Flush with cash, flush with volunteers and greeted by cheering crowds, Vice President Kamala Harris’ fledgling campaign has now stepped up to help manage it all, bringing in some of the biggest names in Democratic politics.
The high-profile hires announced Friday — including David Plouffe, who managed President Barack Obama’s first bid for the White House, and veteran Democratic operatives Stephanie Katter and Jennifer Palmieri — come as the Harris campaign rushes to move away from Joe Biden’s operation and pursue a new job. Mad dash to November.
“Here, let’s take down Trump once and for all,” said a person familiar with the process around Harris.
With the election less than 100 days away, Harris aides must juggle a series of back-and-forth issues and decisions that typically stretch over months. That level of intensity in a short period of time required a crew of solid professionals, said several sources familiar with Harris’ strategy.
“Accept the nomination today. Elect a vice president this weekend. Next week there will be a big campaign, then the convention, then the debates,” said a person familiar with Harris’ strategy.
Some of the high-profile staff additions are intended to focus on messaging, polling and paid media, run by longtime Biden operatives Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti.
According to one of the sources, Obama advised Harris to bring in Plouffe, who will serve as his chief strategy adviser. Cutter will be a senior adviser on messaging and strategy. Mitch Stewart will serve as senior counsel for the battleground states, and Palmieri will serve as senior counsel for the second gentleman.
The core of operations around the states business, communications and front-end team will remain largely unchanged, while Harris’ communications staff — such as general counsel Brian Fallon — will be promoted and there will be additional help on the board. This additional support will include frontline staff as the campaign hosts more and more robust events in larger venues. Harris also appointed a new speaker to oversee the consistency of the message.
“It’s the A-team,” said longtime Democratic strategist Pete Giangreco. “That means the vice president is there to win. This shows what kind of president he will be. He surrounds himself with top-level campaign talent… These are people who have won and played at the highest levels of politics and government.”
With messaging already in place, Harris and his team have focused on projecting their voice, moving on to talking about the future and spending less time touting Biden’s record.
He has already struck a different tone than Biden, both on the stump and in ads. While Biden described November as a fight for democracy, Harris is already talking about it in terms of freedom. Several of Harris’ aides presented it as the same pillars of messaging, but with a different messenger.
According to a person close to Harris, he focuses on issues that Biden does not, including keeping children out of poverty and having economic opportunities to get ahead, not just get by. Two people close to Harris’ strategy said the vice president is more focused on “freedom” than “democracy.” Freedom is meant to cover a range of issues: security, reproductive rights, voting, and living one’s own life.
When it comes to talking about Trump, the message will focus not only on the idea that the country can’t bounce back, but also on the idea that Trump’s second term will be much worse than his first, according to one of the people.
Harris will also focus on some of his initiatives, such as affordable housing, but the person added that a potential first debate between Harris and Trump would be a natural time to make sharper differences on where he differs from Biden.
“The debate is where we might have to think: do they have a different vision of what they’re going to do for the next four years?” said a second person close to the strategy.
A confidant of Harris, Cutter worked quietly with the vice president for months on the strategy. Moving forward, he will prepare the convention, which begins on August 19th in Chicago.
Jen O’Malley Dillon will still manage the campaign. Campaign manager Julie Rodriguez will focus in part on Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada.
There was no difficulty in recruiting veteran operatives into the campaign. Instead, look at that moment and ask, “How can I help?” they asked. a source said.
Another noted that with the enthusiasm immediately surrounding the campaign—and the knowledge that any commitment would be three months rather than two years—many operatives who wanted to come on board were turned away.
All the staffing additions and key decisions come amid explosive enthusiasm on the ground, a general uptick in fundraising and turnout. Some of the numbers are staggering, according to the campaign, including 360,000 people signed up to volunteer for Harris in just one week.
In Wisconsin, 3,500 new volunteers signed up in one week, and large numbers of people began visiting field offices — 10 times the usual number — asking for yard signs.
“In Wisconsin, we’ve had more online volunteer registrations since July 21 than between January 1 and July 20,” said a Harris campaign aide.
Some signs have already been erected in places like Philadelphia that simply say “Harris for President.”
In Nevada, where Democrats have been all but wiped out given Trump’s runaway leadership there, the party has seen some positive signs, including more than 1,200 new volunteers and a surge in polls in the first week of Harris’ campaign.
“This is a game-changing ground game in a small state like Nevada,” Nevada Democratic strategist Molly Forgey said. With Harris, Forgey said, there is renewed hope that the Democrats can land at the top of the ticket in the battleground.
“As a diverse candidate, a native of the West and no stranger to Nevada, he’s uniquely positioned to do well here,” he said.
Harris is also entering the race with a fundraiser. Cash flow – It hit a record high of $310 million on Friday – comes at a steady pace from donors big and small, which means he won’t have to spend more time fundraising and campaigning.
Veteran Democratic fundraiser Chris Korge, who remains the finance chair for the Harris campaign, said he’s never seen the pace of fundraising they’re experiencing now.
“We are raising an amount of money in a small period of time that is unprecedented in the history of American politics,” he said.