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The murders of six more Israeli hostages marked a critical new moment for Doug Emhoff, who’s speaking out on his own and Kamala Harris’ behalf, as only a Jewish American and the spouse of a presidential candidate can.
“In light of the retraumatizing of the tragedy of the weekend, speaking here, even though it’s so hard to do – this is a way that I can use this voice,” the second gentleman said Tuesday at a vigil for the hostages in Washington, DC.
For Emhoff, it’s a reflection of historical circumstances: he has spoken often about how he reconnected to his Judaism after seeing the response he received when Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris for the ticket four years ago. Then as second gentleman, he felt compelled first by the rise in antisemitism and then the October 7 Hamas terror attacks to speak up about how much hurt he felt.
Now, with his wife suddenly the Democratic nominee and both of them thrust more into the spotlight — and as the world approaches the anniversary of those attacks and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza — friends and advisers say they’re seeing a man continuing to search for his own response to an issue that is policy, politics and personal all at once. And advisers and campaign aides are trying to match strategy with a principal whose emotions and determination have struck them in both his private comments and public remarks.
As Donald Trump attacks Jews who vote for Harris as being self-hating, it was Emhoff who sat in the front row of Tuesday night’s vigil – brought together by an array of Washington-area Jewish groups and hosted at the Adas Israel synagogue – wiping tears from his eyes, then struggling to speak through his grief as he stepped to the microphone.
“This is raw,” he said, telling the hundreds assembled he was there “as a fellow congregant, fellow mourner and as a Jew.”
“When Doug talks about how the VP encouraged him to be closer to his Jewish faith and take on antisemitism as an issue, it may be affirming to Jewish voters,” a friend of Emhoff told CNN. “But it also illuminates how they support each other as a couple, the connection to faith they both have, and that is important for all voters to know.”
As Biden has amped up public pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire and hostage release deal, some outside allies have suggested the Israeli prime minister is instead trying to maneuver toward Trump’s benefit. And with voters on all sides of the issue uncertain of where Harris stands, every twist in events could complicate her efforts to win in Michigan, which has a sizable Arab and Jewish populations, but also some other key battlegrounds where the number of Jewish voters is larger than the 2020 margins of victories.
Several people who know Emhoff said that Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s murder hit him particularly hard. He knew the 23-year-old’s parents. He’d just seen them at the Democratic National Convention. The ache of knowing that the hostage only a few years younger than his daughter had been killed just days before his body was found has been overwhelming. It’s left him raw. Going to the vigil, one person who knows him told CNN, was about standing up as a leader — but also about feeling like he needed to be with his community amid the horror and the shock.
“How you all feel right now is how I feel. And how we all feel is something that Kamala hears directly from me almost each and every day,” Emhoff said on Tuesday night. “I share what I’m feeling with Kamala as my partner, as my wife – not just as our vice president. She knows. She gets it. She cares. She’s committed. Hersh’s loss feels so personal to the two of us, just like it feels to all of you.”
Ted Deutch, the former Florida congressman and current CEO of the non-partisan American Jewish Committee, praised the second gentleman while introducing him at the vigil for “reminding the world that an attack on any one of us is an attack on all of us.”
“He understands the unique agony of feeling that our cries for justice have gone unheard and yet he knows that our strength lies in our unity,” he added.
Emhoff has long stressed that he has no policy role in the administration or the campaign, and he continues not to. But the perspective has changed — until six weeks ago, he was married to a leader who was deferential to policy set by Biden. But after being elevated to the Democratic nominee, his wife is being watched closely for any shifts on Israel policy she might make.
Campaign aides say they expect Emhoff to continue to be key as he races around the country campaigning and fundraising, with anxiety already building over how the anniversary of October 7 will play out less than a month before Election Day.
Emhoff says he won’t stop speaking out, linking the need to remind the world repeatedly of what happened to the events of the Holocaust.
“If we don’t tell this story again and again,” he said at the vigil, “we have no hope of ‘Never Again.’”
