OPINION:
Do you know who most dislikes presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz? The people who know them best.
Last week, Mr. Walz’s family gathered to voice their opposition to the Minnesota governor in a social media spectacle. Eight members of the extended Walz family posted a photo of themselves all wearing “Nebraska Walz’s for Trump” T-shirts. They are not fans.
Then there’s Jeff Walz, the governor’s older brother. He didn’t mince words about his relationship with Tim, saying, “I’m 100 percent opposed to all his ideology. My family wasn’t given any notice that he was selected and denied security the days after.”
Reporters caught up with Jeff—dubbed “Toothy Tim’s Cain”—in the staunchly Republican Florida Panhandle, where he continued to throw shade at his brother. “The stories I could tell. Not the type of character you want making decisions about your future,” he said.
And Ms. Harris isn’t immune to familial strife either. Her father, Donald Harris, owns a home less than a mile from the White House but reportedly has never visited her there. In 2018, things got heated when Ms. Harris joked about marijuana use, much to her father’s dismay.
“My dear departed grandmothers … as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their graves right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not, with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics,” Donald Harris wrote in a scathing letter.
“Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty,” he said.
That’s her dad!
Then there’s Ms. Harris’s staff. The Vice President’s office seems to have turned into a revolving door as her employees flee a dysfunctional workplace.
As of July, nearly 92% of the initial staff members had made their grand exit since taking office in January 2021. Out of the original 47 hires, only four have managed to stay without any interruptions, according to records obtained by Open the Books.
The situation got so bad that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said last month on Fox News that “how she treats people around her is a real indication of what she’ll do in the future.”
“Nobody lasts very long. Even as VP, when she didn’t do anything, she could not keep staff. That is a person that the press will never talk about,” he said.
Others weighed in, too. “Politics is about relationships and the relationships with the people around you,” a former staffer told Fox in July. “I think there’s a lot of improvement needed there.”
The report also cited the father of a former intern for then-California Attorney General Harris. “Senator Harris vocally throws around ‘F-bombs’ and other profanity constantly in her berating of staff and others. The staff is in complete fear of her, and she uses her profanity throughout the day,” the report said.
Then there’s “The Truce: Progressives, Centrists, and the Future of the Democratic Party,” a book released in January.
“This was rotten from the start,” a high-ranking aide from Ms. Harris’s 2020 campaign said in the book. “A lot of us, at least folks that I was friends with on the campaign, all realized that: ‘Yeah, this person should not be president of the United States,’” the aide candidly told the authors.
The book paints a portrait of Ms. Harris that could make even the most seasoned politician wince. Described as vacuous and ineffective, Ms. Harris is portrayed as a leader with little indication of her political identity or governing strategy as a potential president.
The atmosphere within the campaign was described as toxic, a sentiment echoed by Kelly Mehlenbacher, the campaign’s state operations manager, who resigned in November 2019 with a blistering letter to The New York Times. “This is my third presidential campaign, and I have never seen an organization treat its staff so poorly,” she wrote.
“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,” she said.
The book’s authors argue that these issues weren’t exclusive to her presidential campaign. Similar complaints were reported from her time in San Francisco, the Senate, and her tenure as Vice President. The criticisms “came from sources who signed up to work for her and, at least at one point, wanted her to succeed. It’s impossible to dismiss all of their critiques as entirely the result of prejudice,” they noted.
And there you have it. The people who know Ms. Harris best are warning America. And they can’t all be wrong.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.
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