The Tampa Tribune reports that Rep. Katherine Harris, who has seen staffers perhaps qualify for a listing in the Guinesss Book of Records in the speed with which they’ve fled her campaign the past week, is now at war. Big time. Against her staffers and her own party:
Changing locks on her campaign headquarters and accusing her staff of disloyalty and her own party of spying on her are signs of erratic behavior that some Katherine Harris staff members say has worsened since her father’s death.
Harris is restaffing her campaign and will announce new key staff members today, a campaign spokeswoman said Monday.
Republicans will look in horror and say “How could this happen? What will it do to the GOP slate in swing state Florida?” Democrats, who have largely hated Harris since the 2000 elections and her role in the controversy over Florida’s votes, will say “How fitting.” And many other voters will simply scratch their heads in dismay as they see an unpredented political meltdown not just of a campaign but of a politico’s entire career: it’s hard to image she’ll get out of this with her clout and image intact. Her most likely status: a late night TV and Daily Show punchline(once she fails at the polls or pulls out).
Details offered by the Tribune are not pretty:
But in the past 10 days, Harris has:
–Had locks changed and posted a security guard at the door of her campaign headquarters in Tampa and had former staff members escorted in to retrieve their belongings.–Told a gathering of supporters in Cocoa Beach on Saturday that the Republican Party had “infiltrated” her campaign staff to put “knives in my back.”
–Told a reporter that a longtime, trusted political adviser had leaked a story about her staff members quitting, then called back to retract the comments.
–Announced hiring her new staff without identifying them.
Those events come atop previous reversals and contradictions, including her announcement last month that she would spend her inheritance from her father on her campaign, which she changed, saying she would sell her assets.
Former campaign manager Jim Dornan, who left in November, called the most recent events in the campaign “unbelievable.”
“It smacks of real paranoia,” he said of the headquarters lockout and comments about infiltration. “That campaign staff was so loyal to her, and to be treated like that is absolutely unconscionable.”
In interviews over the past few weeks, speaking in confidence, former employees from Harris’ congressional and campaign staffs said the trauma of the unexpected death of her father has taken a toll.
“She’s in total meltdown. The campaign is in chaos,” said a longtime Republican operative who worked closely with Harris until recently. “She hasn’t mourned for her father.” Like many other former staff members interviewed, that GOP operative didn’t want to be quoted by name.
Etc. In a sense, the particulars such as the above don’t count. Perception is vital in politics and suffice to say Ms. Harris has a huge perception problem. The longer she hangs in there the longer she’ll politically hang and the longer that’ll explain the wide smiles on the faces of Democrats in Florida. Will a call from a Bush brother eventually get her out of the race…or is it too much now a matter of pride for that?
How bad is it? Right now it would be an improvement for Harris if she just got “a bad press.”
h/t Political Wire
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.