July 2, 2021- 5:30 p.m.
Two people close to Harris’ team said some individuals inside the vice president’s office are frustrated with what they see as a dysfunctional operation that has been at times waylaid by internal conflict. Some of that ire is directed squarely at Harris’ chief of staff, Tina Flournoy, those people said. Another source close to the staff said there were “challenges and struggles” and heard complaints about Flournoy from staff, but denied it amounted to dysfunction or that the tensions were directly Flournoy’s fault.
The White House dove into damage control this week after reports of dysfunction and infighting in Vice President Kamala Harris’ office, with the administration trying to stop a drama-filled narrative from taking hold, according to five people who spoke to CNN about the dynamics within Harris’ office.
“The Vice President and her office are focused on the Biden-Harris Administration’s agenda to build an economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down, to making sure racial equity is at the core of everything the Administration does, to combatting the existential threat of climate change, and to continue protecting the American people from the Covid-19 pandemic,” Singh said.
And White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday said, “I will say that the vice president is an incredibly important partner to the President of the United States. She has a challenging job, a hard job, and she has a great supportive team of people around her. But other than that, I’m not going to have any more comments on those reports.”
Still, conversations are now underway in the West Wing about how to better support Harris’ team, one source close to the White House said.
That help from the West Wing is a sign that the spiraling narrative could start to affect Harris, who is considered the next in line to lead the Democratic Party — with a potential for a presidential run coming as soon as 2024 if President Joe Biden decides not to seek reelection. Biden has said he does intend to run.
As the frustrations bubbled to the surface this week and damage control commenced, the full-court defense also served to amplify the clear concern inside and around the Biden administration about the drama unfolding in Harris’ office. The latest reports are seen as part of a pattern of stories about staff infighting and low morale, which have followed Harris from her Senate office to her presidential campaign and now to the vice presidency.
One administration official described the current efforts by the West Wing as an attempt to help with any issues any staff might be facing.
“Ron, Anita (Dunn), Cedric (Richmond), others, have certainly expressed their solidarity with our team, internally and externally,” the administration official said.
But some of those efforts actually helped solidify reports of staff discontent. Rather than denying the existence of complaints about morale inside Harris’ office, Dunn — a White House senior adviser — told Politico the complaints were “not anywhere near what you are describing” and acknowledged that there “may be people whose feelings were a little hurt on her staff” after many staffers weren’t told of her trip to the southern border ahead of it being announced publicly.
