By some estimates, nearly one in seven Americans have flipped burgers or managed the drive-through window at McDonald’s during their career. Vice President Kamala Harris counts herself among them, but emerging public records suggest a more complex narrative surrounding her work history.
Since launching her 2019 presidential campaign, the Democrat has often cited her alleged experience at the world’s most recognizable fast food brand as her first job after her freshman year in college. “I did fries,” she admitted on “The Drew Barrymore Show,” stating, “and then I did the cashier.” However, a closer examination by the Washington Free Beacon into Harris’s public statements revealed inconsistencies regarding the timeline and authenticity of her claims. She first mentioned working at McDonald’s during a labor rally in Las Vegas that year. “I was working in a McDonald’s,” she told an enthusiastic crowd. Mainstream media outlets like the New York Times reported that Harris “returned to the Bay Area for a summer during college when she worked at a McDonald’s in Alameda, a city next to Oakland.”
Cracks in her narrative began to show earlier this month when Politico noted that the Harris campaign had amended one of her initial ads, changing the claim from “pay her way” through college to “she really took the summer job just to earn a bit more spending money.” Furthermore, the Beacon confirmed that neither of Harris’s two memoirs—published in 2010 and 2019—mention her purported job at McDonald’s. Additionally, her earlier work is unreferenced in “Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer,” which was published in 2009, and Stacey Johnson-Batiste, who chronicled Harris’s rise for a 2021 biography, stated she had never heard about Harris working at McDonald’s.
The investigation took a decisive turn when the Beacon obtained Harris’s job application from 1987, the year after her first year in college. At that time, Harris was already in law school and was applying for a position in the Alameda County District Attorney’s office. The application required her to list every job she held in the past 10 years, detailing her employment history, and notably, there was no mention of working at McDonald’s.
At this time, Harris was a second-year student at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, emphasizing her cosmopolitan life by citing “extensive travel in India, Africa, [and] Europe” and a six-year residence in Montreal, Canada, yet again failing to mention McDonald’s.
Evidence obtained by the Beacon strengthens the skepticism surrounding this claim.
The political landscape often sees a rush among prominent politicians to relate to everyday Americans. For instance, former President Barack Obama frequently referenced his early job scooping ice cream at Baskin-Robbins, which he claimed instilled in him the value of hard work. In Obama’s case, there was substantial media coverage and photographic evidence to support his claims. In the instance of Harris, however, no credible evidence has surfaced to corroborate her assertion of having held a menial job at McDonald’s. Neither the Harris campaign nor McDonald’s responded to inquiries from the Beacon requesting commentary on this matter.
This narrative has unfolded alongside a broader discussion regarding truthfulness in political campaigns—both on the part of Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The latter has faced scrutiny over inconsistent statements about his military record, food preferences, and family struggles related to fertility. As they prepare for their first unscripted interview together
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