Several former staffers of Vice President Kamala Harris have unloaded on their one-time boss, describing her as a “bully” who often left people in tears after berating them in degrading tirades.
The staffers, who spoke to author Charlie Spiering for the UK’s Daily Mail, described her as a “soul-destroying bully,” leading to unprecedented staff turnover.
“Only four of the initial 71 staffers hired by Harris during her first year in office still remain in a job. The rest either quit or were fired, according to analysis by non-partisan watchdog Open The Books,” Spiering reported. “That translates to a 92 percent staff turnover rate – and, say critics, is a likely sign that the issues on Team Harris have more to do with her than anyone else.”
He went on to note that, while researching his recently published Harris biography, “Amateur Hour,” which was released in January, his sources recounted “horror stories” of their treatment by Harris, several of which he said “shocked me.”
Dating back to 2010, when she served as California attorney general, she was known then as running a “toxic” work environment. One professor at the University of California-Sacramento, Barbara O’Connor, told the biographer that several of her students who interned for Harris “frequently came back to her crying and saying that they ‘felt they weren’t valued.’”
When Harris was elected in 2016 as a U.S. senator from the Golden State, apparently she took the same bad behaviors to Washington, D.C. “Analysis showed her office had the ninth-highest staff turnover rate out of the 114 senators who served between 2017 and 2020,” Spiering wrote. He added: “Congressional sources told the Mail that she would berate subordinates in expletive-laden tirades.”
Republican staffers would also, at times, get caught up in the verbal abuse. One source said she berated a room full of Senate staffers in 2018 amid the highly contentious confirmation hearings for now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was falsely accused of sexually assaulting several women during his college days.
During one episode, sources said Harris blew up in an angry tirade outside the main Senate Judiciary Committee room, yelling, “Anyone who’s staff, get the f*** out of here!” to all staffers, including those who worked for GOP senators.
Spiering added:
In a sensational resignation letter shared with the New York Times in November 2019, Harris’s then State Operations Director Kelly Mehlenbacher slammed her boss, saying: ‘I have never seen an organization treat its staff so poorly.’
She continued: ‘It is not acceptable to me that we encouraged people to move from Washington, DC to Baltimore only to lay them off with no notice.’
‘Morale has never been lower,’ she added, saying there was no ‘real plan’ for how Harris might win, but that she hoped her departure ‘might result in some serious consideration of […] our internal communications’.
Harris’ behavior toward her staff has apparently changed little since she became Joe Biden’s vice president, according to multiple reports.
The Washington Post interviewed current and former staffers, many on the condition of anonymity for a December 2021 story, and they gave some candid responses to what it is like working for Harris.
“It’s clear that you’re not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,” one former staffer said. “With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So you’re constantly sort of propping up a bully, and it’s not really clear why.”
Earlier that year, Politico reported that some staffers believed her office was abusive.
“People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses, and it’s an abusive environment,” a person that Politico claims knows how her office works said. “It’s not a healthy environment, and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s—.”
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