Harris Campaign: More Scenes from The MeltdownAs Justin mentioned Wednesday, Rep. Katherine Harris’ (R-FL) Senate campaign has just suffered a second major exodus of staffers – the final count is seven senior and mid-level staffers.
This despite Harris’ insistence after the last major defection that her staffers recommit themselves to the campaign. Her loyalty oath didn’t stick. But apparently Harris didn’t keep up her end of the bargain either:
[Harris’ departing campaign manager Glenn] Hodas said he left for the same reasons as his predecessors. Harris “hasn’t kept any of her promises” regarding her behavior, including promises “not to have tantrums, not to berate staff, not to micromanage and nitpick and not to get flustered on inconsequential details,” he said.
“It’s all the same old stuff,” he said. “None of it has changed. If anything, it’s gotten worse.”
And just to be clear what it’s like to be a Harris staffer:
Harris is prone to tantrums, wants to be treated like a princess, micromanages, fixates on minutia while ignoring the big picture, and sometimes does exactly the opposite of what advisers tell her with bad results that they have to clean up later, staff members said….
“That’s exactly like what happened [before],” said Ed Rollins, a strategist who left the campaign in April. “Everything is someone else’s fault. If there’s not a Starbucks coffee house within distance, it’s someone else’s fault.”
Harris says that she’s hired three new staffers . But it won’t be easy to fill the void:
Former campaign manager Jamie Miller said Harris will be especially hard-pressed to find anyone from Florida willing to take the job.
“It’s a nuclear wasteland in there,” Miller said. “Anyone who goes in is going to be tainted.”
