Top Kamala Harris Aide Airs Dirty Campaign Laundry with Savage Resignation Letter
A top aide in California Sen. Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign has resigned, excoriating the campaign in the process.
In a Nov. 11 letter obtained by The New York Times, State Operations Director Kelly Mehlenbacher expressed her frustration with the way the campaign had been run.
“This is my third presidential campaign,” Mehlenbacher wrote, “and I have never seen an organization treat its staff so poorly.”
“While I still believe that Senator Harris is the strongest candidate to win in the General Election in 2020, I no longer have confidence in our campaign or its leadership.”
More specifically, Mehlenbacher called out the campaign for its recent series of layoffs.
“The treatment of our staff over the last two weeks was the final straw in this very difficult decision,” she wrote.
“It is unacceptable that we would lay off anyone that we hired only weeks earlier.”
The former staffer also pointed to more systemic issues in the campaign.
“Because we have refused to confront our mistakes, foster an environment of critical thinking and honest feedback, or trust the expertise of talented staff, we find ourselves making the same unforced errors over and over,” Mehlenbacher wrote.
Mehlenbacher went on to say that articles from Politico and others about “campaign discord” only further demonstrated the divide within the campaign.
An article published Nov. 15 seemed to prove that point, quoting staffers who blamed the “turmoil” on campaign manager Juan Rodriguez.
Politico also detailed the rocky relationship between Rodriguez and campaign chair Maya Harris, Kamala Harris’ sister.
“No one was empowered really to make the decisions and make them fast and make them decisively,” one aide said.
“No discipline. No plan. No strategy,” another official said of the campaign.
The Times, too, documented the divisions within the campaign, reporting on how Harris “bifurcated the leadership between two decidedly different loyalists.”
Mehlenbacher’s resignation appears to be just the latest bad news for a campaign that has been beset by setbacks since Harris’ rise to the top tier of candidates after the June Democratic primary debate.
In a now-famous moment during that debate, Harris attacked former Vice President Joe Biden, then a clear front-runner for the nomination, for his work with segregationists in the Senate in the 1970s.
Harris’ poll numbers surged in the weeks after the debate. By July 4, her RealClearPolitics average stood at 15.2 percent, second only to Biden’s 26.
By the end of that month, however, her numbers had begun to dip.
Since August, they have plummeted, and the most recent RCP average shows Harris with only 3.8 percent support nationally.
Kelly Mehlenbacher has joined former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign, according to the New York Post.
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