My Experiences as an Intern on Kamala Harris's Presidential Campaign
Background
I
knew from the moment I watched Senator Kamala Harris grill Brett Kavanaugh in
his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to become a Supreme Court Justice on
September 5th, 2018 that I wanted her to become our next president.
She delivered biting and probing questions as only a seasoned prosecutor can,
but moreover, she showed a seriousness and steadiness that has been lacking throughout
the current administration.
Four months later, Sen. Harris
announced that she would run for President. I was thrilled, but I also wanted
to give a fair shot to other candidates before I went all-in. By June 27th,
the night of the first Democratic debate, I had made up my mind; I would be
supporting Kamala. That was the night she famously eviscerated Vice President
Biden’s handling of issues of race, showing she has what it takes to go
toe-to-toe with Donald Trump in the general election.
Two weeks later, I reached out to
the southwest Iowa regional organizing director, Jess Montgomery, inquiring
about a potential internship with the campaign. I knew that one of my two
remaining classes in my master’s program through the University of Nebraska
Omaha would be a political science internship, and the fall semester would be
the only time that I would have a full semester of not deploying. I also
recognized next-door Iowa’s clear and outsized importance in the nominating
process. The stars seemed to align.
The Grind
Campaigning
and organizing is not always fun work; in fact, it is often quite frustrating. The
immediate goal of any campaign should be identifying potential supporters as
well as those supporting other candidates. The two main tools our campaign used
to achieve this goal were the two most traditional ones: phonebanking and
canvassing. However, in the age of caller-ID, only a tiny fraction of potential
caucus-goers pick up the phone, and of the ones who do, even fewer would say
they were supporting or leaning towards supporting Sen. Harris. Canvassing, or
going door-to-door, typically had a much higher response rate, but again very
few people were ready or willing to commit to any one candidate, much less my
candidate.
Of the two methods, I much preferred
canvassing, even as the seasons changed from miserably hot to chillingly cold.
I enjoyed speaking with people face to face. Not only did I connect with more
people, but they were typically nicer and more willing to chat for extended
periods. One woman I met was most concerned with education, specifically if her
children would be able to get quality education when classroom size and teacher
pay dissuaded quality educators from joining or keeping that career. I told her
about Sen. Harris’s plan that would raise teacher pay across America by an
average of $13,000, and she was sold. Another man, whom I could not ultimately
convince to caucus for Kamala, chatted with me for nearly an hour about various
issues and his thoughts on the candidates. He was very wealthy, and after he
offered to hold a fundraising event for the Senator, I suspected he was holding
out his support for any candidate he could meet personally.
Of course, not all interactions were
quite as pleasant. Many people either yelled from inside their house “GO AWAY!”
or outright shut the door in my face after opening it. One woman shouted that
we live in America and I can’t tell her who to vote for, despite the fact that
I had only just introduced myself and not asked any questions. One of the final
interactions I had on the campaign was with a man who said “hell no” to Kamala
and declared “Trump 2020”. I thanked him for his time and turned to leave, but
he apparently wasn’t done; he wanted to regurgitate every Fox News talking
point he had heard over the past few weeks of impeachment hearings, in an
apparent effort to get under my skin. It didn’t work.
For every potential voter who had an
opinion or preference, though, there were dozens who were undecided. This, I
believe, was undoubtedly a product of the historically large field of
candidates running in the crowded primary. Iowans are famously careful about
who they ultimately decide to caucus for – they do their research, they go to
local events to hear the candidates in person, and they ultimately make an
informed decision. But with two dozen candidates running for the nomination,
there is a lot to potentially like, and even more to research. Even today, only
two months out from the Iowa caucuses, only one-third of voters are strongly committed
to their first choice, even as the field has winnowed.
Canvassing and phonebanking weren’t
my only roles in the campaign. I organized two debate watch parties, the first
at my house and the second at a bar in Omaha. I recruited college students at
both UNO and UNL, and even analyzed past precinct-level voter files to
determine the best precincts to target. By mid-October, I was made the Omaha
team captain, which mostly just consisted of organizing events for those in
Nebraska to attend. My biggest and most unique role in the campaign, however,
was creating a weekly newsletter sent to supporters and shared digitally via
Facebook and Twitter that highlighted various policies, favorable news
articles, and upcoming events. To my knowledge, the southwest Iowa region was
the only one that created a product like that.
