The office of Vice President Kamala Harris is being described as an “abusive environment” by people familiar with operation, with staff experiencing low morale, according to a report published by Politico.
“In interviews, 22 current and former vice presidential aides, administration officials and associates of Harris and Biden described a tense and at times dour office atmosphere,” says the report, which points the blame at Harris and her chief of staff, Tina Flournoy.
Politico reports: “Aides and allies said Flournoy, in an apparent effort to protect Harris, has instead created an insular environment where ideas are ignored or met with harsh dismissals and decisions are dragged out. Often, they said, she refuses to take responsibility for delicate issues and blames staffers for the negative results that ensue.”
One prime example is the much-ballyhooed trip to Texas last week that was supposed to inspect the border’s illegal immigration crisis, but didn’t get near the worst of it.
I’m shocked a woman who slept her way into power and deliberately kept young black men incarcerated for free labor is horrible to work for. ?
Not a healthy environment’: Kamala Harris’ office rife with dissent – POLITICO https://t.co/f6Cs8kc2sI
— The?FOO (@PolitiBunny) July 1, 2021
Politico described the trip and the decision-making process that went into the trip as “chaotic,” with staff members grappling with the intense political fallout of the trip, unprepared.
“When it became known that she was going to El Paso,” said Politico, “it left many scrambling, including officials who were responsible for making travel arrangements and others outside the VP’s office charged with crafting the messaging across the administration.”
Indeed, two members of Harris’s advance team, Karly Satkowiak and Gabrielle DeFranceschi, resigned after the trip.
While the White House claims the resignations were planned in advance, the exits garnered unusual press attention and the timing is suspect.
The departures also left the Harris team scrambling for personnel.
“The administration reportedly put out a call for ‘advance associates,’ unpaid volunteers who will help manage the vice president’s travel,” said the Washington Examiner, an unusual move with planned departures.
DeFranceschi, a veteran of the Obama advance team, said that she left because her advice was not listened to, says Politico.
“For DeFranceschi, the deputy director of advance, the departure came down to a ‘difference in opinion on how things should run,’ according to another person familiar with the matter,” says Politico, “‘If you have an opinion about how things should run and it’s not listened to, that can be frustrating.’”
This is not the first time that the Harris management acumen has been called into question.
When Harris was California state attorney general, she was blasted for a sexual harassment settlement that was thought to help protect her career with a massive, taxpayer-funded payout.
A spokesperson for Harris rebuffed the current criticism.
“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,’” Symone Sanders, senior advisor and chief spokesperson for Harris told Politico.
Still, as Politico points out, the criticism of Harris’s management is a long-standing complaint.
In fact, her presidential campaign team “imploded in a painful maze of finger-pointing and leaks,” that left her firing almost everyone associated with the campaign.
