could be a new model for men
And for Emhoff, being married to Harris meant stepping back so his wife could shine. He took a license from DLA Piper in August to help with the campaign and, presumably, to avoid concerns about conflicts of interest. He left the company in November and said he will teach at Georgetown Law School this spring. This will train two professors in the executive branch, as Jill Biden said she will continue her educational career as first lady.
And while Jill Biden is breaking down barriers by keeping her job while previous first ladies left theirs, Emhoff is also breaking new ground, reducing his career to that of his wife.
In his essay on GQ, he makes it clear that her campaign for the vice presidency was a team effort in which he was happy to do his part. “It quickly became clear that it was not just my love for my wife, but also my love for this country,” he writes. “Going back on my entertainment advocacy career was a decision we made together – it was bigger than any of us.”
He allegedly launched himself into campaigns, becoming a great asset for his ability to adapt to a variety of environments. “Of all people, Doug was born at random for that,” Cole Emhoff told the Times.
And while Emhoff and Harris may be a team, she’s the one who just became vice president – and he’s been gracious about his supportive status. This extends to jokes about your title. “See where we are now,” he said in September. “It will be a lot of work for President Biden, Vice President Harris, First Lady Jill Biden and whatever my title is, Douglas Emhoff.”
Since announcing that he will use the title of second gentleman, he has rolled over with the fact that “first second gentleman” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. “You can call me Doug,” he assured CBS Sunday Morningit’s Jane Pauley in a recent interview.
And instead of detracting in any way from the contributions of second ladies who came before him, he took time to learn about them, visiting the Library of Congress to research second wives from the past.
Emhoff said he hopes his time on paper will be a model for his family and the country. He wants his children to “grow up in a world where it is nothing new that a loving partner – of any gender – supports them in everything they do,” he wrote at GQ. And, he concluded: “I may be the first second gentleman, but I know that I will not be the last.”
Harris and Emhoff’s marriage challenges not only the stereotype that the wife should play a supporting role for the husband, but the idea that a person in the marriage should dominate in the pursuit of a career, said Jalalzai. Of course, Harris remains the center of attention, now as vice president, but his marriage appears to be a partnership of equals. This also applied to the Obama people to a large extent, Jalalzai noted, but “in the past four years, we haven’t had that kind of healthy relationship being modeled” in the executive branch.
Only time will tell how well Emhoff inhabits his new position. If previous administrations have taught us anything, it is that we do not always know what goes on in the private lives of public figures. But for now, he and Harris are setting a new standard.
America still struggles with the assumption that it is emasculating for men to be with powerful women – even the jokes about Bill Clinton potentially becoming the “first guy” in 2016 are proof of that. Emhoff, if nothing else, is showing the whole country what it is like to be a man who goes out with an attorney general and, far from being scared, sends her his calendar for the next four months. In defining the role of second gentleman, he started well.