A toxic work environment that is alleged to be inside the office of Vice President Kamala Harris stems from the top, with complicating “power centers” plaguing her road to the White House.
“Look, this is a bottom-line business. And the bottom line is the vice president has challenges with staff — wherever she is,” one senior Democratic operative told the Washington Examiner. President Joe Biden handed Harris a politically fraught portfolio of issues, which could cause some strife within any official’s staff, but the complaints are not new.
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This source called the office discord a “repeat problem” for Harris, adding that the troubles are “not surprising.”
“The Harris inner circles, and I’ll use that plural, because they’ve been different inner circles in California, in her Senate office, on her presidential campaign, and now in her vice presidential-campaign-in-office, they’ve always been rife with a lot of dissension, and a lot of infighting,” this person said. “It’s probably a little unfair to say it’s just her. But she is a common denominator in all of these situations.”
“Being the junior senator from California, that’s different to being vice president,” the person added. “I don’t think there have been any major dust-ups that you can’t recover from. But I do think that this is endemic of a pretty uneven start to her time in this role.”
One report published Wednesday detailed a climate of fear inside the Office of the Vice President, including “a tense and at times dour office atmosphere.”
“Ideas are ignored or met with harsh dismissals, and decisions are dragged out,” the article read, with aides and associates pointing the finger at Tina Flournoy, a longtime Democratic Party operative and Harris’s chief of staff.
Two top advance staffers recently announced their departures, according to another report, along with Harris’s head of digital strategy, Rajan Kaur.
Kaur was welcomed to Twitter by another Harris staffer just one month earlier.
Symone Sanders, the senior adviser and chief spokesperson for Harris, rebuked the claims, saying in the first media report: “We are not making rainbows and bunnies all day. What I hear is that people have hard jobs, and I’m, like, ‘welcome to the club.’”
“We have created a culture where people, if there is anything anyone would like to raise, there are avenues for them to do so. Whoever has something they would like to raise, they should raise it directly,” she said.
“Power centers”
Reports say Flournoy walled off Harris from longtime friends, donors, and associates, a move that the Democratic operative defended.
“It does feel like the intentions of Tina Flournoy are good, which are to kind of clean up some of the mess and keep the hanger-ons away. And to establish some order and a standard, which is understandable,” this source said.
The source added: “The consistent thread with all of the infighting and dissension, with all of the different power centers of Kamala Harris, is Vice President Harris.”
In Guatemala last month, the former California senator was asked whether she would visit the southern border, a persistent question since Biden tasked her with stemming the migrant flow.
The vice president threw cold water on the idea during a press briefing, saying that she would focus on the root causes of migration from the region “as opposed to grand gestures” and repeating that in an interview with NBC.
Asked why she had yet to visit U.S. border states, Harris appeared frustrated by the question that has dogged her for months.
“And I haven’t been to Europe,” she said. “I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border.”
The remarks drew blowback from political opponents and allies, and from the press, for seeming to dismiss concerns about what Republicans and some Democrats see as an accelerating crisis.
“Wake-up call”
Harris visited the border last week with a trip to El Paso, Texas, quieting some of the noise.
“Hopefully, this is a wake-up call,” a Democratic strategist who used to work for Harris told the Washington Examiner, singling out what he identified as “self-inflicted wounds.”
“She’s taking on incredibly complex issues and is under the microscope like never before in her career. So, this sort of treatment comes with the territory,” this person said. “But she really can’t afford any self-inflicted wounds as they will distract from the important work she has in front of her.”
Allies said that Harris, who made history with her election as Biden’s vice president, confronts challenges not shared by others who’ve held the role.
“There’s a challenge that comes along with being the first woman in that position and the first woman of color in that position,” the Democratic operative said. “That doesn’t mean that she and her team are above critique — they’re not. But I think it would be naive to not consider that [in observing] kind of an uneven rollout of her time as vice president.”
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Reports of friction with donors and outside political forces are unlikely to plague her down the line, the other Democrat said.
“Is it going to matter in three years, if she’s the nominee for president, or in seven years if she’s nominee for president? Like, are they not gonna give her money? No, they’re going to. They’ll be there,” the person said.
