The niece of Vice President Kamala Harris was hailed Sunday by Politico for being an "ambitious girl" — the title of a book she's selling — and building a "budding business empire" by leveraging "political adjacency."
The story of Meena Harris, 39, could turn out to be similar to Hunter Biden's book which many said capitalized on being the son of then-Vice President Joe Biden. Some of Hunter Biden's actions led to investigations on conflicts of interest and rocked the Biden administration before it even began.
It even brought some muted scrutiny for profiteering in the past.
"Some things can't be undone," a Biden White House official told the LA Times in February 2021. "That being said, behavior needs to change."
After years of boasting and selling T-shirts and books to capitalize on the proximity to the burgeoning political power of Kamala Harris, there is now a tinge of caution with Meena Harris' profiting off Harris' name drawing scrutiny amid the Democrat's presidential campaign.
"The vice president's family members have independent, professional careers," Vice President Harris' press secretary Ernie Apreza wrote to Politico in a statement. "There is no involvement between the vice president and any of the professional endeavors her family members pursue, nor do any of the vice president's family members use her name in connection with any commercial activities that could reasonably be understood to imply an endorsement or support."
That statement sounds very similar to the White House's past distancing from Hunter Biden's potential multimillion dollar artwork enterprise.
Meena Harris did not respond to Politico's requests for comment, and the vice president's press office referred the news outlet to Meena Harris' personal PR representative, who "did not respond to a large portion of emailed questions," according to the report.
The profile shows how Meena Harris rose from Stanford Law to Facebook, hawking T-shirts along the way to boast about her ties to Kamala Harris. Meena Harris lives in the Bay Area near Silicon Valley and is married to Facebook executive Nik Ajagu, according to Politico.
When Kamala Harris was on the 2020 Democrat presidential ticket, Meena Harris released the book "Kamala and Maya's Big Idea" on June 2, 2020. That book is now being pushed with the banner headline "2024 U.S. Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris."
"Ambitious Girl" was ambitiously and profitably released Jan. 19, 2021, the day before Kamala Harris and Biden were inaugurated into the White House on Jan. 20, 2021.
She also is a Broadway co-producer of "Suffs," a musical about women's suffrage and granting women the right to vote in America. Voting rights actions — including criticizing Republicans' election integrity legislation in Texas and Georgia — were key tasks assigned to Kamala Harris early in the Biden administration just before she was tapped as the border czar.
Thanks in part to a "Phenomenal Women" T-shirt series and its ties to famous women backing Kamala Harris, Meena Harris also took a big strategy and leadership job with Uber, which had been roiled by workplace harassment and discrimination, Politico reported.
"Their value add is political," antitrust reform advocate Matt Stoller told Politico. "Uber was always a political operation. It was never really a business. The whole point of Uber was to break taxi cab commissions."
Meena Harris' t-shirt empire expanded rapidly, including branching into progressive political activism with the May 2018 Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign, LLC, with clothing and merchandise lines "Phenomenally Black," "Phenomenally Asian," "Ambitious," and "Childfree."
"I could've put out this one shirt, and I could've said, Alright, I reached my goal — in fact, I exceeded my goal, I'm done with this thing,'" Politico quoted Meena Harris as having said publicly. "I think in part because of those values that I was raised with and having been somebody who's done community organizing, instead, my thought was, Oh my god, I can't stop now. This is literally something that is resonating with people, so how can I grow it? How can I do more? How can I make it better? How can I reach more people?"
Meena Harris also sold headphones with Beats by Dre with the phrase "The First but Not the Last," homage to Kamala Harris' status as the first Black or Indian vice president.
The profiting off proximity was a stain on the Biden administration and stands to be a potential attack point during in the final months of this presidential campaign, according to Politico.
"One thing, though, is clear: Even as Meena Harris has steered away from using her aunt's name on her brand, she has managed to ensure it remains well-positioned to capitalize on the vice president’s rise," Politico's Ben Schreckinger concluded in his report, Sunday.