Last week, the Second Gentleman, Doug Emhoff, visited Texas, stumping for Kamala Harris’s Presidential campaign. Emhoff, fifty-nine, is a devoted husband who seems happy to spend his time on the road, making enthusiastic speeches about his wife; he’s also a devoted Gen X-er, meaning that when he was in Philly, shortly before going to Texas, he popped into a record store and bought Stone Roses and New Order albums on vinyl. He has discussed the feminism of Pearl Jam and Kurt Cobain; he’s talked about being nervous around Courtney Love. (Their kids went to the same school.) His Texas visit ping-ponged between the one per cent and the people, a contrast you could imagine Cobain writing spiky songs about.
Emhoff landed in San Antonio, disembarking at an airport called Million Air. On the tarmac, he waved and shook hands with local politicians, then clambered into an S.U.V. The motorcade sped past small houses, a mural of the Beastie Boys, a quinceañera venue, Pride banners. Emhoff’s first event was a Freedom to Vote rally, at San Antonio College, and the school’s gymnasium was packed with a diverse and excited crowd. They wore shirts that read “MIND YOUR OWN UTERUS” and “YES WE KAN” and waved placards that said “BORICUAS CON HARRIS-WALZ” and “LA PRESIDENTA.” A mariachi band played Johnny Cash; the Tejano singer Shelly Lares sang her song “Kamala.” Onstage, behind Texas and American flags, a bright-red wall had been partially obscured by a blue velvet curtain.
What’s it like being a Democrat in Texas? I asked an attendee. “It can be frustrating,” she said. John Quinby, a machinist for a research institute, concurred. He wore an Army hat and a “We’re Texas Democrats, y’all!” sticker. “There’s a lot more of us than they count,” he said. “The big cities with large populations are all Democratic enclaves. They want to try to silence us by purging voters, and it’s not going to work. The legislature, the governor, the lieutenant governor. You know about Ken Paxton.” Paxton, the state’s attorney general, had sued two of Texas’s most populous, Democratic-leaning counties for sending unsolicited voter registration applications by mail. Quinby, a Republican for much of his life, now felt alienated by the Party, and especially by Donald Trump. “Two words: malignant narcissist and pathological liar,” he said. He had served in special operations, where the motto is “ ‘De Oppresso Liber’: Free the oppressed,” he went on. “Our mission was to instill a sense of hope in places that had no hope. And that’s where I feel like we’re at now. We need hope. We need stability. We need good governance.”
Ricky Longoria, a twenty-three-year-old “Gen Z dedicated changemaker” and organizer for progressive causes, drove two and a half hours, from the small border town of Falfurrias, to attend. He wore a lapel pin to honor the victims of the Uvalde shootings and led chants of “When we fight, we win!” in English and Spanish. “As soon as I saw Doug was coming, I knew without a doubt I was going to go,” he told me. He appreciates that “Emhoff and Gen X people are really investing in Gen Z trends”—especially through the “fun, fact-based” Kamala HQ Instagram and TikTok accounts. People like Emhoff are “meeting the youth where they are,” Longoria said. “They value our input, and they want us to vote.”
The day’s speakers included congressman Joaquin Castro and Ron Nirenberg, the mayor of San Antonio. Colin Allred, the Dallas-area congressman challenging Ted Cruz in the Senate, was not there, though his presence was felt on placards, in cheers for his name, and in the repeated excoriation of Cruz. (“A doctor’s office is too small a room for a woman, her doctor, and Ted Cruz podcasting!” the Gen Z activist Olivia Julianna said.) When Emhoff finally took the stage, he was met with a rock-show-like ovation. He comes across as a regular guy—an intellectual-property-lawyer regular guy, not a Tim Walz regular guy—and he’s warm and intelligent, comfortable in his role. His passion for the issues is clear, and he speaks frankly. “The misogyny to say to somebody no abortions ever, including for rape and incest?” he said. “After a crime has been committed to somebody’s body . . . It’s immoral, it’s wrong, and we’ve got to prevent it.” (At a fund-raiser later that day, he matter-of-factly used terms like “routine pap smear” and cited the importance of Griswold v. Connecticut—not a common skill among men speaking at political events.)
Emhoff implored everyone to vote, and said that the Harris campaign has an “army of lawyers” ready to defend the election results. This got some roars, but he really hit his stride when he talked about Harris “stepping up” (“Let me brag about my wife a little bit”) and her debate with Trump, reënacting his favorite parts. “She came right up to him, remember?” he said, marching across the stage, hand out. “He couldn’t even look her in the eye!”
