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,\u201d Spiering reported. \u201cThat translates to a 92 percent staff turnover rate \u2013 and, say critics, is a likely sign that the issues on Team Harris have more to do with her than anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went on to note that, while researching his recently published Harris biography, \u201cAmateur Hour,\u201d which was released in January, his sources recounted \u201chorror stories\u201d of their treatment by Harris, several of which he said \u201cshocked me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dating back to 2010, when she served as California attorney general, she was known then as running a \u201ctoxic\u201d work environment. One professor at the University of California-Sacramento, Barbara O\u2019Connor, told the biographer that several of her students who interned for Harris \u201cfrequently came back to her crying and saying that they \u2018felt they weren\u2019t valued.’\u201d<\/p>\n
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. \u201cAnalysis showed her office had the ninth-highest staff turnover rate out of the 114 senators who served between 2017 and 2020,\u201d Spiering wrote. He added: \u201cCongressional sources told the Mail that she would berate subordinates in expletive-laden tirades.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
During one episode, sources said Harris blew up in an angry tirade outside the main Senate Judiciary Committee room, yelling, \u201cAnyone who\u2019s staff, get the f*** out of here!\u201d to all staffers, including those who worked for GOP senators.<\/p>\n
Spiering added:<\/p>\n
In a sensational resignation letter shared with the New York Times in November 2019, Harris\u2019s then State Operations Director Kelly Mehlenbacher slammed her boss, saying: \u2018I have never seen an organization\u00a0treat its staff so poorly.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n She continued: \u2018It is not acceptable to me that we encouraged people to move from Washington, DC to Baltimore only to lay them off with no notice.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Morale has never been lower,\u2019 she added, saying there was no \u2018real plan\u2019 for how Harris might win, but that she hoped her departure \u2018might result in some serious consideration of [\u2026] our internal communications\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n Harris\u2019 behavior toward her staff has apparently changed little since she became Joe Biden\u2019s vice president, according to multiple reports.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Washington Post<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s clear that you\u2019re not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,\u201d one former staffer said<\/a>. \u201cWith Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So you\u2019re constantly sort of propping up a bully, and it\u2019s not really clear why.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier that year, Politico reported that some staffers believed her office was abusive.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses, and it\u2019s an abusive environment,\u201d a person that Politico claims knows how her office works said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a healthy environment, and people often feel mistreated. It\u2019s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s\u2014.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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,\u201d Spiering reported. \u201cThat translates to a 92 percent staff turnover rate \u2013 and, say critics, is a likely…<\/p>\n