On the day after President Joe Biden decided to end his reelection bid in July, more than 300 former staffers for Vice President Kamala Harris publicly endorsed her candidacy \u2014 a flurry of alumni support with little precedent in this already unusual campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were able to witness her leadership firsthand,\u201d the former staffers wrote in a letter, attesting to Harris\u2019s behavior on and off camera. \u201cShe is an extraordinary leader of great character.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rapidly assembled letter was a spontaneous outpouring of affection for Harris, said Rachel Palermo, who worked for Harris for three years in the vice president\u2019s office and coordinated the effort.<\/p>\n
But in interviews, former staff who signed the letter acknowledged it also addressed one of Harris\u2019s perceived weaknesses as a candidate and elected official: her demanding management style. People who have worked for Harris say her interactions with staff can resemble a prosecutor prying details from a witness, asking pointed questions about everything from her schedule to policy briefings. And her cautious approach to big decisions has frustrated deputies rather than inspire them.<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019s record as a boss has been the focus of news stories throughout her career and amplified by high-profile staff departures.<\/p>\n
As a senator, her office developed a reputation for a revolving door; according to a Legistorm analysis, the turnover in Harris\u2019s office ranked her ninth among senators who served between 2017 and 2021. Turnover was especially high in 2019, as some left to join her campaign for the 2020 presidential nomination.<\/p>\n
More than 90 percent of Harris\u2019s vice-presidential staff who started working for her in early 2021 have since left the office, according to a Washington Post analysis of 101 positions in her office that have been funded by the Senate, which represents the bulk of her staff. She has been repeatedly dogged by reports of infighting and dysfunction among her aides.<\/p>\n
The situation for Harris grew so worrisome in the summer of 2021 that Biden summoned his senior staff and issued a warning: If they were leaking negative stories about Harris, he would fire them, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting. Biden, who as president was surrounded by a cadre of close advisers who had stayed with him for decades, also privately called Harris to reassure her that she retained his support, they said.<\/p>\n
The staff churn has spawned accusations of mismanagement by the vice president, but many Harris allies say that critique is overblown, sometimes rooted in her gender and race. By the same measure, for instance, her predecessor Mike Pence saw 83 percent turnover in his vice-presidential office. And former president Donald Trump\u2019s White House staff was infamous for its turnover; one of his communications directors, Anthony Scaramucci, lasted just 11 days before his firing.<\/p>\n
While some former staffers have publicly griped about Harris\u2019s leadership, their complaints pale compared with warnings issued about Trump, whose former chief of staff, defense secretary, national security adviser and other key deputies have sounded alarm bells about his third attempt at the White House.<\/p>\n
But interviews with 33 current and former staffers and allies show that Harris herself \u2014 and the team around her \u2014 have undergone important changes since the most difficult days of her first year as vice president. These people close to Harris, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of assessing the Democratic nominee\u2019s leadership, say she grew into the role, found policy issues that more closely aligned with her comfort areas and replaced key aides with staffers who responded better to her management style.<\/p>\n
Now her approach faces its biggest test yet, a supercharged national political campaign to win the White House in 60 days. Harris suddenly took over a vast and growing operation whose leadership includes operatives installed long ago by Biden as well as her own recruits, a balancing act of egos and ambitions. If elected, Harris will inherit a far larger management challenge: the vast federal bureaucracy.<\/p>\n
People close to Harris say her widely praised presidential rollout, in which she quickly locked down the Democratic nomination following Biden\u2019s withdrawal and moved to capitalize on her party\u2019s enthusiasm and energy, are testaments to her management. They also point to the growing pool of alumni who have rejoined her team, particularly this summer. At least 20 staffers who previously worked for Harris are now working on her campaign, such as policy experts Rohini Kosoglu and Ike Irby, veterans of both her Senate and vice president\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
