2024 Elections

Kamala Harris’ lean and low-profile transition planning is sharply different from the expansive team that Biden relied on four years ago.

If Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidential election next week, her transition effort is poised for a rapid expansion. | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

By Adam Cancryn and Jasper Goodman

10/30/2024 05:30 PM EDT

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Vice President Kamala Harris is relying on a small and intensely private transition operation to help her prepare for what would be the first transfer of power from a sitting president to his vice president in more than a quarter century.

But as Harris makes a final push for the presidency, the secrecy surrounding her transition’s personnel and policy decisions has driven anxiety among Democrats on the outside still unsure what her administration would look like, who might influence her priorities — and how significantly, if at all, her presidency would diverge from the last four years of President Joe Biden.

On the campaign trail, Harris has wavered between distancing herself from Biden and standing by him and his record. And speculation is already rampant among Democrats over which jobs will go to “Biden people” already in government versus newer “Harris people” closely allied with her on the outside. So far, Harris and her transition advisers — a mix of Biden administration veterans and close Harris aides well aware of the chatter building around them — are doing little to tip their hand.

“It’s going to be a hell of a fight,” one Democratic operative said of the coming battle over personnel and policy priorities between different factions of the party. “There’s a whole lot of Biden people who are really wanting to stay — and a whole lot of other people who really want them to leave.”

Harris’ lean and low-profile transition planning is sharply different from the expansive team that Biden relied on four years ago for his takeover from Donald Trump, a reflection both of the very different circumstances of this election as well as Harris’ late entry into the race.

Biden built a massive transition apparatus, recruiting scores of allies to revitalize a federal bureaucracy demoralized by the Trump administration and help respond to a........

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