Meghan Markle sought a California Senate seat and a Biden Oval Office meeting — and got neither

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle pursued far-reaching U.S. political influence after leaving the British royal family, including an alleged push for a Senate appointment and a White House audience that the Biden administration quietly refused.

Markle, an American citizen who retained her U.S. passport after marrying Harry in 2018, requested a meeting with California Gov. Gavin Newsom in the weeks before the November 2020 presidential election to discuss being considered for the U.S. Senate seat that Kamala Harris would vacate if Joe Biden won, the New York Post reported. A government memorandum from Newsom's office, which surfaced in February 2021, confirmed that the governor held an "introductory meeting" with the couple on October 19, 2020. Newsom's team characterized it as a social occasion. The specific topics discussed were not disclosed.

A Sussex source firmly denied that Markle wanted to take over the Harris seat. Newsom's representative did not respond to a request for comment.

Newsom appointed Alex Padilla, then California's secretary of state, to replace Harris two days before Harris was sworn in as vice president on January 20, 2021. Padilla went on to win election to a full six-year term in 2022. Markle got nothing from the effort.

Markle's name surfaced again when Feinstein's seat opened

The California Senate talk did not end with the Padilla appointment. When the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein's seat became vacant, Markle's name was again floated as a possible replacement, according to sources who spoke to The Daily Mail and were cited by Fox News. A major Democratic donor told the outlet that Markle was "definitely a long-shot but in the craziness that is US politics these days it's not an impossibility." A source close to feminist icon Gloria Steinem said Markle was "interested in politics more than anything else" and believed "that's where her power is, but she has had to focus on making money."

Newsom had pledged to name a Black woman to Feinstein's seat. Markle, who has spoken publicly about her biracial identity, fit that description on paper. But nothing came of it, another political ambition that produced headlines and no appointment.

California has become a graveyard for outsized political ambitions. Katie Porter's recent pivot away from politics after a catastrophic gubernatorial loss is only the latest example of the state chewing up candidates who confuse celebrity with a voter base.

Biden's White House said no to an Oval Office sit-down

The Senate maneuvering was only part of the couple's Washington campaign. In late 2021, Harry and Meghan requested a formal Oval Office meeting with President Biden and asked to stay at Blair House, the guest residence across from the White House that is traditionally reserved for foreign heads of state on official visits.

White House staff turned down both requests. A former Biden aide said the president and First Lady Jill Biden "didn't want to get into a family squabble" by hosting the couple. An anonymous source added that the spectacle of Harry and Meghan sitting down with the leader of the free world "would have caused a major diplomatic kerfuffle" with 10 Downing Street and the British Royal Family.

A Sussex source denied that the couple had asked for either an Oval Office meeting or to stay at Blair House.

The denials sit awkwardly alongside the broader pattern. Harry and Meghan had hired consultants with ties to the Obama White House, including Miranda Barbot, Harry's current chief of staff, who formerly worked in the Obama administration, to serve as a bridge to the Biden team. They were not shy about using those connections.

Lemons for Jill Biden, a ride on Air Force One, and more rejections

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who served as one of the conduits relaying Harry and Meghan's requests, recalled a peculiar episode in her 2024 memoir "Say More." Markle once sent a box of lemons to Psaki's Virginia home so that Psaki could carry them past White House security and deliver them to Jill Biden's East Wing office. The gesture was apparently meant to cultivate a personal relationship with the First Lady.

Jill Biden had been a regular attendee at The Invictus Games, the sporting event for wounded warriors that Harry founded in 2014. But after she became First Lady in January 2021, she stopped attending because of the optics surrounding Harry's departure from the United Kingdom.

The couple's requests did not stop at the Oval Office. In September 2022, after the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, Harry and Meghan inquired about riding Air Force One back to the United States. That request was also denied.

Biden was described as a longstanding admirer of Queen Elizabeth II. He and Jill Biden had personal reasons to sympathize with Harry, Biden lost his first wife, Neilia, and infant daughter Naomi in a 1972 vehicle wreck, a kind of family tragedy that rhymed with Harry's loss of his mother, Princess Diana, in a 1997 car crash. But sympathy did not translate into political access.

A constitutional problem nobody bothered to raise

Beyond the political calculations, Markle's alleged Senate ambitions ran into a constitutional question that the New York Post flagged but that apparently did not come up during the couple's outreach. Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution provides that "no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust... shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."

Markle holds the title Duchess of Sussex, granted by the British Crown. Whether that title would have created a constitutional barrier to holding a U.S. Senate seat is a question that was never tested, because Markle never got close enough to the appointment to force the issue.

Alexander Hamilton, who founded the New York Post, wrote in "The Federalist Papers" that "the importance of the prohibition of titles of nobility... [is] the corner-stone of republican government; for so long as they are excluded, there can never be serious danger that the government will be any other than that of the people." The American republic was designed, from its founding documents, to keep foreign aristocracy out of its governing institutions. A duchess lobbying for a Senate seat would have tested that principle in a way the framers probably never imagined.

From political ambitions to paid-leave lobbying

When the larger political plays failed, Markle shifted to issue advocacy. In November 2021, she reached out to several U.S. senators to lobby for federally mandated paid family leave. The effort generated some press attention but no legislative result.

The couple's political involvement had begun publicly in September 2020, when Harry and Meghan gave a video interview to Time magazine urging Americans to vote and "reject hate speech." The appeal was widely interpreted as a thinly veiled endorsement against then-President Trump, who responded directly.

"I wish a lot of luck to Harry, because he's going to need it."

Trump's comment proved more prescient than dismissive. Every major political move the couple attempted over the next two years, the Senate seat, the Oval Office meeting, the Blair House stay, the Air Force One ride, the lobbying campaign, ended in rejection.

The New York Post reported that the couple's ambitions in Hollywood and the lifestyle space had also fizzled out, though the article did not specify which ventures failed. What remains clear is that Harry and Meghan spent years cultivating Democratic political connections through Obama-era operatives, personal charm offensives, and even citrus deliveries, and came away with nothing to show for it.

The American system has a way of sorting out who belongs in its halls of power and who does not. Titles, celebrity, and boxes of lemons do not substitute for a voter base, a political record, or the basic constitutional eligibility that self-government demands.