Kamala Harris’s campaign is facing internal tensions as a team of new senior strategists takes over an operation largely staffed by people hired when Joe Biden was the Democratic nominee, according to six people, including aides familiar with the dynamics.
Longtime Harris supporters are also upset by the continued presence of some Biden aides known for disparaging the vice president, three of the people said.
The friction developing is the result of an unprecedented overhaul of the Democratic ticket less than three months before the election, an arduous task that requires integrating two political worlds while simultaneously selecting a vice presidential candidate and battling former President Donald Trump.
And it requires negotiating a new structure at the highest levels of the organization.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, a former White House official and Biden’s campaign manager, told Harris in a phone call that she needed specific assurances that some of the campaign’s new power players — including David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s former campaign manager — would not dilute her decision-making authority, two of the people told POLITICO. Those people, like the others who detailed the campaign’s internal dynamics, were granted anonymity to relay private conversations.
Last week’s call came after advisers in the vice president’s inner circle lobbied hard to hire Plouffe, whom Harris wanted on the campaign trail to provide advice.
POLITICO was the first to report the Harris team’s interest in Plouffe, and the first to report her hiring more than a week later. After O’Malley Dillon’s call with the vice president, the Harris campaign marked Plouffe’s arrival among a long list of staff additions with titles that an aide and a close ally said don’t convey their importance or necessarily their proximity to Harris.
They described Plouffe’s title — senior adviser for the path to 270 and strategy — as severely downplayed given that those tasks are typically the purview of a campaign manager.
And they noted with suspicion that campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a former Harris alumna in 2020 who later held key positions in the White House and Biden sphere, was given the specific new task of focusing on the Sun Belt states of the American West as well as Latino voters, considering Harris’s greater competitiveness in those states and her extensive experience. They saw it as a demotion that further diffuses her overall power.
A senior Harris official rejected those characterizations. The official noted that Chavez Rodriguez’s new duties were in addition to her current work and that the new senior advisers, including Plouffe, have a defined portfolio. In their case, it involves working closely with O’Malley Dillon and others to execute the campaign’s strategy state by state, in addition to advising Harris.
Others inducted include veteran strategist Stephanie Cutter, as senior advisor on messaging and strategy; Mitch Stewart, senior advisor for battleground states; and Jen Palmieri, senior advisor to second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
“There’s no question that when you have 2,000 people and you’re switching to the candidates at the top of the ticket, it’s going to take a minute to make sure everyone is seated properly, and we still have work to do in that regard,” O’Malley Dillon said in an interview. “But I think ultimately when you look at what this campaign has accomplished in such a short period of time, and how people went from working with the president at the top of the ticket to immediately moving to the vice president at the top of the ticket, it shows that at its core, there’s very strong support for the vice president and strong collaboration.”
O’Malley Dillon retained his influence over the organization chart, as did other original Biden staffers, and all department heads kept their leadership roles. But some Biden staffers who had previously worked in Harris’s portfolio saw their jobs changed and their standing diminished just as the first warning signs of disunity began emanating from headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware.
All of this is coming at a time when a campaign designed to think and speak in Biden’s voice has had to adapt dramatically to follow the lead of Harris, its new standard-bearer. That has created factions of Biden supporters on the team — including some who spent years privately criticizing Harris’s political skills and instincts — and her own team, which she has worked to integrate.
At the same time, Harris’s top advisers have made clear that any changes would be “additive” and that those leaving the campaign would do so voluntarily. In other words, advisers who spent years working for Biden would retain their positions and, in some cases, their workloads.
Sheila Nix, Harris’s senior adviser and chief of staff, issued a statement contrasting the campaign’s progress with what’s happening under Trump.
“This is a team that in a matter of weeks changed candidates, added a running mate, saw hundreds of millions of dollars pour in thanks to a historic show of support from millions of voters, and crisscrossed the country talking to voters — all while the other guy grew increasingly unhinged and dangerous from his perch at Mar-a-Lago,” Nix said. “What matters here is what we’ve been able to do in a remarkably short period of time to build a winning campaign, period.”
Anxiety within the campaign could still dissipate over the three months until November, but advisers also fear it could grow in scope and importance and cause problems in the chain of command. Harris built a chaotic operation in her 2020 presidential primary campaign that she allowed to fester, causing bottlenecks and dysfunction to radiate throughout her organization. In the first two years of her vice presidency, she also saw several staff departures and internal fissures that reinforced the idea that she could not properly assemble and lead a harmonious team. But Harris and her staff have worked hard to move past all the old dramas and the shortened 2024 campaign is the latest test of whether she could keep up the pace.
A handful of people in Harris’ circle told POLITICO they are concerned that the tension developing among campaign staffers will spill over into the vice president, arguing that it is unfortunate and unfair given the strides she has made in recent years to build a cohesive and loyal unit.
But some Harris supporters have noticed former Biden advisers quietly complaining that they now have to work for her. And there is considerable anger directed at chief digital strategist Rob Flaherty, whose title includes deputy campaign manager.
Flaherty and his aides struggled when making a rough cut of a Harris launch video based on the theme of “freedom,” according to a person involved in the process. The person said the earlier version featured shots with primarily Black women in the background, which threatened to pigeonhole Harris as someone with more limited appeal rather than demonstrating her ability to unite voters across communities.
The original video had to be outsourced through the Democratic National Committee, which brought in an outside creative team to remake it.
A second person who worked on the video said Flaherty was one of several editors on the ad that was completed on a tight deadline and ultimately heralded as a huge success. The campaign responded to a request for comment on Flaherty.
In a statement, Shelby Cole, a DNC mobilization officer and Harris’s former digital director, said staffers at all levels “have put everything they can into this campaign,” adding that the resulting public support for the new candidacy is “a reflection of the team I am so proud to be a part of.”
And O’Malley Dillon credited Flaherty with playing a crucial role in the campaign’s transition when Harris took over, including overhauling the website and publishing a torrent of new content. He acknowledged that the campaign includes former 2020 rivals, but said many of the same people have been working side-by-side for at least a year.
The raw emotions of the rapid shift still linger, however. Another Harris aide pointed to the role of the digital operation in Biden’s campaign, after their disastrous June 27 debate, which included a fundraising speech arguing that switching to another candidate, including Harris, would make Democrats “less likely to win.”
Harris’ aide said they had also observed TJ Ducklo, a longtime spokesman for both Biden and Harris, badmouthing Harris.
Michael Tyler, Harris’ communications director and Ducklo’s boss on the campaign, said no one is badmouthing his candidate. “No,” he said, “it’s not going to happen.”