Call them the First Gentlehive, the Emhunks, the Doug House—the D-Unit. The extremely online sector has spoken: Doug Emhoff, husband of Kamala Harris, is the internet’s newest boyfriend. Many are digging Doug, with a vocal group of Em-issaries emerging as a spin-off of Harris’s loyal KHive.
The election may not be until November, but the second gentleman is winning social media users’ hearts. “I need Gen z to see this picture of Kamala’s husband in the 80s and make him TikTok’s white boy of the month,” reads one tweet with more than 2.2 million views, accompanied by a fuzzy-focus photo of a young Emhoff with an earnest expression.
“Doug Emhoff shouldn’t be texting me long paragraphs if he wants money,” another tweet read. “He should be sending rare photos of him in the 80s.”
Another quipped, “basking in the bisexual frenzy of Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff in the ’80s,” with separate photos of the couple.
Decades later, Emhoff has evolved into a second gentleman who embodies dorky daddery, waving at his wife at the State of the Union with such enthusiasm that he cracks her up, on another occasion, blowing kiss after kiss to her from the House gallery and doing a whole-arm wave.
At this point, Emhoff has cemented his role as a professional Wife Guy, and he’s shown himself to be the best in his field. Back in 2020, he was signing Biden-Harris campaign emails as “Doug Emhoff (Kamala’s Husband),” and was already mugging for cameras in a shirt with his wife’s name emblazoned on the chest. He’s such a Wife Guy, in fact, that he’s an Ex-Wife Guy too. Kerstin Emhoff, with whom Doug shares two children, Ella and Cole, felt compelled to speak up in Kamala Harris’s defense after Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s 2021 thoughts about politicians without biological children (in short: How dare they?) recently resurfaced.
“These are baseless attacks,” Kerstin said in a statement. “For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.”
Doug has even captured the cross-stitch vote, with a pattern, posted for digital download, declaring, “I can’t wait to see what Douglas does with the tree!” a reference to Christmas at the White House, the lavish decor for which is traditionally in the purview of the first lady.
That her husband has become the internet’s boyfriend is yet another chapter in the saga of Harris and social media, which dates back to before the 2020 election cycle, when the then California senator’s name was in the mix as a potential presidential candidate. During a three-month period studied by Axios, social media posts with articles related to Harris had the most interactions when compared to her fellow Democratic hopefuls, with Harris netting roughly three times the online action that Joe Biden did. Her campaign, in just over a week since she inherited it, has been quick to jump on viral moments, like singer Charli XCX declaring “Kamala IS brat” and pairing Chappell Roan’s “Femininomenon” with clips of the veep looking capable.
Doug is also a reliable source of levity in an election where the landscape seems to be shifting dramatically by the day. For example, he revealed that when his wife got the news that Biden was halting his reelection campaign, he had been unreachable, phone-less and sweating it out in an hourlong West Hollywood SoulCycle class, then grabbing a bite after, when he learned of Biden’s announcement.
“Of course I didn’t have my phone, so I ran and ran and got into our car, and of course my phone is just on fire, and it’s basically, ‘Call Kamala,’ ‘Call Kamala,’ ‘Call Kamala,’ from everyone,” he said on an organizing call for gay and queer Black supporters of Harris. “And of course, the first thing she said was, ‘Where the … were you? I need you.’”
