Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to head to her very own debate camp on Thursday, three sources familiar with the plans told NOTUS. She and her team will hunker down in Pennsylvania, the state where her debate with former President Donald Trump will take place next Tuesday, set to fully focus on preparing for prime time.
In conversations with nearly a dozen people involved with or aware of the preparations, a set of goals emerged for the next week. The campaign is planning to tune out as much of the outside noise as possible to lock her in, aware of Harris’ relative rust as a debater and her tendency to overprepare and fixate on the details.
The camp is co-led by Karen Dunn, a well-known D.C. lawyer who helped Harris prepare for her 2020 debate, and Rohini Kosoglu, Harris’ longtime policy guru who has been with Harris off and on since her Senate days. Other influential policy and informal advisers include Minyon Moore, fresh off a successful role chairing the Democratic National Convention; Brian Nelson, another longtime aide who now helps lead the campaign’s domestic policy shop; Tony West, her brother-in-law; Sheila Nix, her campaign chief of staff; campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond; and Sean Clegg, a strategist from California who has worked on multiple Harris campaigns.
While people familiar with planning caution that plans can still change, as the Biden administration is in what they hope to be the last stretch of a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas that might require Harris’ presence in the Situation Room, the current intention is for Harris to join her tight group of formal and informal advisers for extensive prep after a campaign event in New Hampshire.
“It’s smart to go where you’re going to be, feel in the zone,” said a Democratic operative who has previously prepared candidates for debates.
Harris has been preparing for some form of a debate for months, but Thursday marks a new step in her process, tuning out the noise of the campaign trail to focus on thwarting her rival.
One person familiar with the process told NOTUS that in her downtime, Harris has been pouring over briefing books and other reading material, including in between campaign stops.
