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.