by Edward Ring
Long before fate made Kamala Harris the presumptive Democratic Party candidate for president of the United States, Washington Post published an article is critical of the way he treats staffAn article published in December 2021 detailed high staff turnover and said it “raises questions about her management style.”
What were they thinking? A very recent Washington Post search for Harris shows only admiring tributes. There have been several in the past two weeks:Kamala Harris Makes Politics Fun Again — For Democrats“Democrats Make Change and Find Hope“Kamala Harris and the Coconut Tree of Hope“Kamala Harris’ Life, Career, and Early Achievements from AG to VP“Kamala Harris’s Powerful Laughter in the Face of Weirdness“Kamala Harris steps into the storm — and keeps her balance“How Kamala Harris’ Early Career Prepared Her for This Moment.”
Have you had enough? Like almost every other major newspaper and media outlet in America, the Washington Post is now fully behind Harris. Suddenly, she can do no wrong. But the reports of her pattern of staff abuse are credible. In 2019, a petite Northern California newspaper published an article by local elected official Terry McAteer, in which he described the work environment of then-California Attorney General Harris, where his son was interning. In his article, titled “The Other Side of Kamala Harris,” McAteer claimed that Harris “instructed all staff to get up every morning when she came into the office and say, ‘Good morning, General.'” McAteer said that Harris “vocally throws out ‘F-bombs’ and other expletives as she berates staff and others. The staff is completely terrified of her, and she uses her expletives all day long.”
Harris’ treatment of employees is evidenced by the high turnover in her office during her time as vice president. Now, with all eyes on her presidential bid, OpenBooks has conducted an investigation. They found that her office had an “extraordinarily high staff turnover rate of 91.5 percent.” Of the 47 employees initially assigned to Harris in 2021, only four remain.
Reports of Harris’ managerial dysfunction were not barred from the liberal press before July 20, 2024. October 2023. Atlantic published an article entitled “Kamala Harris’ Problem: Few People Think She’s Ready to Be President.” Conservative media outlets have also exposed Harris’ weakness as a manager. In 2022, National Review published an article with a title that speaks for itself “People really, really don’t want to work for Kamala Harris.” And it’s no wonder that similar articles have been found on the website in the past few weeks New York Post AND Fox News.
Missing from these revelations—which are unlikely to be seen again in the Atlantic, the Washington Post, or any other national media outlet—is the connection between Harris’s violent personality and the imperative culture of the left. One person who explains the left’s pathology with extraordinary clarity is Thomas Sowell, whose quotes on this topic contains the following elements:
The views of those on the left are accompanied by hostility, even hatred.” “People on the left of the political spectrum, more than others, demean and demonize those who disagree with them.” “No one can truly understand the political left without understanding that they are in it to feel superior.” “The left’s vision, full of envy and resentment, takes its worst toll on those at the bottom.
These quotes are apt at defining Kamala Harris’s political philosophy, but they’re equally apt at defining her personality and the way she treats people. More broadly, they explain the character of leftists in general. They explain why the people at Democratic rallies are almost all incensed and resentful. And further insight into the culture of the left can be found in the institutions that were the foundation of their power in the 20th century: radical unions. The first major unions to endorse Harris for president in 2024 former teachers’ unions:American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association.
We can acknowledge the essential role that some private sector unions can play in America while maintaining a sober assessment of teachers unions. They are consistently far-left organizations that have done everything in their power to destroy public education. Their entire political agenda is divisive and confrontational (why would they even have a political agenda?), whether it’s their hypocritical and relentless attacks on “corporations and billionaires” or their fanatical adherence to every theory of race, gender, and climate ever written.
Harris’ union support goes back a long way. During her first bid for major office in 2010, in a close race against moderate Republican Steve Cooley for California attorney general, “labor groups, including the California Labor Federation, Service Employees International Union Local 1000 and the California Nurses Association, he spent hundreds of thousands dollars to lend a hand Harris win a narrow victory.”
Unions are inherently adversarial. They tend to force workers to become dues-paying members. They tend to portray employers as perpetual adversaries. And unlike businesses, which must compete for customers who have many options, their ultimate tool for influence is the strike. But this antagonism is compounded by the radical leftist bias of unions in California. One way to understand how pervasively this culture dominates politics in Harris’ home state is to consider the background assessment state legislators. In 2020, 75% of California Democratic state legislators had biographies that indicated a background solely in labor unions and government agencies, compared to just 34% of Republicans.
Further evidence of the dominance of unions among California politicians can easily be found in viewing your donors. When you search campaign contributions by amount, you often find Democratic state legislators in California, where every one of the top 20 donors is a union. They are usually public sector unions, with the teachers union being the biggest player.
In business, even in those corporations that have been corrupted by woke ideology, such as we see today, meritocracy remains imperative to success. Until the fusion of large work, large business, and large government is complete—which the Democrats and RINOs cannot push forward brisk enough—corporate credit lies largely in operational competence. Skilled engineers. Competitive products. But in the world of government and politics, credit lies in conformity and personal relationships. Not in what you know, but in who you know.
Of course, it’s not binary. Who you know is essential to success, even in uncorrupted and competitive companies. But in the world of government agencies, it’s everything. Out of touch with reality and untouchable by their unions, government employees advance not on merit but on connections and conformity. Then the most reliable among them get selected to run for office.
This is the environment in which Kamala Harris rose to the top of American politics. A culture of leftist hostility mixed with an us-versus-them union mentality. A culture in which power based on political connections is the only power that matters.
If you know where to look, there is already a wealth of information about what Kamala Harris will do if she has the chance to impose California’s liberal-progressive (and corporate) political agenda on the entire nation. But it is essential to realize that behind her expressions of compassion, her radiant smile, and her twisted public persona is a scheming and incensed person born for authoritarian rule. This perilous duplicity is an example of what we must always expect from everyone on the left. Everyone.
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Edward Ring is a senior fellow at the Center for American Greatness. He is also director of water and energy policy at the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. Ring is the author of Fixing California: Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism (2021) and The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California (2022).
Photo “Kamala Harris” by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Licensed under CC BY 2.0.
