Harris Campaign Immediately Slings Mud at Philly Dem Chair
FINGER POINTINGThere’s been plenty of finger-pointing after Kamala Harris’ presidential dreams quickly crumbled on Tuesday evening
The Harris campaign shot back at Democratic Party leadership in Philadelphia after a local party boss blamed the top of the ticket for a poor showing in the city, insisting they treated local leadership with a “lack of respect.”
The feud began when Robert Brady, the chair of the Philadelphia Democratic Party, ripped Kamala Harris’ campaign on Wednesday as being disrespectful and incompetent.
Brady told The Philadelphia Inquirer he thinks Democrats “probably” should have kept Joe Biden as the party’s nominee or chosen a “better candidate” than the sitting vice president.
The 79-year-old ex-lawmaker, who’s led Philly’s Democratic Party since 1988, also criticized Harris for her lack of relationship with party leaders in the city—the largest in what was overwhelmingly viewed as the election’s most-important swing state.
“They never dealt with us,” Brady told the Inquirer of Harris’ campaign. “They didn’t show us any respect. I never talked to the lady and she’s the candidate.”
Robert Brady walks off stage at the DNC after speaking in 2016.
Brady said both Joe Biden and Barack Obama met with him and other local ward leaders when they campaigned in previous elections, which he said “means something.” This time around, he said his organizers didn’t even get asked to join Harris on stage at rallies.
“Not that I got an ego,” Brady said, “but it shows the lack of respect.”
Brady said Harris’ campaign invited him to a 4 p.m. meeting of Democratic leaders in Washington on Wednesday—an invite he reportedly declined and suggested was too little, too late.
The local leader also said Democrats made the wrong call in selecting Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be Harris’ running mate. Instead, Brady said the campaign should have called on Josh Shapiro—Pennsylvania’s own popular governor—to join her ticket.
In response, a Harris campaign adviser sent The Inquirer a photo of Brady, Harris, and Walz standing side-by-side. It was not immediately clear when the meet-up took place.
Harris senior adviser Brendan McPhillips accused Brady’s organization of failing to campaign door-to-door for the Democratic candidate, and even alluded to mismanagement of the city’s local party.
Harris' campaign “knocked more than two million doors in the weekend leading up to Election Day, which is two million more doors than Bob Brady’s organization can claim to have knocked during his entire tenure as party chairman,” McPhillips told the paper.
“If there’s any immediate takeaway from Philadelphia’s turnout this cycle, it is that Chairman Brady’s decades-long practice of fleecing campaigns for money to make up for his own lack of fundraising ability or leadership is a worthless endeavor that no future campaign should ever be forced to entertain again,” he said.
Despite being passed over as her running mate, Josh Shapiro still hit the campaign trail alongside Kamala Harris.
The Inquirer reported that Harris’ performance in Philadelphia was the lowest by a Democratic presidential candidate in the city in the last two decades.
Issues in Philly—where Democratic voter turnout was a flop—went beyond just the candidates themselves, however. Brady told his local paper that spending was a problem, too, with Harris’ team shelling out about “half” of what previous get-out-to-vote campaigns in the city did.
From the outside, it appeared Harris and her campaign were all in on Pennsylvania and on Philadelphia. She visited the state more than any other during her campaign and held 16 rallies there. It was also where she flocked to for her key campaign moments, like her final rally Monday night and to announce Walz as her running mate.
Momentum appeared to be high at rallies in Pennsylvania in the campaign’s final days, but didn’t turn into an increase in turnout there on Election Day.
Harris had a number of campaign offices in Philadelphia, the Inquirer reported, but she was still unable to receive enough turnout there to keep up with the state’s red suburban and rural areas.
Brady told the Inquirer he doesn’t take any personal responsibility for the damning loss for Democrats. When asked, he reportedly gave a blunt assessment of Tuesday’s election results.
“We did everything we could with limited resources we had and people just rejected her and voted for him,” he told the paper.
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