Ex-Biden Staff ‘Clashing’ with Harris Campaign?

A senior Harris official pushed back on those characterizations. The official stressed that Chavez Rodriguez’s new duties were being added to her current job and that the incoming senior advisers, including Plouffe, all have a defined portfolio. In his case, it’s to closely collaborate with O’Malley Dillon and others to execute the campaign’s state-by-state strategy — in addition to advising Harris.

Others brought in include the veteran strategist Stephanie Cutter, as senior adviser on message and strategy; Mitch Stewart, senior adviser for battleground states and Jen Palmieri, senior adviser for the second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

“There is no doubt when you have 2,000 people and you are changing who is at the top of the ticket that it’s going to take a minute to make sure that everyone is seated well, and we still have some work to do on that,” O’Malley Dillon said in an interview. “But I think, ultimately, when you look at what this campaign has accomplished in such a short amount of time, and how people went from working with the president on the top of the ticket to flipping immediately to the vice president on the top of the ticket, it does show at its core really strong support for the vice president and strong collaboration.”

O’Malley Dillon maintained her influence over the organizational chart. As did other Biden originals, with all of the department heads keeping their leadership roles. But some Biden staffers who had worked on Harris’ portfolio before have seen their jobs change and standing diminish just as the early warning signs of disunity began to emanate from the Wilmington, Delaware headquarters.

All of this comes as a campaign built to think and speak in the voice of Biden had to sharply adjust to taking its cues from Harris, its new standard-bearer. That’s created staff-level factions of Biden loyalists, including some who spent years privately criticizing Harris’ political skills and instincts, and her own team, whom she’s worked to integrate.

At the same time, Harris’ top advisers have made clear any changes would be “additive,” and those leaving the campaign would be doing so voluntarily. In other words, aides who spent years working for Biden would retain their titles, and, in some cases, their workloads.

Sheila Nix, the senior adviser and chief of staff to Harris, issued a statement in which she contrasted the campaign’s progress with what’s happening with Trump.

“This is a team that within a few short weeks has changed candidates, added a running mate, seen hundreds of millions of dollars pour in fueled by a historic outpouring of support from millions of voters, and crisscrossed the country talking to voters — all while the other guy has grown increasingly unhinged and dangerous from his perch on Mar-a-Lago,” Nix said. “The story here is what we’ve been able to do in a remarkably short amount of time to build a winning campaign — full stop.”

Anxiety inside the campaign could still dissipate over the three-month sprint to November, but aides also fear they could grow in scope and significance and lead to trouble down the chain of command. Harris built a chaotic operation in her 2020 presidential primary campaign that she allowed to fester, causing bottlenecks and radiating dysfunction across her organization. In the first two years of her vice presidency, she also saw several staff departures and internal fissures that reinforced the idea she couldn’t properly assemble and lead a harmonious team. But Harris and her staff have worked hard to overcome all the old dramas and the curtailed 2024 campaign is the latest test of whether she could keep it up.