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US Vice President Kamala Harris’s office is going through personnel changes following the departures of several top aides. This week, a White House official said that the vice president has brought on a White House staffer to become her new deputy chief of staff.
A White House official told CNN Monday that Harris hired Erin Wilson – who is the deputy director of the White House Office of Political Strategy and Outreach – to become her new deputy chief of staff.
Wilson will be replacing Michael Fuchs, who announced earlier this year that he was stepping down as Harris’s deputy chief of staff. Wilson was also the national political director for President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.
White House deputy chief of staff, Jen O’Malley Dillon, said in a statement that Wilson is a “key leader” in Biden’s political team and that her “leadership, dedication, and thoughtfulness will be an asset to the Vice President’s team.”
This comes amidst several high-profile departures. Aside from Fuchs, Harris’s chief of staff, Tina Flournoy, was also reported to be resigning.
Harris’s national security adviser Nancy McEldowney, communications director Ashley Etienne, chief spokesperson and adviser Symone Sanders, and deputy press secretary Sabina Singh, have all previously stepped down from their posts.
The frequent personnel changes in Harris’s team follow previous reports of dysfunction in the vice president’s office. Much of the conflict was allegedly regarding Flournoy’s leadership which also meant Harris’s leadership of her own team. Top White House officials and top Harris aides have all come to defend her and Flournoy and dismissed the reports as false.
In other related news, Harris this week presided over the Senate’s vote to pass legislation that would codify the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion ruling as law. Harris would cast the tie-breaking vote in an evenly divided chamber, giving the Democratic Party a very thin majority. The legislation previously passed the House in February.
Senate Republicans filibustered the legislation in the Senate this week, with one conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin also voting to oppose the bill, leading to the bill falling flat in the Senate.
“The Senate is not where the majority of Americans are on this issue,” said Harris following the vote.
