By Adam Andrzejewski of OpenTheBooks
“People really, really do not want to work for Kamala Harris,” wrote former staffer Dan McLaughlin, January 2022.
Topline
Under Kamala Harris, the Office of the Vice President has been called a “revolving door,” a “staff exodus” of key aides “heading for the exits.”
That’s not hyperbole from the national media. Our auditors at OpenTheBooks quantified an extraordinarily high 91.5-percent staff turnover rate. We used U.S. Senate disclosures to conduct our investigation and those databases can be downloaded below.
Elected in November 2020, Harris took the oath of office in January 2021. As of March 31, 2024, only four of the initial 47 staffers from the first year are still employed – consistently and without interruption – by the Vice President.
Furthermore, the turnover chaos isn’t getting better. In the trailing 12-month period, 24 staffers left — that’s almost half the employees.
Download the Office of Vice President 2021 & 2024 payrolls here (source: U.S. Senate disclosures)
Key facts
The “top-to-bottom dysfunction” that The Atlantic referenced in October 2023 is shown in the reported payrolls that we captured.
“In her first year and a half as vice president, Harris saw the departure of her chief of staff, communications director, domestic-policy adviser, national security adviser, and other aides,” the magazine wrote.
If only that was all who left.
The semi-annual Report of the Secretary of the Senate, among other things, lists the names, titles and salaries of staff in the Office of the Vice President (OVP).
In the most recent publishing through March 31, only four staff from the original 47 listed in the 2021 report remained consistently employed and are among the office’s 50 current staff members.
The Kamala Harris Fabulous Four – here are the names, titles, employment date, and salaries of the four employees most loyal to Kamala Harris:
Yael S. Belkind has been assistant to the chief of staff since Jan. 20, 2021, earning $85,924;
Nasrina Bargzie was associate counsel since Feb. 10, 2021, now is deputy council, taking home $118,066.
Oludayo O. Faderin was associate director from July 2021, then became deputy director of west wing operations, making $85,924.
Olivia K. Hartman was hired in August 2021 as advance coordinator and became deputy director of scheduling, making $94,750.
Silas Woods, III began his career with the vice president as a vetting researcher on Feb. 17, 2021 making $52,500, became associate director of research, and left in August 2022. He went to work as a press assistant for the White House making $67,000. On March 25, 2024, Woods returned as a personal aid to the second gentleman and deputy director of special projects, where his full salary isn’t reported.
The other 45 people employed in OVP as of March 31 were hired after Sept. 30, 2021, when staff had already begun leaving the office.
In the last year alone, (April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024) 24 people left their jobs with Harris.
Key background—Kamala Harris Tried To Hide Everything
The Kamala Harris, Office of Vice President, is committed to the opacity of its payrolls and all other office information.
In our 2021 reporting at Forbes, “VP Kamala Harris Is The Least Transparent Elected Official In The Nation,” we outlined the OVP’s refusal to provide any information to the public and taxpayers. Her office denied our FOIA request and claimed that they were immune.
We had filed a FOIA request with the OVP for its staff payroll in September 2021. A spokesman replied:
“Thank you for your inquiry. The Office of the Vice President is not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. See 5 U.S.C. 552; 44 U.S.C. 2207.”
We even tried to coax the information out of the OVP:
“I understand the OVP isn't subject to FOIA — is there any information you can provide me at all about the office staff? Whether it's total staff employees (without names or any other employee-specific info) or total payroll for 2020 or current numbers for 2021?”
However, the spokesman replied:
“Thank you for the inquiry. OVP does not have any information to share at this time.”
Therefore, we had to rely on the U.S. Senate’s semi-annual report for Oct. 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021, which gives a list of the 28 staff members who had been hired by the new administration between Jan. 20 and March 31, 2021. Over the next few months, the OVP added another approximately 20 staff members.
We calculated that for VP Harris’s 28 staff listed in the Senate report, the 2021 salaries added up to $2,334, 223.
But President Joseph Biden’s congressional budget submission shows the OVP got $5 million for 23 full time staff in 2021 and requested over $6 million for 27 full time staff in 2022.
The OVP wouldn’t answer for the discrepancy in budget and staffing, citing the earlier provision that states only federal agencies are subject to FOIA, and the OVP, it argues, isn’t a federal agency.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the second-in-command, and possible next president of the United States, is the only elected official in the country not required to share her office’s spending with the public.
We captured 25 million public employee salary and pension records on 55,000 FOIA requests last year. You can search all federal, state, and local government payrolls on our website for free or with our free AI search tool, Benjamin, named after Benjamin Franklin.
Biden’s High Turnover
Harris isn’t alone in her inability to retain staff.
Since 2021, only 127 of Biden’s initial 560 White House employees remain, a 77-percent turnover rate that would be considered high if not for Harris’ 92-percent rate.
Between 2023 and 2024, 225 people left, a 43-percent turnover rate that is only slightly lower than the 46-percent between 2022 and 2023.
(For context, Donald Trump’s payroll turnover from his first year until his fourth year was 72-percent.)
But Biden’s high turnover isn’t the only staffing failure that should give taxpayers pause.
He has the largest White House headcount since the Richard Nixon administration, who was the first president to exceed 500 staffers.
Now Biden employs 565 staffers, costing taxpayers $61 million in salaries. That’s up from the 524 staffers in 2023, costing $52 million.
Biden has 152 more employees than Trump (413) (FY2020) and 97 more than Obama (468) (FY2012), when each were in the fourth year of their first terms.
This shouldn’t be surprising, as Biden has made clear his intentions to grow the size of the federal government.
In the first nine days of his presidency, Biden issued many executive orders expanding the size, scope, and power of the federal bureaucracy.
During his first three years, more than 40,000 bureaucrats were added across the 123 executive agencies, outside of the Department of Defense, U.S. Post Office, and intelligence services.
Crucial quote
Symone Sanders, Harris' chief spokesperson and senior adviser, in early December 2021 was quoted in The Washington Post responding to critics of the staff departures, saying,
“We are not making rainbows and bunnies all day. What I hear is that people have hard jobs and I’m like ‘Welcome to the club.’”
She left the OVP later that year.
Critic
“Working for Harris is a nightmare, not just because she rides her staff hard, but also because she does so without the competence, decisiveness, and effectiveness that inspires people in politics to suffer under demanding bosses,” Dan McLaughlin wrote in a January 2022 National Review article titled, “People Really, Really Do Not Want to Work for Kamala Harris.”
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