WASHINGTON — If she wins in November, Vice President Kamala Harris could face a hostile, Republican-controlled Senate that is in no mood to confirm the top Cabinet officials she needs to run her administration.
Pending that scenario, Harris’ team is looking into whether some Biden administration officials who have already been confirmed by the Senate and don’t need to face the gauntlet will remain in place, four people familiar with his transition plan said.
His aides are also considering retaining some current officials initially so he can have more time to make personnel decisions. With only a few months left to build a campaign after abruptly replacing President Joe Biden, Harris has little time to focus on the makeup of the new administration, people familiar with the plan said.
Harris’ transition team is identifying Cabinet members and ambassadors who want to stay on after Biden’s term ends, though there has been no formal inquiry asking whether they will stay.
Entering office with Biden carries a political risk for Harris and undermines his message that he is a change agent who will take a new approach to governing.
Recently NBC News survey 40% of registered voters worry that a Harris presidency will be a continuation of the Biden years, while 39% worry that Trump’s second term will be similar to his first.
Harris wants to make her own mark on the Cabinet and name the first woman to lead the Pentagon as part of a broader reshuffle of the national security team, allies say.
Harris may ask some Cabinet members to stay on indefinitely or reassign some Senate-confirmed officials based on performance, according to people familiar with the planning. (Federal law allows such actions.)
‘Interesting Road’
Some Democratic senators and other party officials have asked his transition team not to require all of Biden’s appointees to resign if Harris wins — just in case Republicans take over the Senate and control the confirmation process, people familiar with Harris’ transition plan said.
The electoral map is tough for Senate Democrats. Republicans stand good luck Wielding the Democrats’ narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate in November is a difficult reality that complicates Harris’ transition plan.
In the past, the Senate has shown deference to new presidents when it comes to Cabinet appointments, a gesture that allows them to put in place the team they prefer. But the creeping polarization in Washington has eroded bipartisan norms.
After becoming president in 2009, Barack Obama retained Robert Gates as secretary of defense, making him the most prominent holdover from the George W. Bush presidency. (Since Gates had already been confirmed, he did not need to win Senate confirmation to remain in office).
Years later, Gates gave an oral interview where he said that Senate confirmation had become so difficult that he didn’t want to fire people at the Pentagon because it would be too difficult and time-consuming to confirm a new person.
“It had reached the point of polarization [Capitol] A hill where any high-level confirmation in the national security arena would be difficult,” Gates said University of Virginia Miller Center. “I just didn’t feel like we could afford the waste of time to bring new people on board.”
If Republicans take control of the Senate next year, Harris’ nominees could face weakened scrutiny from GOP senators who want to undermine him at the outset.
“The question of what to do with the current appointees — at all levels — is something we have to address,” said a person familiar with Harris’ transition work.
Harris’ advisers look to history for guidance.
For more than 35 years, there has been a transfer of power in the country where the outgoing and incoming presidents come from the same party.
Members of Harris’s transition team investigated this – the handover from Ronald Reagan to George HW Bush, both Republicans, after the 1988 election. They also examined the transition plan that took place in 2016, when Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton ran to succeed Obama. He lost to Donald Trump that year, so the switch never happened.
Harris’s team is working on an unusually tight schedule and is still building the basic hardware needed to screen potential hires and screen the board.
He inherited much of Biden’s campaign machinery when he became the presumptive nominee in July. But Biden didn’t need a particularly strong transition operation. As the current president, he already had a team in place and set his overall policy and direction.
As he ran for office in 2020, by contrast, Biden’s advisers were having preliminary discussions about the transition that March.
No presidential campaign likes to talk openly about transitions for fear of appearing overconfident. However, transitions are essential to the White House’s success in its first 100 days, a yardstick by which modern presidents are often judged.
In general, a president earns more 4000 political appointments, about 1,300 of them must be confirmed by the Senate.
Last month, Harris’ campaign was appointed Johannes Abraham managing the team preparing for the transfer of power. At the time, Abraham was the US ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Indonesia. He came to his new role with first-hand experience as executive director of Biden’s transition in 2020.
Trump also started transition preparations relatively late. Like Harris, his campaign only gave his name transition team leaders in August.
“He was obviously a late starter, but to his credit, he had the courage to announce a transition leadership,” said Max Stier, founding president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that helps candidates plan their transition to the presidency. “Now the transitions are difficult and there is not much time. He has an interesting way. Harris is neither a real candidate nor a real contender. There isn’t much precedent for this. But as for how it started, it started well.”
Find new secretaries for the Cabinet of Ministers
If Harris becomes the first female president, she has privately told allies she wants to make history by appointing the first female defense secretary, two people familiar with the plan said.
Among the potential Pentagon chiefs are Christine Wormuth, now the secretary of the Army, and Kathleen Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense. Another potential candidate was Michelle Flournoy, a senior defense official in the Obama administration.
“He’s a really well-liked and respected person in the building,” said Rosa Brooks, who served as Flournoy’s adviser at the Pentagon.
Naming a female defense secretary “sends a very powerful message that will help other women break through all these glass ceilings,” Brooks added. “For women who are finally able to serve in combat roles in the military, this will be incredibly encouraging for them. It will shatter that glass ceiling in a way that I hope will have a lasting impact on the culture of military and national security.”
Harris’ instinct is to appoint a different national security official, some of whom would not need Senate confirmation, said two people familiar with his approach. One exception, they said, might be CIA Director William Burns. Sources said Burns, a former diplomat who served under six presidents, could remain in another Cabinet post or take on another role.
One difference between Harris and Biden is that they tend to be more eclectic in their personnel choices. As a former prosecutor, state attorney general, senator and vice president, he has had to rely on people of very different abilities during his long career in public life.
Biden, by contrast, has built a small network of trusted advisers who remain in his inner circle as he moves from job to job.
“He understands the importance of having people who know his history and background and how he approaches the world. But he also values people who are experts in their field,” said Rohini Kosoglu, former head of Harris’ Senate staff.
Two people Harris could consider for national security adviser — a White House staff position that does not require Senate confirmation — are Julianne Smith, the former US ambassador to NATO, and Phil Gordon, who served as his vice president’s national security adviser. said that he is familiar with the issue.
Potential secretary candidates include Burns of Connecticut, Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Chris Coons of Delaware, both Democrats; Linda Thomas-Greenfield, currently US Ambassador to the UN; and Samantha Power, head of the US Agency for International Development.
When asked for comment, an official involved in Harris’ transition wrote in an email: “The lean transition team will not be making any personnel decisions before the election.”
“There is no transition without a successful campaign,” the official said. “Right now, the focus is on the Harris-Walz campaign. As provided for in the Presidential Transition Act, the Vice President’s Transition Team lays the groundwork to support the Vice President and his senior staff after Election Day.”
It’s unclear whether Harris will seek jobs for other Biden-era figures. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, himself a former presidential candidate, has become a familiar face in Biden’s Cabinet, turning to Fox News with some frequency to defend the administration’s policies to a conservative audience.
A person close to Buttigieg said it was too early to say whether Biden would leave Washington after his term ends.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo also became a fierce surrogate for Harris on the airwaves. He appeared MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday in what he called a “personal capacity.”
Asked about Trump’s recent comment that he would be a “protector” of women, Raimondo responded: “How did we get here? Let’s turn it off once and for all.”
Clarifying what he meant by “turn off,” Raimondo added: “Vote him out. Get him out of American politics.”
“We have an answer,” Raimondo said. “We have a remarkably talented candidate who is honest, pragmatic, open. Let’s make it happen.”