Kamala Harris has a packed schedule these days: multi-state campaign stops; briefings from advisers on issues at home and abroad; a steady stream of phone calls, meetings and interviews, all as she hopes that she will defeat Donald Trump in next week’s election.
But amid the flurry of activity in the final stretch of the 2024 campaign, there is one discussion the vice president has made clear to aides she will not entertain, even in private: who might serve in a future Harris Cabinet and administration. Wary of tempting fate, Harris has been explicit to advisers in the final weeks of the campaign that she is not interested in having those conversations, four sources told CNN.
“She has been pretty resistant to having those conversations,” said one senior Democrat familiar with the pre-election discussions with the vice president. “Her position has been very much: I’ve got to go win this thing.”
The vice president’s refusal to participate in those planning discussions in earnest is, at least in part, rooted in superstition. Harris, who once quipped that she’s “a little superstitious,” has long believed that no good can come from putting the cart before the horse, those familiar with her thinking said.
“She’s superstitious,” one longtime Harris associate told CNN. “She is a rational and logical and linear thinker and that means she focuses on immediately what’s in front of her and she resists the temptation to look too far down the line.”
That trait could be one of the few she shares with Trump. The former president, too, has voiced wariness at transition planning before winning an election, in part because he believes it could amount to bad luck for the final outcome.
But he’s taken his resistance to formal transition planning a step further, declining to take critical formal steps toward preparing for a transition, blowing past a pair of key deadlines and breaking with precedent in a way that outside experts warn could ultimately pose challenges for a peaceful transfer of power.
While Harris’ transition team has been operating out of government-provided offices in Washington, Trump’s transition team is working from Manhattan and the Willard Hotel in Washington. Representatives from both transition teams met with federal agency transition planners on the White House campus on Tuesday to discuss “post-election readiness,” a White House spokesperson said.
Unlike during previous campaigns, the Harris team has telegraphed virtually nothing about the names or profiles of officials who could fill top roles in a potential administration, even as some Democrats in Washington and media outlets are eagerly fueling speculation. When then-candidate Joe Biden was in the concluding weeks of his successful 2020 bid, names for several roles had already been floated.
Nor is the Harris team asking yet for lists of names to fill potential roles — though, in the past, those lists are often sent unsolicited to transition officials by groups or individuals hoping to make a stamp on future administration policy.
For a candidate who, over the course of her abbreviated campaign, has had to bridge divides between progressive and moderate Democrats, those decisions will inevitably be delicate ones. That, in part, is why Harris and her team believe they are best left until after Election Day.
Waiting until she first knows with certainty that a role will be hers before assuming the duties that come with that job was how she operated much earlier in her career, too. Those familiar with her rise in California say she stuck to a similar ethos when she was running for attorney general and district attorney.
It was also how she more recently conducted herself before her quick ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket over the summer. Even when speculation was running rampant that Biden might drop out of the 2024 race, Harris – as CNN reported at the time – was meticulously careful about not doing anything preemptive until the moment he shared his decision.
The resistance to engage in extensive pre-election discussions about staffing a potential administration has lent a degree of secrecy to the Harris transition effort, particularly for those Democrats who are eager to learn about open positions.
Sources tell CNN the transition team has been focused on building out infrastructure for vetting, including recruiting lawyers and putting processes in place that are ready to launch if Harris wins. And just as her campaign has been truncated, so too has the transition planning.
“There is no transition without a successful campaign and that is the top priority right now. The transition is focused on setting up the infrastructure necessary to be ready for the post-election period,” a transition spokesperson told CNN.
But behind the scenes, transition personnel are also preparing for various scenarios, including if the race remains too close to call days after Election Day. In that event, both Harris’ and Trump’s teams may start receiving briefings from the Biden administration following a measure passed in 2022 that lays out protocols for the transition period.
A Harris victory would trigger the first same-party transition since 1989, when President Ronald Reagan handed off the presidency to his vice president, George H.W. Bush. The relative rarity of a Democrat handing over keys to the White House to another Democrat injects some uncertainties into the process, most notably how much continuity Harris would bring to staffing decisions in her own administration.
Typically, departing political appointees are expected to submit resignation letters as the presidency transfers to a new officeholder. But if Republicans flip the Senate, there have been discussions of keeping on some Biden holdovers to limit prolonged battles over confirmation. And there has been talk about how a GOP-controlled Senate might impact who the team brings up for a nomination.
“They’re trying to stand up confirmation processes with an eye toward that prospect,” one source said.
Yet the extent to which Harris would retain members of the Biden administration is largely unknown. She would likely bring in her own roster of senior West Wing advisers, replacing those who had worked for years or decades with Biden. That includes her own selection for White House chief of staff.
Harris’ current chief of staff, Lorraine Voles, is not expected to transition over to assume the role of White House chief of staff, several sources said.
And there is an expectation that much of the Cabinet would turn over, allowing Harris to name her own nominees to top posts. Even in two-term presidencies, top Cabinet officials often leave their high-stress jobs after one term.
Biden’s Cabinet has experienced almost no turnover in four years. Yet it’s not clear whether Harris would consider existing Biden officials who might be eyeing higher-profile roles, potentially as the secretaries of state or treasury or as attorney general.
While Harris has maintained relationships with individual Cabinet and administration officials, some believe she will prefer to start anew with her own team. Harris has also said she would name a Republican to her Cabinet, but she has refused to speculate on who that might be or for what role.
If Harris is uninterested in mulling over names for top positions in her possible future government until she knows she has won the election, her transition team has been busy getting ready for the possibility of a sprint to Inauguration Day.
The transition work is being led by Yohannes Abraham, former ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Others, including Josh Hsu, the vice president’s former general counsel, and Dana Remus, a senior adviser and outside counsel to the campaign, have been involved in the work of the transition team, a source familiar with the process said.
If the election is called for Harris, the transition team is expected to spring into action, quickly forming agency review teams, naming key White House staff and members of the Cabinet, and presenting the vice president with a long list of decisions to make.
