California Sen. Kamala Harris is cutting her campaign staff and re-focusing her efforts on Iowa as her campaign struggles after an early, brief rise.
Harris will lay off dozens of aides at her Baltimore campaign headquarters and is redeploying other staffers to Iowa, Politico reported.
Harris’ campaign is “hemorrhaging cash and in danger of lacking the resources to mount a competitive bid against better-funded rivals in Iowa,” according to the report.
The restructuring will affect her staff in New Hampshire, Nevada, and California.
Campaign manager Juan Rodriguez is also expected to cut his salary and other consultants will also have their payments reduced or their contracts renegotiated.
Harris hopes the move will save the campaign enough money for a seven-figure ad buy ahead of the Iowa caucus.
Harris camp insists they can still win:
The Harris campaign said that other campaigns have similarly cut staff early before coming back to win.
“From the beginning of this campaign, Kamala Harris and this team set out with one goal — to win the nomination and defeat Donald Trump in 2020. This requires us to make difficult strategic decisions and make clear priorities, not threaten to drop out or deploy gimmicks,” Rodriguez said in a statement. “Plenty of winning primary campaigns, like John Kerry’s in 2004 and John McCain’s in 2008, have had to make tough choices on their way to the nomination, and this is no different.”
Harris struggles in polls, fundraising:
Harris raised jut $11.8 million in the third quarter but spent $14.6 million. Her poll numbers have also trended down.
Harris is polling at just 4.7 percent nationally, according to the RealClearPolitics poll average, putting her behind Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg.
She is averaging just 2.7 percent in Iowa, 4 percent in New Hampshire, 7 percent in South Carolina, and 8 percent in her home state of California.
