When Kamala Harris faced an onslaught of negative press attention during the summer of her first year as vice president, her office reached out to the West Wing for help. Aides asked for an additional commissioned officer who could deal with political matters to join the three commissioned communications staffers she already had. And they asked then-deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon directly.
“Not happening,” was her answer. Instead, she said, go to the Democratic National Committee, which eventually assigned her team a contracted consultant. Some on Harris’ team wrote it off as the natural tension between a president’s and vice president’s teams that can sometimes leave the B team feeling left behind. Others close to the vice president took it more personally and felt it fit a pattern of Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign manager not supporting Harris in her historic vice presidency.
It was that existing feeling that left some close Harris supporters initially surprised — and even disappointed — when the vice president announced last week that she asked O’Malley Dillon to stay on leading her new presidential campaign, and that O’Malley Dillon said yes.
“People thought heads would roll,” said one Democrat close to the campaign. Not just for perceived slights against Harris while in office, they cautioned, but also because of how poorly Biden’s bid ended.
The campaign chair wasn’t the only person kept in their position who rubbed Harris or her allies the wrong way when they served under Biden. In fact, almost all Biden staffers would keep their jobs under Harris, loyalists or not.
Harris told aides she was seeking to “maintain stability” in a campaign that had already faced three weeks of catastrophic waves of stress after Biden’s debate.
“It’s just too hard to turn the ship around at this point,” one person close to Harris said, noting that any campaign turnover would have elicited headlines of infighting. “So there’s nothing prudent about that or a smart decision. You can just layer folk.”
NOTUS spoke with more than a dozen Democrats — including campaign aides, Democratic operatives, consultants and friends of the vice president — many of whom described Harris as taking the high road, putting the health of the campaign and drive to win in November over any personal feelings. They said it revealed a maturity showcasing how much the vice president has transformed since her failed 2019 bid that languished from infighting.
“I thought it showed that Kamala was pretty big,” said the person close to Harris.
And they believed that the way forward for the campaign — which, before Biden’s exit, had far fewer VP-dedicated staffers than Biden dedicated ones — is through. And in some ways they are hoping that 96 days is too few for any personnel differences to make a dent in the campaign’s trajectory.
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Harris’ campaign has had a forceful start. They quickly flipped the Biden campaign into the Harris campaign, producing new “Harris for President” logos in just hours in the wake of Biden’s letter announcing he would leave the race and plastered them around Wilmington HQ. They flipped the momentum of a depressed Democratic electorate, now steeped in energy with a younger, Black and South Asian woman leading the ticket. They raised over $200 million in the first few days, largely from first-time grassroots donors. And even though the emails for press blasts still read “@joebiden.com,” they’ve transformed their messaging to reflect a younger and more authentically fun candidate whose emphasis points and tone differ from Biden’s.
But that ability to push past their grief for a fallen chief hasn’t left them without some stress in the transition. Multiple people familiar with the dynamics told NOTUS that there was some “unease” among staff on the campaign about what happens next. Questions like, “Are our jobs really safe,” “Will I be layered” and “What happens if Harris wins” have floated around, according to those people familiar. After the immediate fallout, there was some jockeying for new positions in senior staff.
“People are very confused right now,” said one Democrat close to campaign aides. “I think everybody is very insecure right now about how this is going to work and where they will land.”
And new power centers have emerged. Brian Fallon is moving into more of a leadership role on campaign-wide communications, instead of the longtime Biden staffers. Harris’ brother-in-law, Tony West, and her husband, Doug Emhoff, are serving as major sounding boards, and have helped with decisions that, under normal circumstances, Biden staffers would mostly handle. And a new cadre of Black women advisers, like Minyon Moore, have more of a role.
“It’s a marriage we didn’t think we’d be in,” said one aide. “We’re still figuring things out and working to get to know each other on a deeper level.” They added that folks who were once in the “backseat are now in the driver’s seat.”
“I would say people should do their jobs and not worry that much about how it’s perceived,” said Jamal Simmons, Harris’ former communication director. “They have a new candidate, and they should do their best to serve the candidate. But they don’t have a lot of time to worry about perception, internal politics. They should be focused on winning this election.”
And they are focused. On a staff call on Thursday, O’Malley Dillon reassured aides that everyone is remaining in their current positions, while acknowledging that more people would be joining the team.
The Harris campaign did not respond for comment on this story.
Those who worked with Harris know her voice better than those who ran point for Biden. To meld the two factions, some are looking to campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez, who is respected and trusted both by Harris and her allies for her time spent on the then-senator’s 2019 campaign and by longtime Biden aides who worked with Chávez Rodriguez for years in the West Wing.
“Julie’s the linchpin,” one source close to the campaign said. “Because Julie is the person who can go back and forth between those worlds.”
Chávez Rodriguez has been giving assignments to Harris aides, one source told NOTUS, as the go-between for former Biden staffers and newly empowered Harris staffers.
Meanwhile, multiple people who spoke with NOTUS praised O’Malley Dillon for her work ethic and ability to steer a campaign.
“I think she’s smart, wants to win and was doing the best she could with the resources she had,” one Democratic operative with knowledge said. “What she really understands is team building and organizing, like she’s someone who you want to follow into battle and she knows how to organize tough states.”
Another operative said O’Malley Dillon had built such a specific campaign that only she could be the one to run it. Still, The Washington Post reported that to stay on, O’Malley Dillon was promised she would remain in control without someone more senior coming on second-guessing her efforts. One person close to Harris aides said no official agreement was made.
In addition to meeting with potential running mate picks, the vice president and her close team have spent the last days searching for high-level Democratic operatives to bring in. As a condition of her joining Biden’s 2020 ticket, Harris agreed not to bring her own political team along, two sources told NOTUS. Eventually, she did bring on a few aides, but not the longtime California advisers she used since her race for attorney general, or her sister, Maya Harris, who helped run her 2019 campaign.
Now, Harris is looking to rebuild a group of high-profile people for her inner circle, similar to what other politicians like Biden have enjoyed.
NOTUS previously reported that Harris’ allies were trying to recruit Jim Messina, the architect and manager of former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, as well as longtime Obama aide David Plouffe. Other operatives’ names have floated around the rumor mill as possible options like Guy Cecil, a former Hillary Clinton aide, and Stephanie Schriock, former president of EMILYs List, according to another source familiar
But with any fast-changing campaign, there are bound to be some growing pains. One former Biden aide likened it to the changes campaigns make between a primary and general.
“It’s almost like you’re handing off the baton. The hard part of that is that means you’re having less power, maybe there’s layering going on,” said the former Biden aide. “It’s gonna happen where you have people coming in and making decisions that maybe somebody else wants to make … I think they’ll handle it very respectfully and carefully.”
Another person put it more bluntly:
“I don’t think there’s enough time for those fissures to get bad,” said a donor close to the campaign. “It certainly is something that would be an issue. I just don’t think we have enough time.”
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Jasmine Wright is a reporter at NOTUS.