All is not joyful behind the scenes with Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign, where her loyalists and former President Barack Obama's alumni have been stitched together with the remnants of President Joe Biden's campaign, creating a "Frankenstein" team that's confused about who's in charge, inside sources say.
The tensions are growing as the team's size increases, according to six people involved with the Democrat nominee's campaign, Axios reported Thursday.
And now, people involved in the campaign say they hope that with election day being a short time away, tensions won't grow too high.
"It's just a mad dash," one source said. "Things are colliding occasionally, but it's not malicious."
Another told Axios that the organization will be fine as long as the team continues to believe Harris can win the election.
With Biden's campaign, a few aides made the big decisions, but Harris' team has several centers of power. She kept most of the Biden campaign in place, aside from Mike Donilon, who was in charge of the president's messaging strategy. He has returned to the White House.
And when combined with her own staff and prominent names from Obama's 2012 reelection, "the entanglement of these different entities has led to many people feeling a real lack of role clarity," one of Axios' sources said.
Another person, though, said that there "isn't as much tension at the very, very top," but still, there is a question about "who is the first among equals with the vice president."
The same source said the confusion about who is in charge happens more often at about "two or three rungs down" from the top.
There is also tension between the Biden and Obama factions of the team. The president's aides reportedly believe the Obama side had been armchair quarterbacking them for months, and had been involved in the effort to push Biden out of his reelection campaign.
Meanwhile, Harris has brought on prominent election attorney Marc Elias, who had split with the Biden camp last year.
He is close to former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder, who Harris brought on to help her vet running mate candidates, leading to the selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
The Harris campaign has also changed the focus of the campaign. Biden emphasized democracy and his accomplishments, while the vice president is focusing on freedom and the future.
There is some frustration among the Biden side for having to defend Harris' past support on progressive issues such as fracking bans and Medicare for all. They say her support for such issues in 2020 led to Biden winning the nomination and election.
Harris' campaign has declined to comment on the reports.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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