Governor Gavin Newsom at the California and New Zealand Partner to Advance Global Climate Leadership press conference, San Francisco, CA, May 27, 2022. (Photo: Sheila Fitzgerald/Shutterstock)
Former Top Kamala Harris Aide Joins Newsom’s Staff
Is working for Kamala Harris really a resume-builder?
By Katy Grimes, December 16, 2024 11:04 am
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday that Nathan Barankin will become as his Chief of Staff.
Nathan Barankin will replace Dana Williamson, who was chief of staff to Gavin Newsom according to Politico today.
In October, Politico reported that Barankin joined Gov. Gavin Newsom’s senior staff.
Williamson served as Newsom’s “enforcer” and his “political assassin” at the Capitol, and “was a top liaison to powerful labor unions and business interests.” Her last day was Friday, Politico reported.
Barankin has been on the inside and outside of government, and has his own political consulting operation, Oak Tree Strategies, Inc. Most recently, he worked as an adviser to Kamala Harris.
Will Barankin be Newsom’s new “enforcer?”
Barankin was chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris in 2018, and left that position “to work in an advisory role at her political action committee, a sign that the California Democrat may be preparing to launch a 2020 presidential bid,” Fox reported. “Barankin first worked for Harris in 2011 when she was state attorney general as her chief of staff and then as her deputy chief attorney general.”
The Globe remembers Barankin when he worked for then-Senate President Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento).
Here’s an interesting Politico headline about the Harris team: Meet Harris’s economic brain trust:
“A lot of times, what she focuses on in those big, big macroeconomic discussions is: Let’s get granular here. How is this going to work?” Oak Tree Strategies President Nathan Barankin, Harris’s former chief of staff, told your host. “She wants to drill down to the greatest level of certainty that can be acquired to figure out who’s going to actually benefit from turning left or turning right on a particular decision.”
So Barankin is a fiction writer too?
Politico continued:
“Barankin described the policies Harris rolled out earlier in her career as ‘value principles’ that would represent a starting point for what she would like to achieve. Some would be politically impossible, even if Democrats were to secure majorities in both houses.”
“But when ‘you run for president, you’ve got to articulate your values. And a lot of times you put out proposals that implement aspects of your values,’ he said. For Harris, that does not mean those proposals are ‘set in stone, and [that] she would never consider anything else in order to achieve those similar objectives.’”
The Globe is happy Barankin found a soft landing after the disastrous Harris campaign. It’s not his fault that Harris was such a terrible candidate and may have actually blown through $2.5 BILLION in record time. Reports that she blew through $1.5 BILLION in 15 weeks abound, and she left the campaign $20 MILLION in the hole.
This is from another Politico article – ‘She was Zoom’d out:’ Veep mulls escape from D.C. bubble:
Nathan Barankin, one of Harris’ longest-serving aides who was chief of staff to her in the Senate and a top staffer in the California attorney general’s office, said he’s not surprised by the vigor that has come out of her meetings with leaders and activists. “They almost always come out energized, excited, even if they didn’t get what they wanted.”
Are you kidding me? People come out of meetings with Kamala Harris “energized and excited” – said no one ever (except maybe highly paid political consultants).
Perhaps Barankin meant to say exhausted and knackered… I can see that after a serving of Harris’s word salads and the stimulating conversation about yellow school buses and the moon.
Meanwhile, Kamala’s recent interest in being California’s next governor “could realistically elect a Republican Governor in 2026,” Rep. Kevin Kiley said on X.
The “overtly vacuous” Kamala Harris should “go quietly into the night” – she was “the worst presidential candidate in the history of American politics,” and “is a bit like a ringwraith from The Lord of the Rings, she is just a soulless human being…”
- Former Top Kamala Harris Aide Joins Newsom’s Staff - December 16, 2024
- Governor Jerry Brown Turned California into a Sanctuary State – Gavin Newsom Made it Worse - December 16, 2024
- Trump Names Ric Grenell Presidential Envoy for Special Missions - December 14, 2024
Thank you for the story. I wonder why Newsom moved on from Ms. Williamson? Did she leave on good terms or was it a poor performance issue. It would be interesting to hear her side of the story. While we may never know the palace intrigue is interesting.
Wow, that’s quite a career history for Gov Gruesome’s new Chief of Staff: Darrell Steinberg employee and long-time aide for Kamala. An objector observer might say that either Kamala didn’t take whatever advice Barankin dished up or he fell down on the job as a consultant. Whichever!
Hilarious that, according to Barankin and his glowy Kamala descriptions, he “said he’s not surprised by the vigor that has come out of her meetings with leaders and activists. ‘They almost always come out energized, excited, even if they didn’t get what they wanted.’”
Vigor, huh? Energized and excited, huh? Barankin is the King of Spin for sure! Isn’t it more likely that the “leaders and activists” come out comatose and retracing their lives, trying to figure out where they went wrong to end up associated with the worst candidate EVER, past, present, and future?
But never mind, it’s looking like we need to push (under the radar) for Kamala to run for CA Governor anyway, given that Kevin Kiley has noted that “if she runs, California could realistically elect a Republican Governor in 2026.” Works for me!