Win Or Lose, This Election Will Be Lucrative For Kamala Harris

Forbes

If the past is precedent, the vice president will be able to cash in on the 2024 election whether she ends up as commander-in-chief or not.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2024/07/25/win-or-lose-this-election-will-be-lucrative-for-kamala-harris/  0:00 Introduction 0:08 Kamala Harris' Worth 2:34 Kamala's Husband Worth And Background 4:29 Could Kamala Harris Be The Next President Of the United States?  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now

00:07is my Forbes colleague, money and politics reporter Kyle Kahn Mullins. Kyle, thanks for

00:11coming on once again. Always great to be here, Brittany. Thanks for having me. It has been

00:17a really hectic week in the political news world. On Sunday, as we know, President Biden

00:23did drop out of the 2024 race. Within days, Vice President Kamala Harris has become the

00:29likely Democratic nominee. And you're reporting that although the polls are very close on

00:35between her and Trump, win or lose, the election will be lucrative for Kamala Harris. So first,

00:41to start off the conversation, what is her net worth?

00:45The Forbes is estimating that Kamala Harris, along with her husband, Doug Emhoff, is worth

00:49about $8 million. That is up from $7 million in 2021. So it's grown a little bit over time.

00:55And that's mostly due to an increase in the value of her home in Los Angeles.

01:00So you've reported this interesting fact. In the short term, she'll actually make out

01:04better if she loses. That's obviously she'll make out better financially if she loses.

01:09How so?

01:11So we should caveat this whole conversation with Kamala Harris isn't making decisions

01:15about whether or not to run for president and run for office with her bank account in

01:20mind. We can pretty safely assume that. But with all of that said, I think it's important

01:26in order to answer this question, will she make out better if she wins or loses?

01:29Let's look at previous vice presidents. Start with Mike Pence, who, of course, lost the 2020

01:33election. He was able to quadruple his net worth in just a couple of years after he left office

01:41from about a million dollars to about $4 million. And Joe Biden, another good example,

01:45he chose not to run in 2016. And between then and when he ended up running in 2019, 2020,

01:52he and his wife, Jill, raked in $17 million of income. They increased their net worth from about

01:58$2.5 million to $8 million. Oh, just in a couple of years. What does all that tell you? It tells

02:04you that they can make a lot of money on the speaking circuit, writing memoirs. Mike Pence

02:09did some consulting as well. Joe Biden did some teaching. These are very plush, tried and true

02:16gigs for ex-politicians. So in the short term, Vice President Harris could lean into these

02:22methods and make out pretty well. So let's still go on with the hypothetical. She does

02:28lose. How would her husband's second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, contribute to the fortune here?

02:34Yeah, I think Doug Emhoff is the other really big piece of the equation here because

02:39Mike Pence's wife and Jill Biden were not enormous contributors to their fortunes. Doug Emhoff was

02:45actually the breadwinner and has been throughout their relationship until now. Doug Emhoff, before

02:51Kamala Harris became Vice President, when she was still a senator from California,

02:54he was an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles at private practice. He was making over a million

02:58dollars a year. He was making a significant fortune. And so if she were to lose and were

03:05to be put back into private life, Doug Emhoff could go back to working that much sooner. It's

03:10kind of an opportunity cost question. And so whereas right now he's teaching at Georgetown

03:16and he's doing all of his duties as the second gentleman, that's a lot less lucrative than

03:24being an entertainment lawyer in private practice. So now let's go out down the other hypothetical

03:30road here. She does win. She gets inaugurated in January. What are some of those monetary perks

03:35of being commander in chief? Sure. So let's start with the obvious. You get a taxpayer funded

03:41mansion to live in rent free, the White House. You also get a fifty thousand dollar expense allowance

03:46for things that are related to you doing your duties as president. And she would get a salary

03:51bump. She currently makes about two hundred thirty five thousand dollars as vice president. She'd get

03:54a bump to four hundred thousand dollars, you know, a year. Additionally, she also gains access to a

04:01pension, presidential pension, which is significantly more generous than the pension

04:05that is available to the vice president. So she would that Forbes estimates that that pension,

04:11which would pay her the salary of a cabinet secretary for the rest of her life,

04:16it would be worth about one point seven million dollars if she only served one term as president.

04:20And it would be worth about one point one million dollars if she served two terms as president.

04:24So all of these are these kinds of financial perks that come with being president while you're in

04:28office. So you write for Forbes that the presidency is an exercise in delayed gratification. How so?

04:36Yeah, I really think that that's the key point here is, yes, there are presidential there are

04:42perks that come financially with being the president, but they still have to pay for

04:45their own groceries. They still have to pay for their own personal legal expenses. It's not a

04:48free lunch. It's really after the presidency that presidents are able to make an enormous amount

04:54of money. I think the best example is the Clintons between 2001 and 2016 when Hillary Clinton ran for

05:00president. They made over two hundred and forty million dollars. We know that because they released

05:05all of their tax returns for those years. And they did that again. It was they hit the speaking

05:10circuit hard. They wrote books. Hillary was a senator for a little while, but she was

05:16secretary of state. And Bill was doing, you know, speaking, writing all the all the same stuff.

05:22So they made an enormous amount of money, which helped because when they left the White House,

05:25they were roughly broke. There are other examples, though, from other previous presidents. Trump,

05:32of course, after he left office, he ended up founding Truth Social, the Twitter knockoff that

05:36has inflated his network by billions of dollars after it went public. George Bush, he made seven

05:42million dollars. George W. Bush, I should say, he made seven million dollars from his book contract

05:46and he's made tens of millions of dollars in speeches. The Obamas made sixty five million

05:50dollars from their book contract. And they also signed a Netflix deal. We don't even know how much

05:54they made from that, but I'm sure it was worth plenty of money. So when you think about those

05:59ex presidents who separate themselves a little bit from politics more, do they make out better

06:05or worse financially based on your reporting? It's hard to say, and the reason why it's hard

06:11to say is because they've separated themselves from politics. We're unlikely to get the kinds

06:15of financial disclosures that would tell us exactly how much they're making and how much

06:19they're worth at any given time. So the Clintons, we know how much they made because Hillary Clinton

06:23ran for president 16 years later and released all of her financial records for the previous,

06:28you know, almost two decades. Donald Trump, we know because he's running for president again and also

06:34his lucrative, you know, the thing that made him all the money was public companies that we were

06:39able to track. The Obamas and the Bushes, they haven't run for office. So again, or their spouses

06:44haven't run for office. So it's a little bit harder to know. We're relying on reporting and inside

06:49sources and that kind of thing. Kyle Kahn Mullins, per usual, I always appreciate your reporting.

06:54Thanks for joining me. Great to talk to you, Brittany. Thanks so much.

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