Vice President Kamala Harris is adding several top advisers to her campaign staff, including David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama’s first presidential run, as she remakes a campaign hierarchy that was initially built to re-elect President Biden.
Other new hires, announced by the Harris campaign on Friday, include veterans of the Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns: Jennifer Palmieri, a former Obama and Clinton communications director; Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Obama’s deputy campaign manager in 2012; and Mitch Stewart, who was Mr. Obama’s battleground states director that same year. The vice president has also elevated political aides such as Brian Fallon and Megan Jones, who worked for her smaller team on the Biden campaign.
The new aides will all report to Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair who took over Mr. Biden’s campaign in February and who has been the functional leader of the Harris campaign since Mr. Biden dropped out of the race. Ms. Harris announced last week that she had asked Ms. O’Malley Dillon to remain in charge of her campaign. Brian Nelson, a Treasury Department official who worked for Ms. Harris when she was the attorney general of California, will be the campaign’s senior adviser for policy.
“We’re thrilled to expand her team with these battle-tested leaders that know her and know how to win close elections,” Ms. O’Malley Dillon said in a statement. Politico was first to report the news that Mr. Plouffe would be joining the Harris campaign.
Sheila Nix, a senior adviser to the campaign and chief of staff to Ms. Harris, added, “These seasoned and respected leaders are a part of Vice President Harris’s steadfast commitment to grow a team that will ensure we do everything possible to win.”
Mr. Plouffe’s addition had been discussed almost since the moment Ms. Harris entered the race, and he is expected to fill the void left by some of Mr. Biden’s advisers, such as Steve Ricchetti, Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn, who are not expected to be as involved now. Ms. Dunn is joining the pro-Harris super PAC Future Forward.
The lead pollster for the Harris campaign will now be David Binder, a pollster based in San Francisco who has worked with Ms. Harris for two decades. He will oversee the campaign’s existing team of pollsters, who funneled their findings while Mr. Biden was the candidate through Mr. Donilon, the president’s longtime aide. Also joining the polling team is Terrance Woodbury.
Jim Margolis, an ad maker who worked on Ms. Harris’s 2020 campaign, is joining as his firm, GMMB, builds out her media team.
Quentin Fulks, who served as Mr. Biden’s deputy campaign manager, will now oversee that paid media program.
Ms. Cutter will now be a senior adviser for message and strategy, and Mr. Stewart will serve as a senior adviser for battleground states. Ms. Palmieri will be a senior adviser to Ms. Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff.
The campaign also announced that Liz Allen, a former top State Department official, would serve as the chief of staff to Ms. Harris’s running mate, similar to the role she held for Ms. Harris in 2020.
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