Vice President Kamala Harris has hired two veteran communications aides to help finesse messaging and long-term planning after a rocky first nine months in office for the second-in-command.
Lorraine Voles, a crisis communications expert, and Adam Frankel, a former Obama speechwriter, worked for Harris during the presidential transition and have extensive experience crafting messages from the White House and the corporate world.
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Voles and Frankel “offered to be of assistance” to Harris and will focus on “organizational development, strategic communications, and long-term planning,” a White House official told the Washington Examiner. Both are on temporary assignment, though the White House declined to provide a more specific time frame.
Harris is tasked with several challenging assignments, including addressing the root causes of a migration surge to the United States from Central America and advancing action on voting rights. After Harris drew national attention for a biting retort during a televised interview while visiting Guatemala this summer, several staff members departed her office.
But facing electoral headwinds in key national races, Democrats will need to exercise every possible edge. This may mean leaning heavily on Harris to help boost turnout.
Among the services Voles advertises on her website, “crisis management” and “marketing and rebranding” earn top billing.
She has broad experience navigating the choppy waters of public relations crises, including for embattled mortgage lender Fannie Mae during the 2008 financial crisis, according to her Linkedin. She later “led university-wide crisis communications efforts” at George Washington University during a 2013 admissions controversy.
A Clinton White House veteran, Voles has worked alongside Biden’s now-chief of staff Ron Klain in multiple roles. As White House deputy press secretary, she developed communications strategies for the presidential nominations to the Cabinet and Supreme Court. Klain, as an associate in the White House counsel’s office, directed the selection efforts and helped push Attorney General Janet Reno and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg through the Senate confirmation process.
Voles later became the communications director for former Vice President Al Gore before Klain became his chief of staff.
Frankel was a speechwriter for former President Barack Obama and an early hire on the then-senator’s 2008 presidential race. He is also married to Stephanie Psaki, a senior adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services and the sister of White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
A slew of polls in swing states is stoking concern for Democrats, as they suggest the party’s slim congressional majorities could soon dissolve.
Whether Harris could help shore up Democrats where they need it is uncertain. Her own presidential campaign sputtered before reaching her deep-blue home state of California.
But compared to Biden, Harris may be on an upswing. A recent Gallup poll shows her polling six percentage points above her boss, with Biden at 43% approval compared to Harris’s 49%.
She could prove valuable in certain swing areas, one Democratic strategist said, including in Georgia, where Democrats won two Senate seats in a January special election, barely tipping the balance of power in the upper chamber. He also pointed to Pennsylvania’s larger cities and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Other battlegrounds may prove less appealing for the time being.
“I don’t think you’re bringing her to rural parts [of the country or] suburbs,” this person said.
In Virginia, where Harris has traveled several times this month, a Washington Post-Schar School poll showed gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, a former Democratic governor in the state seeking reelection, behind Republican Glenn Youngkin with independents. Biden won the 2020 presidential race by 19 percentage points with independents in the state and stumped for McAuliffe during a campaign rally this summer.
On Tuesday, the vice president made a surprise appearance to advocate for voting reforms at George Mason University in Virginia suburbs.
So far, Harris has appeared only once with McAuliffe during a private fundraiser.
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Some Republicans see an opening.
“For the second time this month Kamala Harris is doing a public event in Virginia and Terry McAuliffe is refusing to be seen with her,” Youngkin communications director Matt Wolking tweeted.