The southwest Iowa regional office
was located in downtown Council Bluffs, which was beneficial for two reason –
one strategic and one personal. Pottawattamie County, home to Council Bluffs,
is by far the largest county by population in the region, meaning our staffers
and volunteers had nearby access to thousands of potential caucus-goers. For
myself, it was highly convenient that my commute to the office was only a 30
minute drive from my house. Typically, each week I would work at the office (or
canvass in Council Bluffs) on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, as well as either
Saturday or Sunday afternoons. Unfortunately, that schedule meant I would be
away from my family during times we normally spend together. To make matters
more difficult, my husband, Zach, was then left alone to have to watch and
raise our two children. While he’s no stranger to single-parent ops (I deploy
an average of 120 days/year), there were certainly times when I felt bad about
willingly choosing time campaigning over time with Zach and the twins.
For as much as I worked and was away
from my family, however, the permanent staff on the campaign had it much worse.
The Harris campaign was the first to go to a 7-day work-week in early September,
usually working 10+ hour days. They moved from all over the country, leaving
their friends and family behind, to work for Sen. Harris’s campaign. Our
organizers included Rochelle Golliday, who had been an intern for First Lady
Michelle Obama and worked on Hillary Clinton’s Iowa campaign; Jake Fields, a
former staffer for Jacky Rosen’s 2018 Senate campaign; Leo McCaffrey, an organizer for Haley Stevens in Michigan in 2018; Rachel
Jordan, who worked on Governor Martin O’Malley’s campaign; Jonny Vannucci, who
interned at both the State Department and the UN; and Natalie Weiss, a local
activist from Lincoln, Nebraska. Each one of them was a pleasure to work and
spend time with, and I will forever value their friendships and our experiences
together.
The
Failures
Senator Kamala Harris suspended her
campaign last week after months of declining poll numbers and a lack of
cash-on-hand to continue in a serious and honest way. Like many, the decision
to end her campaign left me in shock and with a wide array of emotions.
Strategically, I was dumbfounded as to why she would leave the contest when she
was consistently still polling in 5th place (albeit in the
mid-single digits) and was one of only seven candidates to have so-far
qualified for the December debate. I believed that a strong performance, like
that in the June debate, could have had the potential to jump-start her
candidacy, bring in more donations, and breathe new life into her stalled campaign.
Additionally, on some level I felt betrayed; I of course realize that there
will eventually only be one nominee and had been of the belief for some time
that it was very unlikely that she would ultimately be that nominee, but ending
her campaign before even the first vote was cast meant that all our hard work
over the past few months would see no tangible results, even if the results may
not have been favorable.
At the same time, as I said, it was
becoming increasingly clear that Kamala would not perform well in Iowa, and
staying in the race would only pull support and attention from candidates more
likely to win or do well. The political scientist and pragmatist in me knows
that a greatly protracted primary campaign will likely only help one person: Donald
Trump. By that measure, her exit now leaves her supporters able to shop around
for other candidates, potentially helping the eventual nominee’s victory be more
decisive.
A lot has been written about the
failure of Sen. Harris’s campaign, and I’m sure even more is yet to come. She
was often referred to as the ‘female Obama’, and her campaign announcement in
January drew 20,000+ people, the largest crowd for any candidate up until
October. At points during these early months, she was considered one of the
frontrunners. How did she end up with no money and very little support two
months before the Iowa caucuses?
Broadly speaking, one of the biggest
contributing factors was her lack of a clear message, or reason for why it
should be her over another candidate. The candidates who win nominations always
have a simple theme to their campaign. Barack Obama offered a vision of a
post-partisan (and implicitly a post-racial) America; Bernie Sanders champions
a political revolution; Joe Biden sells a return-to-normal; Elizabeth Warren
has built a brand on fighting for the middle class and ending corruption in
Washington, etc. A clear message, especially in a crowded primary, is essential
– it helps to differentiate one candidate from another, specifically when their
policy positions are largely the same.
Another huge factor was what Kamala
described as ‘the donkey in the room’ – the issue of electability. After the
2016 election in which Trump surprised almost everyone by winning three
Midwestern states that gave him the win in the Electoral College, the media and
Democratic elites began putting a heavy emphasis on Democratic candidates
needing to win back the white, working-class men who swung to Trump. This
narrative has ignored the fact that minority (especially black) turnout was
down dramatically from 2012, undoubtedly due to a black man no longer being on
the ballot as well as specific and targeted attempts by Russia to suppress the
black vote. Additionally, it is often forgotten that Democrats had an extremely
flawed candidate in 2016. Still, elites messaging enforced the idea that only a
white candidate, probably male, can win against Donald Trump, and that
perception is perhaps best exhibited when observing that the four most-likely
nominees are all white, and 3 are male. Moreover, so far, not a single person
of color has met the polling threshold to qualify for the December debate.
