How Did Kamala Harris Generate Wealth Through Her Career In Public Service?

6 months ago

Forbes money in politics reporter Kyle Mullins joins "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss Kamala Harris' early career and the foundations for her financial success.

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Transcript

00:00 You have figured out the net worth of our Vice President Kamala Harris,

00:04 but before we reveal the big number, can you give us her backstory a bit for us?

00:09 Absolutely. So Kamala Harris was born in Oakland in 1964. Both of her parents were well-educated

00:18 immigrants. They met at UC Berkeley. Her dad was an economics professor. Her mom was a breast

00:22 cancer researcher. She was raised mostly by her mother. The pair divorced soon after they had

00:30 their second daughter, Maya, who's Kamala's younger sister. And from there, Kamala Harris grew up in a

00:37 fairly working class, according to her, at least fairly working class family. She went to the

00:42 historically black university, Howard University for undergraduate. And she even interned in the

00:48 senator's office while she was there, whose seat she would later fill. And talk to us a little bit

00:54 more about her law career and, more importantly for us, how much she was making before she was

01:00 elected to the Senate in 2016. Of course. So she went to UC Hastings in San Francisco for law

01:07 school, passed the bar on her second try, and then she became a prosecutor in the Bay Area. She worked

01:13 in a couple different counties in the Bay Area while she was there. She ran for the district

01:19 attorney of San Francisco in 2003. And she beat a two-term incumbent for that. And I have her salary

01:25 here. She ended up making as much as $200,000 a year in that role. So pretty well-paid public

01:32 sector job. She won a second term there in 2007 and then became the attorney general of California.

01:38 She ran in 2010, won her election, and became AG in 2011. However, despite the fact that was coming

01:45 with a little bit more prestige, she actually came with less money. Her salary was down to $159,000

01:50 as the attorney general of California. And you've reported that the early 2010s shaped her finances

01:58 because of hefty pensions, amongst other things. Can you expand on that for us?

02:05 So we talked about these two-plus decades that she already had before she was elected to the

02:10 Senate in public sector positions. So we're looking at these very large pensions that she built up

02:16 over that time. Those are worth, Forbes estimates, around $1 million today, her local government

02:23 pension and her state government pension. And then the other thing that the early 2010s was

02:29 really important for her is her mom passed away in the early 2010s. And it's not clear how much

02:34 she inherited from her mom, but we do know that her and her sister ended up selling their mother's

02:39 Oakland condo for about $700,000 in 2012. So we can assume that they made at least some money

02:45 off of that. And also during this time, she married her husband, Doug Emhoff. Can you talk

02:51 about what he's bringing to this partnership financially? A lot more money, I can tell you

02:56 that for sure. So Emhoff was an entertainment lawyer in the LA area at the time. He and,

03:02 you know, private sector law tends to bring in, be significantly more lucrative, I would say,

03:07 than public sector law. So in addition to bringing more income to the partnership, he also brought,

03:12 you know, a larger retirement account. He had a pretty sizable investment portfolio,

03:17 including some publicly traded stocks, which he had to offload and replace with some,

03:23 you know, index funds and other conflict avoidant investments once she became elected to the Senate.

03:30 So now let's talk about that time once she became elected to the Senate. What did her finances look

03:34 like? What did her investments look like, as well as her savings? So we'll start with her income.

03:41 She got a salary bump from that attorney general position up to $174,000 a year as a senator.

03:47 She had about $250,000 to $500,000 in a savings account at the time. You know,

03:52 these disclosures only require politicians to disclose ranges, so we don't know exactly how

03:56 much she had. She also had a similar amount in retirement accounts. Plus, she had those two

04:02 really big pensions. And then everything else on her disclosure at the time was Doug Emhoff

04:07 and his large investment portfolio and retirement accounts. And then additionally, I should also

04:13 note that soon after she was elected to the Senate, she and Emhoff bought a $1.8 million

04:18 apartment in D.C. So they kind of added that real estate to their portfolio as well.

04:24 So then let's fast forward three years. She announced she was running for president in 2019.

04:30 How much did Forbes estimate she was worth then?

04:32 Yep. So we valued all the presidential candidates in 2019, 2020. In 2019, we put her net worth,

04:39 which again includes Emhoff, at about $6 million. And then when she became vice president in 2021,

04:45 we bumped that up to $7 million. So, you know, you're starting to see that pattern of her

04:51 fortunes start growing over previous valuations.

How Did Kamala Harris Generate Wealth Through Her Career In Public Service?

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