The protesters lugged the charred couch into the middle of the two-lane street, depositing it directly in front of Vice President Kamala Harris’ Brentwood residence.
The activists, from the Sunrise Movement, were there Sept. 23 to beseech Harris to stop promoting the extraction of fossil fuels. The ruined couch had come from a house destroyed last month in a Riverside County wildfire.
“BIG OIL CAUSED THE FIRES,” read signs that some protesters carried while chanting slogans and marching past the foliage-shrouded home that Harris shares with Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff.
This went on for about 45 minutes, and traffic occasionally built up as drivers negotiated the disruption. Eventually, a neighbor across the street had seen enough, coming out of his house to shout, “She’s not here, you know! This is stupid! Get off my driveway.”
Such are the occasional aggravations and annoyances that bedevil the tony section of Los Angeles that Harris calls home.
Though her street is dotted with lawn signs championing her candidacy, some residents are frustrated by the attention and security that come with having the vice president in their midst. And they fear what the future will hold if Harris wins the presidency.
“Every time she comes, we have to go through security. The street becomes one-way. If she’s about to leave or enter, we have to wait outside 45 minutes,” said a woman who lives on the same block as Harris, adding that she’s heard neighbors suggest they would put their property up for sale if Harris defeats Donald Trump in November.
“If she said, ‘Merry Christmas, sorry for the inconvenience,’ that would be nice. But, four years, not a line,” said the resident, who, like a handful of others not thrilled about the vice president living nearby, asked that her name not be disclosed over concerns that her comments might reveal her political leanings.
In Harris’ north-of-Sunset Boulevard neighborhood, where only 23% of the vote went for Trump in 2020, some of the unhappy residents are Republicans. “Do you think she’s gonna win?” fretted a woman who said she has long supported the GOP before issuing a warning over the publication of her name: “If you use it, I will kill you.”
It’s unclear how often Harris stays in Brentwood, though neighbors say she visits with some regularity. Emhoff purchased the house for $2.7 million in 2012, according to public records, and Harris moved there after marrying him two years later. She visited Los Angeles at least 59 times in 2023, and at least 46 days a year earlier, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Harris campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Officials who did “advance work” for past presidents — coordinating travel and logistics — said that if Harris secures the presidency, her visits to Brentwood might be less frequent but would require more security. Take Harris’ motorcade — the source of traffic snarls. If she were traveling as president, it could easily top 40 vehicles.
“It’s hard to hide a motorcade, especially a presidential motorcade,” said Reed Galen, advance director for George W. Bush during his 2004 campaign. Galen, who co-founded the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, ticked off the many components of a motorcade, among them an ambulance and a vehicle carrying a counterassault team. “It can stretch out to be ridiculously long.”
Residents in Harris’ Kenter Canyon neighborhood are accustomed to high-profile homeowners — LeBron James and Travis Scott live nearby — and the security details and trail of paparazzi they bring. But the protection for Harris rises to another level. That was apparent the morning of Sept. 29, when Harris was at home. Her block was closed to all but local vehicle traffic and pedestrians went through a checkpoint. White tents were set up for plainclothes guards.
Though some residents are miffed, many more said they take the traffic, parking restrictions and presence of Secret Service personnel in stride. Some, including Jonathan Kimmel, said Harris bedding down nearby is something of an honor, and he declared, with an eye toward the election, that he was willing to endure an even worse commutes.
“I would do a two-hour detour each way if it meant Trump not being president,” said Kimmel, executive producer of Comedy Central’s “Crank Yankers,” whose brother, TV host Jimmy Kimmel, has endorsed Harris. “I would gladly take the sewer system down the street if I had to.”
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Near Harris’ home, an edgy lawn sign graces the front yard of a nearly 8,200-square-foot house.
“EVERYBODY SUCKS / 2024,” it reads.
No one was home on the day The Times knocked on the front door, where a floor mat invites visitors to “COME BACK WITH A WARRANT.” Still, for every resident grousing about traffic, there were more who said they were tickled by Harris’ presence, and bristled at what they see as others’ unneighborly attitudes.
Actor Jon Tenney, who lives up the street from Harris, said that when the Secret Service is there, “It feels like kind of a nice block party” — in a good way. He grew exasperated when told about another resident’s pique.
“That’s crazy,” said Tenney, who co-starred on TV’s “The Closer.” “She’s the vice president of the United States: There’s a security detail. That’s part of her job.”
Harris’ supporters and detractors agree on one thing: The Secret Service personnel were courteous and professional — and residents felt safer with them around. That’s even a selling point touted by Ben Belack, the listing agent for a house offered at $5.149 million down the street from Harris’ property.
“When people were coming for [the] open house, I was not leading with LeBron James … it was, ‘presidential candidate’ and ‘Secret Service,’” said Belack, adding that several prospective buyers were pleasantly surprised to know Harris had a house in the enclave. “I think people rank security and the potential improvement of security high.”
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Brentwood is a land of canyons, from moneyed Mandeville Canyon to Harris’ Kenter Canyon. It’s no wonder VIPs favor them: Their chaparral-dusted peaks afford stunning views and privacy, and their shaded lowlands provide posh small-town vibes and proximity to shopping streets and other amenities.
Harris isn’t even the only canyon dweller to mount a president campaign: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who dropped out of the race in August, lives in a $6.6-million Mandeville Canyon home, according to reports.
Compared with Kennedy’s nearly 6,000-square-foot house, the four-bedroom Harris-Emhoff home is unassuming. The roughly 3,500-square-foot residence was built in 1948, decades before the McMansion trend — to say nothing of the faux farmhouses that now dot Brentwood.
If Harris defeats Trump in November, could she still find time to visit it? Galen, the former advance director, said that a president’s many responsibilities would probably make regular trips difficult. The presidency, he said, is “a little bit like being in a gilded jail cell.”
One thing is certain, Galen said — if Harris were to visit Brentwood as president, security would be beefed up. Consider the recent climate protest: “If she becomes president, [the Secret Service] will not let that happen again. Or they will designate a free-speech area.”
A political consultant who has done advance work for Democratic presidents said that the geography and infrastructure of Harris’ neighborhood present basic security challenges. It starts with the street itself, a narrow one where residents park on the side of the road.
“That creates vulnerabilities,” said the consultant, who requested anonymity due to the sensitive subject matter. “Preferably, you’d run a presidential motorcade on a street with no cars parked.”
Properties housing presidents, he noted, also are often protected with large physical barriers — think the sanitation trucks filled with sand that were positioned around the entrance to Trump Tower when its namesake owner was in town. It’s hard to imagine a similar arrangement working on Harris’ street.
Indeed, the house in Kenter Canyon appears more difficult to secure than the home bases of some past presidents. Bush, for example, delighted in trips to his ranch in tiny Crawford, Texas. And Californian presidents have had abodes in more out-of-the-way destinations: Richard Nixon’s La Casa Pacifica in San Clemente, and Ronald Reagan’s Rancho del Cielo in Santa Barbara County.
Knowing that Brentwood presents security challenges, Galen said, Harris and Emhoff might ask themselves, “Every time we want to take a couple of days off, do we really want to inconvenience thousands of people?”
Tenney, the actor, said that an assistant for Harris once delivered a gift bag and an apology “for any inconvenience.” Tenney said he met the vice president recently at a fundraiser and told her they were neighbors.
“She said, ‘Oh, I am so sorry,’” he recalled.
Times staff writers Sammy Roth and Jack Flemming contributed to this report.