The mood was jubilant, except for a moment when yelling was heard in the back of the gym. “You are a war criminal!” a man in a suit screamed, before being ushered out. Emhoff said, “Later!,” then reassured the crowd. “It’s all right. We all believe in the First Amendment, and that’s what we’re fighting for.” Several attendees mentioned how impressed they were by this genial unflappability. I talked to Carine Loiseau, a solar-energy entrepreneur with two sons in the military. Loiseau is a green-card holder who emigrated from Haiti; she can’t vote but she volunteers, and was excited to see Emhoff. “I think he’s amazing,” she told me. “Calm, cool, collected. And you can feel the pride emanating from him.” Some men, she went on, resent their wives’ ambition. Emhoff is “the opposite of that. He’s really pushing for his wife to make it, and it’s so refreshing to see.”
Emhoff left the stage to his walk-off song, the New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give.” (“One dance left / This world is gonna pull through.”) Then the motorcade proceeded to the private fund-raiser, in a wealthy part of town, where Emhoff gave the same stump speech, got another warm reception, and raised a million dollars.
Part of Kamala Harris’s job, whether debating Trump, addressing the Democratic National Convention, or sitting down with Oprah, is to appear Presidential, to inspire certainty in the country’s future. Emhoff’s job is to inspire certainty in her. On the trail, this involves a delicate pairing of self-effacing anecdote and grand proclamation. Motifs include the awkward voice mail that Emhoff left Harris before their first date (“Hey, it’s Doug. I’m on my way to an early meeting. Again, it’s Doug”); how Harris “finds joy in pursuing justice”; and how, after Emhoff’s divorce from his first wife, Harris restored his sense of family and harmony. “Kamala Harris was exactly the right person for me at an important moment in my life,” he concluded in his D.N.C. speech. “And at this moment in our nation’s history, she is exactly the right President.”
Emhoff, too, seems suited to the moment; in contrast to the various septuagenarians on the national stage, he’s a youthful, keenly focussed guy who says “awesome” a lot. I spoke with Tricia Gronnevik, a forty-four-year-old credit-union marketing analyst who attended the San Antonio rally. “Doug just blew me away with how real he is,” she said. “It doesn’t seem fake or forced, like good old J. D. Vance.” Gronnevik is a fifth-generation Texan—she grew up on a ranch—and she thought Emhoff would be a worthy First Gentleman. “We need a new version of masculinity represented,” she said. “I’m really tired of the alpha-male toxic bullshit. Being a South Texas country girl . . . I grew up in deer camps listening to a lot of misogynistic shit. It’s refreshing that we have men here who are supportive and not punching down, being bullies.” Emhoff’s “super-cool” musical taste “is making me love him even more,” she added. “I’m a big New Order fan, too. The Cure is my favorite band of all time, so if he’s a Cure fan I’m gonna die.”
On Tuesday, the Emhoff show moved to Austin. It was H.A.A.M. Day, an annual citywide fund-raiser in which hundreds of musicians, including kids from local rock schools, perform in small venues to raise money for musicians’ health care. (It was also the thirty-third anniversary of the release of Nirvana’s “Nevermind.”) Meanwhile, Emhoff and Beto O’Rourke, formerly of the post-hardcore band Foss and the U.S. Congress, had a musical morning of their own. In a video released later, they sit on either side of Willie Nelson, who is ninety-one, at his ranch, as he plays acoustic guitar and sings “On the Road Again.” (The same day, Nelson and Margo Price also put out a video, urging Texans and Tennesseeans to vote for Democrats.) That afternoon, Emhoff dropped by a fund-raiser at a downtown hotel. He was starting to lose his voice, but he joyfully referenced the debate, and talked about abortion and preserving democracy. O’Rourke helped rev up the energy level, praising “the surprise secret weapon” of newly registered student voters in Texas; the crowd roared. The campaign raised another million dollars. This was what it was all about, Emhoff said. “I’ll sleep on November 6th!”
His last stop in town? Lunch at Whataburger. It was the latest entry in a robust American genre, after J. D. Vance’s implausible performance as Regular Guy Buying Donuts, in August, and Trump’s hundred-dollar cash gift to a customer in a Pennsylvania supermarket, last week. Emhoff and O’Rourke made amiable chitchat with the cashiers; O’Rourke recommended the Dr. Pepper shake. One cashier asked if they’d like to fill out a comment card. “You’re a six out of five!” Emhoff said. Both men appeared at ease in their surroundings, and not just because Emhoff, like Harris, once worked at a McDonald’s. But politicians are never entirely normal. After ordering, O’Rourke turned to the cameras and said, “It just doesn’t get more Texas than having breakfast with Willie Nelson and coming to Whataburger for lunch.” The men took their burgers to eat on the road. ♦