Those allies and staffers say that Harris\u2019s management style hasn\u2019t changed \u2014 but the circumstances have. Rather than trying to find her voice as a first-time presidential candidate or brand-new vice president, she has suddenly become the party\u2019s standard-bearer. Office disputes during the height of the pandemic are now viewed as minor frustrations as Harris fights to keep Trump out of the White House.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer leadership roles, the way she thinks through problems and wants to tackle them \u2014 those have been a very consistent through line,\u201d Irby said in a recent interview. \u201cThe mechanics around her \u2014 and the opportunities that those offices provide for leadership \u2014 those have changed.\u2019<\/p>\n
Reports that Harris was a difficult boss have followed her since her time in California politics, a career that began when she bested San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan \u2014 her own former boss \u2014 in a runoff election in 2003. She was later elected California attorney general in 2010, a victory that elevated her national profile and installed her in a job overseeing more than 5,000 lawyers, investigators and other employees.<\/p>\n
Some of those staff bristled at her leadership. Gil Duran, who served as Harris\u2019s spokesperson for a five-month stint in 2013, has been perhaps her most persistent public critic \u2014 urging Harris in a 2021 column to \u201cget a grip on the management issues and stop the cycle of dysfunction\u201d that he said had marked her career.<\/p>\n
In an op-ed published in 2019, Terry McAteer, a former school superintendent in California, alleged that his son Gregory witnessed Harris berating staff during Gregory\u2019s brief internship in the attorney general\u2019s office. The claims were secondhand and mostly overlooked at the time but received significant attention from conservative media in recent weeks as Harris emerged as Democrats\u2019 nominee. McAteer alleged that Harris insisted that her staff stand every morning to greet her and say \u201cgood morning, general\u201d and did not allow her junior staff to look her in the eye. Gregory McAteer declined to comment on the op-ed but said in an interview that he was supporting Harris for president; Terry McAteer declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Other former staff and allies said that as attorney general, Harris could be tough, but never inappropriate or arrogant.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe holds herself to an incredibly high standard, and therefore, she holds her team to a really high standard,\u201d expecting their work to be thorough and complete, said Daniel Suvor, a former aide in California\u2019s attorney general\u2019s office between 2014 and 2017. Suvor, a lawyer whom Harris recruited from the Obama White House, said he believed McAteer\u2019s claims to be \u201ccompletely false,\u201d offering examples of Harris\u2019s approachability and saying she was down-to-earth. \u201cShe detested being called \u2018general\u2019 by her staff,\u201d Suvor said.<\/p>\n
Debbie Mesloh, who advised Harris during her 2010 attorney general campaign and subsequent transition in 2011, said Harris\u2019s management style draws elements from Harris\u2019s mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a scientist and single parent who pushed her two daughters to fend for themselves intellectually.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe talks a lot about their kitchen-table debates \u2026 you had to be informed to be able to present your case, and then to know enough to be able to defend your case,\u201d Mesloh said. \u201cWorking with her was no different than that \u2026. some people really struggled with that. But I found that rigor helped us aim higher.\u201d<\/p>\n
After longtime California Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) announced her retirement, Harris was elected to her seat in 2016 \u2014 the same day Donald Trump was elected president.<\/p>\n
In interviews, Harris\u2019s Senate staff said she was a firm but fair boss, crediting her for pushing them to hone messages and her planned committee questions so they would be simple and evocative.<\/p>\n
Her January 2019 announcement that she would seek the White House inspired hope among her staff and supporters, but her bid fizzled out later that year, prompting a slew of tell-all stories and private recriminations, particularly about how she had managed and run the campaign organization.<\/p>\n
Among the complaints: that Harris failed to provide direction and leadership to her campaign, confusing her own staffers, and that she couldn\u2019t choose between her family members and political advisers, leaving rival factions to wrestle for control. Her sister Maya chaired the campaign.<\/p>\n
Harris ended her campaign in December, weeks before the first primary in Iowa, a striking collapse for a candidate who was initially viewed as a top contender.<\/p>\n
Juan Rodriguez, her 2019 campaign manager, declined to comment on specific criticisms of Harris\u2019s management.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found Kamala Harris to be an excellent leader and an even more excellent human being,\u2019 Rodriguez wrote in an email.<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019s first year after taking office as vice president in 2021 was also challenging.<\/p>\n