Structurally, the early-state
nominating order of the Democratic primary, in which two disproportionally
white and rural states (Iowa and New Hampshire) hold the first two nominating
contests, likely compounded Sen. Harris’s perceived electability problem. That
is not to say that voters in those two states are racist - after all, Iowa
launched Barack Obama to the Presidency - but I believe it is fair to say that
if South Carolina or another heavily diverse state were to hold the first
contest, Kamala would have been given a longer look by voters and would also
have been mentioned more by the media as a prohibitive frontrunner.
As always, the media played a role
in the demise of Sen. Harris’s campaign. Part of the issue is that beginning in
August, after a fine but lackluster debate performance, the media simply
stopped talking about Kamala Harris, at least relative to the three leading
contenders at the time, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders. By
that point in time, her position in the polls had fallen from 15% in early July
to about half that. The candidate on the rise both in Iowa and nationally was
Elizabeth Warren, and the media seemed to favor the ‘comeback-kid’ story of
Warren.
Yet, the adage “all press is good
press” is also not true, at least in this case. Sen. Harris’s campaign was
subject to a great deal of negative coverage, much of it earned - most notable
was her seeming flip-flop positions on Medicare-for-All. She had co-sponsored
Sen. Sanders’s “damn bill”, yet by July, after hearing from voters across the
country, Kamala said, she moderated by proposing a plan that would offer
Medicare for anyone who wanted it but would also allow private insurance
companies to still offer plans for a transitionary period of 10 years, though
they would be subject to stricter regulation. The media, as well as the other
candidates, who perhaps saw her as a threat, latched onto this turnabout by
Harris, which just fed into the perception that she didn’t have an ideological
core that informed her policy stances. For me, it reinforced my belief that she
would be an excellent leader, because she has the ability to think
pragmatically and change her mind when she’s presented with data and confronted
with voters’ worries.
Still, that perceived flip-flop was
a moment in the campaign from which she could never recover. By October and
through the end of November, just days before she formally closed shop, there
were frequent stories about infighting in the campaign, mostly at the top. For
my part, I never personally witnessed any kind of staff conflict in our region,
but I was told that it happened, and it, along with the polls and negative
headlines, created a sometimes-tense environment in which morale was low.
Lessons
Learned and Going Forward
I learned a lot through this
internship. I learned campaigning is tough work. It is seldom rewarding – I
didn’t get my first ‘Commit to Caucus’ (C2C) from a voter until October. The
hours, especially for paid staffers, are long, and the work is tedious. It
mostly consists of making phone calls or knocking on doors all day. It puts a
strain on families and on relationships. But the people who invest their time
and energy into these campaigns are heroes to the idea of democracy. They are
fighting not just on behalf of their preferred candidate, but in a
representation of their own beliefs and values.
I also learned how to best convince
an undecided voter, at least in the Midwest. In the beginning, when canvassing,
I would accept an answer of “I’m undecided” without further question or
prodding. Perhaps as a result of how I was raised, I’m not keen on pressing a
point or be seen as pushy. Rather, it is truer to my personality to accept
opinions at face value and thank them for their time. This is clearly not a
technique that lends itself well to campaigning. Gradually, as I became an
effective subject matter expert on Sen. Harris and her positions, I found I was
much more successful when I followed up by asking, “what issues matter most to
you?” Then, I would be able to easily explain how Kamala would address that
specific issue, and if asked, would contrast that with other candidates’
positions.
One thing I never changed about my
approach is that I never spoke negatively of another candidate when interacting
with voters, and I’m proud of that. Sure, there are a couple candidates in the
field whom I dislike and disagree with on occasion, but negativity feeds hate,
and hate is a path towards the dark side, as well as four more years of Donald
Trump. The Democratic party and those fighting for its candidates must show
Americans a different path and vision. It is not enough to simply replace the
occupant of the oval office; whomever wins must go on to try to unite all
Americans under a common purpose. Division, fear, and hate will never
accomplish that. 
Going forward, I’m not going to let my
candidates’ loss paralyze me or prevent me from staying in the fight. I’ve told
myself that I will give myself a week or so to ‘grieve’, and then I will begin
researching in earnest who most deserves my support. I clearly haven’t yet
decided who that will be, and I look forward to hearing from my friends as well
as organizers for other campaigns on why I should support their candidate. When
I settle on a candidate, and especially when we have a nominee, I’m going to
use what I learned to fight like hell for that person, and I couldn’t be more
excited.
