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05 Sept 2025

US Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris has Irish links but don't expect a visit

The likely Democratic candidate for the US Presidential race has ties to Ireland but may not be the type of connections she will want to embrace

US Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris has Irish links but don't expect a visit

US Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris has Irish links but don't expect a visit

Ireland has a long association with US presidents, from John F Kennedy to Obama and most recently Joe Biden who visited Louth and Mayo tracing his roots just last year.

A year is a long time in US politics especially and now Donald Trump, who owns Doonbeg hotel and golf resort in Clare, is the frontrunner for the US Presidential election and Joe Biden has dropped out with just over 100 days to go before polling.

Vice President Kamala Harris looks like being the Democratic replacement and has already held a rally in Milwaukee as she becomes her campaign to become the first female president of the US.

Obama had Offaly, Biden has Mayo and Louth, and it seems Kamala Harris has Antrim but her Irish connection is not one she will be embracing. 

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It has emerged that Kamala Harris has Irish roots through her dad's family. His paternal grandmother was Christiana Brown who decended from Hamilton Brown, a "slave owner" in Jamaica who had come from Antrim.

There is a potential second Irish link through her father's maternal grandmother who was called Iris Finegan but experts have found this claim hard to prove due to poor records. 

It seems our link to the possible future US president are tenuous at best and given the fact one of those links is through a slave owner, Kamala Harris is unlikely to be boarding Air Force One and heading to Ireland if elected - at least not for ancestral reasons.

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