Harris was a historic figure from the moment she was inaugurated, the first woman, first Black person and first Indian American ever to reach the nation\u2019s second-highest office. The role also positioned her as the front-runner to be the future leader of the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n
But the history and expectations brought additional attention to an office that has been routinely overlooked in previous administrations and is about one-eighth the size of the president\u2019s. Journalists shadowed her across the world; some tracked her popularity along with Biden\u2019s, and political opponents sought to amplify any stumbles. Harris\u2019s remarks also became fodder for comedic comparisons to HBO\u2019s \u201cVeep\u201d \u2014 where actor Julia Louis-Dreyfuss played an oft-tongue-tied female vice president \u2014 a development that some staff found amusing and thrilling, and others found mortifying.<\/p>\n
To serve as her primary gatekeeper and office manager, Harris appointed Tina Flournoy, a longtime Democratic operative as her first chief of staff. The two did not know each other previously, and Flournoy\u2019s prior White House experience had been limited to serving as chief counsel in the personnel office during the Clinton administration.<\/p>\n
Some current and former staff said that Flournoy\u2019s visibility into White House operations was limited and that she had a difficult time managing requests for Harris\u2019s time, frustrating the vice president\u2019s longtime allies. Other staff defended Flournoy as a competent manager and said that the new chief of staff needed time to build the office and develop her relationship with Harris.<\/p>\n
Flournoy did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
At first, Harris sought to prove to Biden and his inner circle that she was a team player, following lingering tensions from the 2019 primary campaign, said six former and current White House staff with knowledge of those conversations.<\/p>\n
The dynamic prompted Harris not to push immediately to carve out her own portfolio or hire her own people, often bringing in staffers who had previously worked for Biden.<\/p>\n
It took time for her office to \u201cgel,\u201d said a former senior administration official who worked closely with Harris\u2019s team.<\/p>\n
Harris also told Biden and senior officials that she did not want to be defined by women\u2019s or racial issues, particularly in her first year. As a result, her top priorities in 2021 included improving voting rights and reducing migration at the southern border. Harris struggled to make progress on both of those issues, which contributed to office frustrations, said current and former staffers.<\/p>\n
Making matters more difficult, Harris took office in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, meaning her staff initially worked remotely.<\/p>\n
Ashley Etienne, who served as Harris\u2019s communications director in 2021, said the pandemic reduced their White House work \u2014 already \u201cthe most taxing emotionally, financially, physically, job you can have\u201d \u2014 into what felt like Zoom-filled drudgery for months.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t even meet with her. We couldn\u2019t even be in the same room with her,\u201d Etienne said.<\/p>\n
Some of Harris\u2019s early staff was also discomfited by her prosecutorial leadership style, former staffers said, which included pointed questions from Harris about footnotes in their reports or the reasons behind why certain items had been added to her schedule.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s stressful to brief her, because she\u2019s read all the materials, has annotated it and is prepared to talk through it,\u201d said one former aide.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t come to the vice president and just ask her to do something,\u201d said another staffer. \u201cYou need to have a why.\u201d<\/p>\n
That behavior manifests in other encounters, the staffer continued, such as when someone pays her compliments. \u201cShe\u2019ll turn to them and say \u2018why?,\u2019 and that throws them off,\u201d the staffer said.<\/p>\n
By the summer of 2021, Biden felt compelled to step in, issuing his warning to staffers about leaking.<\/p>\n
The scrutiny was accelerated by a wave of staff departures later that year, including Etienne and fellow Harris spokesperson Symone Sanders. The turnover was also compounded by natural churn: The vice president\u2019s office has traditionally relied heavily on staff from other parts of government who serve short-term details.<\/p>\n
In August 2021, Harris and Flournoy hired Lorraine Voles, who had been a spokesperson under then-President Bill Clinton and the communications director under then-Vice President Al Gore, to serve as a key communications aide. That experience gave Voles more \u201cmuscle memory\u201d than Flournoy on how to navigate the White House, said the former senior administration official who worked closely with Harris\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
Staff say that Voles \u2014 who holds a master\u2019s degree in organizational leadership \u2014 helped steady the office by better managing and deploying its several dozen workers. In April 2022, Harris replaced Flournoy as chief of staff with Voles.<\/p>\n
