Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States, was seen beaming as she stepped into the former Delaware campaign headquarters of President Joe Biden.
The visit was intended to boost the morale of the staff who, after 15 months of dedicated service to re-elect the President, found themselves working under her leadership. "It is my great honor to have Joe's endorsement in this race," she proudly announced to the crowd, who were now her employees. However, beneath the surface of the applause, some may have harbored private concerns about their new boss.
According to the Daily Mail, Harris has been publicly portraying herself as a warm and jovial "Momala." However, behind this facade, she has allegedly earned a reputation as a workplace 'bully' who destroys morale. An analysis by the non-partisan watchdog Open The Books revealed that only four of the initial 71 staffers hired by Harris during her first year in office still remain employed. This equates to a staggering 92 percent staff turnover rate, leading critics to suggest that the issues within Team Harris may be more about her than anyone else.
After Harris was elected in 2017 to represent California in the U.S. Senate, working conditions reportedly did not improve. Her office had the ninth-highest staff turnover rate out of the 114 senators who served between 2017 and 2020. Congressional sources told the Mail that she would berate subordinates in expletive-laden tirades. Even those working for Republican lawmakers allegedly found themselves in the line of fire.
In one instance, sources described how Harris lashed out at a room full of Senate staffers during the highly contentious 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh. Witnesses recalled Harris cursing and ordering around staffers who did not even work for her. "Anyone who's staff, get the f*** out of here!" she allegedly yelled.
Years later, amid the dramatic and rapid collapse of Harris's 2020 presidential bid, this allegedly troubling behavior began to be leaked to the public. In a sensational resignation letter shared with the New York Times in November 2019, Harris's then State Operations Director Kelly Mehlenbacher slammed her boss, saying: "I have never seen an organization treat its staff so poorly." She continued: "It is not acceptable to me that we encouraged people to move from Washington, DC to Baltimore only to lay them off with no notice."
Just a few months into Biden's administration, troubling stories about her management style surfaced once again. In June 2021, Politico spoke to 22 individuals familiar with Harris's VP office who all claimed that her team was experiencing "low morale, porous lines of communication and diminished trust among aides and senior officials. It's not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s***," one source said.
A Biden administration official claimed Harris was responsible: "It all starts at the top." That sentiment was shared by Gil Duran, an ex-aide to Harris who worked in her Attorney General's office and quit after five months. "What is the common denominator through all this?" he said, "It's her."
In the summer of 2021, Harris was said to have been 'prepped extensively by her team' on how she could respond to questions about why she'd not yet visited the southern border, despite her role as White House 'border czar'. But when the time came to deliver her answer, Harris botched her interview with NBC's Lester Holt. "We've been to the border," she told Holt in June of that year. "You haven't been to the border," he replied. "I haven't been to Europe," Harris clapped back with an awkward laugh. "I don't understand the point that you're making."
At other times, and perhaps as a result of the Holt disaster, Harris reportedly began to over-prepare for some events. In April 2022, she was said to be so anxious about a salon-style dinner at the home of David Bradley, a heavyweight DC media mogul, that she held a 'mock dinner' with staffers who acted out the roles of dinner guests, Axios reported.
Speaking exclusively to the Mail, political strategists who have previously worked for Harris say the root of her problems is that she overly relies on a trusted, though under-qualified inner circle that includes her sister Maya Harris and brother-in-law Tony West, a former Obama Justice Department official. Neither are professional political strategists.
On Monday, Harris announced that Biden campaign chief Jen O'Malley Dillon would remain on duty as would senior Biden advisor Julie Chavez Rodriguez who previously worked for Harris in her Senate office and on her 2020 presidential race.
In a May interview on actress Drew Barrymore's talk show, Harris played the magnanimous boss. "It's really important to be around people who love you, who are about you and who are going to be honest with you," she said. As she now prepares to tackle the monumental task of running a presidential campaign in just four months, the question for Harris will surely be whether she's prepared to listen to that honest feedback.
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