Harris adviser says VP ran ‘flawless’ campaign, GOP campaign managers candid on primary missteps

Sheila Nix, chief of staff to Vice President Kamala Harris, said Thursday afternoon that Harris ran a “pretty flawless campaign” at a summit of campaign managers, reporters and Harvard University staff.

“In my opinion, the vice president was the best position of all possible people for us. He had been vice president for 3 1/2 years and was part of the campaign and was ready to jump in,” Nix said at the Campaign Manager Conference dinner at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Obviously, we had a lot to do right away,” Nix continued. “We had to get delegates so that it could be him. We had to flip the convention on behalf of President Biden. We had to join forces and we had a 107 day campaign ahead of us and we had to move quickly.

“I would say he ran a pretty flawless campaign, and he did all the steps (that were) necessary to be successful,” he added. “And I think obviously we didn’t win, but I think we hit all the marks.”

Several other top campaign staffers, such as Asa Hutchinson, Dean Phillips, Jill Stein, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie and President-elect Donald Trump, offered brief reflections at the dinner. The collective addressed two main issues: the reasoning for jumping into the race and what could have been a strategic mistake.

To attack or not to attack?

Several of the campaigns pondered whether they made the right decision to maintain their attack on Trump in the primaries — leaving Christie’s campaign and, to a lesser extent, Hutchinson’s on an island of their own.

“Anyone here who wants to challenge the race at any level for any office, you never beat an incumbent without attacking the incumbent,” said Mike DuHaim, Christie’s senior adviser. “You have to say that the incumbent has not been doing a good job or that I would be better than the incumbent. You can’t say that the headline is really, really, really, really, really big, but I’m also really, really, really, really big”.

The Christie campaign became frustrated when it realized other major candidates weren’t following Christie’s lead, DuHaim added.

“It becomes frustrating, of course. And you start talking privately about what they were, what other people’s real motivations are,” DuHaim said.

While Christie took on Trump directly, aggressively and consistently, the same could not be said for Hutchinson.

“Unfortunately, in order to keep fighting, to be able to see his voice and his name and his face, he had to go on the offensive,” said Rob Burgess, Hutchinson’s campaign manager. “Obviously, he didn’t do it as aggressively as Governor Christie, but he did it his Arkansas way.”

Although Haley was the last candidate to oppose Trump in the primary, the former South Carolina governor did not go after Trump as aggressively as the other contenders until he became the only alternative.

Along with Haley, other candidates such as Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, Sen. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida also avoided harshly attacking Trump, fearing it would alienate those who still liked and supported the former president. agenda but he had doubts that he could win.

“I think, like a lot of people here, we determined that 40% of the voters were always going to be for President Trump, 40% because of Trump curiosity and maybe 20% of the primaries were not going to be for President Trump,” said Mike Zolnierowicz, of Burgum. campaign managers

Nix, Harris’s campaign manager, said Trump’s decision not to participate in the debate after the Sept. 10 ABC News presidential debate is also detrimental to the Harris campaign’s strategy of clearly presenting the options between Trump and Harris to voters multiple times.

“I think it was hard for us to get the attention we would have liked back then,” Nix said.

Single-state and multi-state strategy

Over the course of the dinner, a common theme discussed among various campaign managers was whether to have a single-state strategy or a multi-state strategy.

Betsy Ankney, Haley’s campaign manager, insisted that a Republican candidate could not succeed if he went into just one state.

“One of the things we saw earlier was, you know, Iowa (and) New Hampshire were eight days apart,” Ankney said. “All the other candidates other than Donald Trump and Nikki Haley had a one-state strategy. Chris Christie was playing in New Hampshire. DeSantis, Iowa. There was no way we could have been successful in this campaign without having a strong showing at the world level and being able to go the distance.’

Ankeny added that campaigns that mismanaged revenue — an “embarrassment of riches” — was another major flaw in the election.

“I think a potential theme of this election cycle is embarrassment of riches,” he said. “You saw that with the DeSantis campaign in the primary. You saw that with the Harris campaign in general. Often, when candidates have more money than they know what to do with, they make bad decisions, and we were mean and thin and bad.’

Scott, Christie and Hutchinson’s campaign managers debated focusing on and investing in one of the early primary states rather than others because of limited resources, lack of money, and many saw the campaigns as their best chance for success.

Although DeSantis’ campaign manager was not in attendance, his presidential campaign also focused on one state: Iowa.

Hutchinson’s campaign manager, Burgess, pointedly said in an interview Thursday night that he and the former Arkansas governor disagreed on whether to focus on one state or several states, and Burgess left the campaign.

“He wanted to do a five-state campaign, and I didn’t know how I was going to pay for it,” Burgess said. “I wasn’t happy with taking out a mortgage on his house, and I didn’t want to be responsible for the campaign having debt.”