Voles developed a strategic plan for how to maximize Harris\u2019s time and carve out her own lane, particularly on reproductive health after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and ended the national right to abortion. The role was a natural fit: Harris is a longtime champion of reproductive rights, while Biden \u2014 a practicing Catholic who often avoids saying the word \u201cabortion\u201d \u2014 sometimes struggles to explain his administration\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n
By 2023, staffers say Harris had become more comfortable making spot decisions to push her agenda. In April 2023, she decided within hours to travel to Nashville in support of the \u201cTennessee Three\u201d \u2014 the state lawmakers who were kicked out of their posts for protesting gun control. This spring, she quickly visited Florida to criticize a state law that took effect that day and banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.<\/p>\n
In private meetings with staff, she has drilled down on issues such as how federal patient privacy laws intersect with Republicans\u2019 efforts to crack down on abortion access, said Jennifer Klein, the director of the White House Gender Policy Council, which has worked closely with Harris on reproductive health issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really didn\u2019t know her at all, and all of a sudden I was in staff meetings, with four or five people \u2026 and she pushed me,\u201d said Klein. \u201cShe demands a lot of the people who work for her and with her, but she really does that because she wants the best product.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turnover in Harris\u2019s office has slowed as the vice president\u2019s team stabilized. One-third of current staff have been on the team for more than two years, her office said; turnover in the VP\u2019s office since the summer of 2021 is roughly on par with the rest of the White House.<\/p>\n
People close to Harris said she has not changed how she manages staff but has surrounded herself with people more comfortable with her style, including a bevy of alumni. Kirsten Allen, a 2019 campaign spokesperson, is now her communications director; Kristine Lucius, her former Senate chief of staff and White House legislative policy adviser, is on her third tour of duty as Harris\u2019s domestic policy adviser; Josh Hsu, who worked for her in the Senate, on the 2019 presidential campaign and in the White House, has returned for a fourth tour on the current campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has developed a group of people around her that she trusts, that trust each other, and have the ability to work together as a coherent team. And that\u2019s really critical,\u201d said the former senior administration official.<\/p>\n
Current and former staff say they remain frustrated by the repeated depiction of Harris as an angry boss, insisting that it doesn\u2019t match a manager who can be goofy and affectionate when she\u2019s not focused on serious policy issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s lost in the reporting \u2026 all the things that she does with the team, and the way that she\u2019s fun,\u201d said Mesloh, who worked with Harris in California. Mesloh described how Harris encouraged staff to bring their children to the office, hosted team dinners, and even made lists with staff about the best food trucks in cities like Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Officials and allies also pointed to the role of sexism and racism in shaping perception of Harris. More than a dozen current and former staff said that her management style was little different from prior bosses who were White men.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe VP has been policed in ways that other politicians I worked for weren\u2019t policed,\u201d said one former Harris staffer, who\u2019s worked for other top Democrats. \u201cPeople from outside our office came to me, wanting to change how she laughed. I can\u2019t remember anyone ever trying to change how Mike Pence or Joe Biden laughed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of Harris\u2019s staffers-turned-critics are quietly rethinking their views, declining questions about their prior complaints.<\/p>\n
Duran \u2014 the former aide in Harris\u2019s California attorney general\u2019s office who was once dubbed \u201cthe go-to anti-Harris quote\u201d by Politico \u2014 said he\u2019s swallowing his criticism too.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no question in my mind that whatever Harris\u2019s flaws are, Donald Trump is much, much worse,\u201d Duran said.<\/p>\n
Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
On the day after President Joe Biden decided to end his reelection bid in July, more than 300 former staffers for Vice President Kamala Harris publicly endorsed her candidacy \u2014 a flurry of alumni support with little precedent in this already unusual campaign. \u201cWe were able to witness her leadership firsthand,\u201d the former staffers wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9102,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}