Black staffers with Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign claimed in a new report that they faced “outright discrimination” from within during her failed White House bid.
According to a New York Times report, which quoted several staffers who claimed they ran a “clandestine” operation to knock on doors in black and Hispanic neighborhoods in deep blue cities like Philadelphia just days before the election.
The paper said that dozens of staffers went “rogue” and began meeting at a Dunkin Donuts location to plan what they called “Operation Dunkin-kirk,” a dark reference to the British army’s early defeat during World War II and being stranded on a beach in France awaiting rescue.
Staffers revealed to the outlet a “striking breakdown” in the campaign’s efforts to increase voter turnout.
Frustrated by ineffective or counterproductive phone call assignments, some staffers took action, secretly organizing a last-minute door-knocking campaign to mobilize Black and Latino voters who typically support Democrats.
“I was the first one knocking on these doors,” Amelia Pernell, a Harris campaign organizer involved in setting up the clandestine Dunkin’ Donuts field office in North Philadelphia, told the Times. “They hadn’t talked to anybody. It was like: ‘Hey, nobody has come to our neighborhood. The campaign doesn’t care about us.’”
But the real point of contention came after the loss. “An internal survey commissioned by the Harris campaign also found that Black staff members were frustrated with campaign leaders and felt that their ideas were ignored at a rate far higher than their peers’. Some complained of outright racial discrimination. The campaign’s leadership was made aware of the survey’s results,” The Times reported.
Others blamed the Harris campaign for blowing through nearly $1.5 billion, failing even to win the popular vote, and then refusing to take any responsibility.
Lindy Li, a member of the DNC finance committee, told NewsNation’s Rich McHugh last month that internal conflicts and financial confusion within the party led some staff members to leave entirely.
Li, who had just participated in a campaign call with Harris donors and staffers, described the vice president’s demeanor as “self-congratulatory,” even though she became the first Democratic Party presidential candidate to lose the popular vote since 2004.
“She actually held two calls, one for her top donors and one for grassroots. I was speaking and texting with fellow attendees in the call, and we were amazed by how self-congratulatory the tone was …. The call was about 20, 30 minutes,” Li said. “I don’t recall anyone taking responsibility for the fact that we spent about $2 billion across the super PAC and the campaign and came up so significantly short. We lost seven swing states.”
During the call, Li stated that Harris was recognized as a “visionary leader.” The DNC official added, “I believe at one moment during the call she was talking about her Thanksgiving recipe. I don’t say this with any malice or anything. I’m just merely conveying what happened. I think I was stunned to hear that, given just the extent and brutality of the loss, and the fact that DNC staffers, two-thirds, at least two-thirds, have been fired summarily, and a lot of them are at a loss as to what to do.”
In conclusion, Li said that the party lacks direction after the election. “I’m just frankly stunned that there was no sort of postmortem or an analysis of how we can do better, what sort of lessons were learned. It was really just patting each other on the back, congratulating each other on I’m not sure what, and saying we’ll see you for Christmas.”
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