Husband, zaddy, first gentleman? The evolution of Doug Emhoff.

Doug Emhoff is just a guy who loves his wife.

At countless fundraisers and campaign events, he gushes about his spouse of 10 years, vice president and current presidential candidate Kamala Harris. He gives interviews about the importance of men supporting the women in their lives. He visits Planned Parenthood clinics to champion reproductive rights.

None of this is revolutionary stuff for the spouse of a top political leader, but Americans are so starved for high-profile male feminists — especially guys who don’t demand praise or take themselves too seriously — that Emhoff has claimed a prominent spot in the cultural zeitgeist. He’s a zaddy, a pinup, “TikTok’s white boy of the month.”  He has his own dedicated fan base (which Vanity Fair has questionably christened the D-Unit). And now, as America’s potential first-ever “first gentleman,” he’s taking his biggest stage yet: On Tuesday, Emhoff will be speaking at the Democratic National Convention, and then is expected to introduce his wife as she accepts the Democratic nomination two nights later.

The last man to help his wife campaign for president was former President Bill Clinton, who brought his own baggage to the role, and sometimes struggled not to make the campaign all about him. 

Emhoff, by contrast, has so far been able to serve as an advocate for his wife — and for American women in general — without hogging the spotlight himself. 

Still, he’s already had to address a long-ago affair that challenges his loyal wife-guy image. And, if Harris is elected, he’ll have to chart his own course as the first man to hold a quasi-official role that, for centuries, has been defined by women.

The role of first spouse is already changing, with first ladies keeping their jobs and playing a larger role in public life. Emhoff could have the opportunity — and, some might argue, the responsibility — to transform it even further, ushering in a new era when a first spouse is not always a wife, and when young men can look to the White House to learn not just how to lead, but how to follow.

So who is Doug Emhoff, and what do his history and background say about how he might approach the role of first gentleman?

“I’m just, you know, a husband”

Emhoff and Harris met in 2013, and by all accounts were quickly smitten with each other. “The moment I met Kamala, I knew I was in love,” Emhoff wrote in GQ in 2021. He was a successful lawyer, and she was already the attorney general of California. They married in 2014, and Harris became “Momala” to his two teenage children from his first marriage, Cole and Ella (who have become objects of public fascination in their own right). 

Harris and Emhoff maintained their separate careers, even as she ran for president in 2020 — until Joe Biden chose Harris as his running mate.

On the campaign trail, Emhoff served as his wife’s No. 1 fan and enthusiastic if slightly goofy surrogate. “I’m just, you know, a husband, and I’m here to tell people why I love Kamala,” he reportedly told Chasten Buttigieg, another popular political husband, in 2020.

When Harris became vice president, Emhoff appeared to take his role as second gentleman seriously, visiting the Library of Congress to learn more about previous second spouses. “I understand that I am the first gentleman to hold this role,” he said at the time, “and I certainly do not want to be last.” 

Comments like that have made him a popular crush among feminists and progressives, who call him a “hot Jewish dad” and buy mugs with his face on them.

Emhoff presents his support for his wife not just as an act of love, but as an example of what a feminist husband can look like. “Lifting women up so that they can carry out important roles is a very manly thing,” he said in a 2022 interview. “That is not taking away opportunities from men.” 

So, how should a first gentleman be?

When the role was invented in the 18th century, the first lady was simply supposed to “serve as the President’s hostess at social events,” Katherine Jellison, a history professor at Ohio University who has studied first ladies, told Vox in an email. Eleanor Roosevelt is widely seen as the first presidential spouse to become a “public figure in her own right” and to champion a public-service cause, Jellison said. 

Though her immediate successors, Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower, didn’t follow that pattern, Jackie Kennedy devoted herself to the preservation and restoration of the White House and other historic buildings, and every first lady since has devoted herself to at least one cause or issue, Jellison said. Jill Biden, for example, works with military families and on the administration’s cancer research initiative. 

The last three first ladies have also challenged Americans’ expectations that the role would be filled by “a white, U.S.-born woman who identifies primarily as a homemaker,” Jellison said. Michelle Obama, America’s first Black first lady, also came from a powerful career as a lawyer and hospital administrator — and had been her husband’s superior at work. Melania Trump was an immigrant, the first first lady to be born outside the US in nearly 200 years (she also often bowed out of the social aspects of the role). Jill Biden has continued her career as a community college professor and has served as a crucial adviser to her husband.

“The women who have most recently held the role of first lady reflect the greater diversity of American womanhood in the 21st century,” Jellison said.

Over time, the first lady’s hostess role has diminished — for example, neither Melania Trump nor Jill Biden chose a pattern of official White House china, a tradition since the 19th century.

As first gentleman, Emhoff would have the opportunity to go a step further, reflecting the diversity of relationships in America today — including those that began later in life, create blended families, and allow space for a female partner to hold a high-powered, even all-consuming, job.

Emhoff is likely to bring his own priorities to the White House if his wife does end up there. “He might continue to follow Jill Biden’s lead and keep his ‘day job’ teaching law at Georgetown University,” Jellison said. He would also probably continue speaking out against antisemitism, an important role for him both personally and politically. He would be the first Jewish first spouse, as well as a key Jewish surrogate in the administration.

One of “the nice men of the left”

Now that Harris is running for president, Emhoff’s brand of feminist masculinity stands in stark contrast to the more combative styles embraced by high-profile men across the aisle. When vice-presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance began to get renewed attention for his comments calling Harris a “childless cat lady,” Emhoff responded that the remark had “hurt [his] feelings.”

“You’re telling a lot of people in this country and this world that they don’t matter,” he said in an interview with Vox Media podcast host and former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara.

He’s also shown himself able to talk easily about reproductive health care, something Trump certainly can’t match. On a recent visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic, he talked about a “post-Dobbs hellscape” in which “you can’t get a Pap smear; you can’t get basic care.” He’s also described abortion restrictions as “affecting all Americans, not just women.”

It’s earned him praise from progressives, with Rebecca Traister of New York magazine describing Emhoff and presumptive vice presidential nominee Tim Walz as the “nice men of the left.” These men, Traister writes, “are presenting a different definition of masculine strength tied to women’s liberation and full civic participation and all but declaring it a new norm.”

Still, Emhoff had an easier job as second gentleman than he has as a top surrogate in his wife’s campaign, or than he’ll have if she wins. As his profile rises, he’s had to own up to an affair he had during his first marriage, with a teacher at his children’s school.

“During my first marriage, Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions,” he said in a statement to the Times. “I took responsibility, and in the years since, we worked through things as a family and have come out stronger on the other side.”

The revelation of the affair threatens to tarnish Emhoff’s uxorious image somewhat — “What happens when it comes out that a wife guy has been a less-than-perfect spouse in the past?” Heather Schwedel asks at Slate. For now, many Americans seem willing to forgive (one X user called him a “born-again wife guy”). 

But if Emhoff does find himself in the role of first gentleman, he’ll face more scrutiny — and new challenges. 
Above all, however, Emhoff would have a chance, at a difficult moment for American masculinity, to show what it’s like to be a man in an important but secondary role.

His last four years in public life have been built on the idea that there is dignity, honor, and joy in backing up the woman you love. In a time when women’s autonomy feels ever more in question, it may be the most important contribution he can make.