Vice President Kamala Harris’s efforts to distance her 2024 presidential campaign from much of the far-left policy stances she took during her 2020 White House bid appear to be driven—at least in part—by the influence of her brother-in-law, Tony West. A senior vice president and chief legal officer at Uber Technologies with deep ties to Wall Street and Silicon Valley, West has taken a leave of absence from his role as a corporate executive to serve as an informal advisor on Harris’s campaign.
While West has helped bolster support for his sister-in-law among the globalist corporate and financial elite, his influence over the Harris presidential campaign is rankling some organized labor leaders and economic progressives in the Democratic Party. After replacing the 81-year-old Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in July, Harris largely abandoned Biden’s more economically populist policies. Most recently, she attacked President Donald J. Trump’s tariff policies, which were largely unchanged under Biden.
TROUBLE WITH THE TEAMSTERS.
Harris’s shift away from organized labor-supported tariffs and West’s support of anti-union laws around the country is believed to have contributed to the Teamsters Union’s decision not to endorse the Democratic Party nominee ahead of the November election.
Uber’s support of a 2020 California ballot measure that would allow it to classify its drivers as independent contractors—enabling the company to deny certain employment benefits and more effectively resist unionization efforts—is said to have been a particular sticking point for the Teamsters’ leadership. Some of the union’s leaders pointed the finger at West for Uber’s $200 million campaign supporting the ballot measure.
Recent survey data released by the Teamsters suggest a significant shift in the rank-in-file from supporting Joe Biden to backing Donald Trump after the former announced he would not seek re-election.
SIDELINING BERNIE & WARREN.
West’s advisory role and influence on the Harris campaign isn’t just drawing criticism from organized labor, however. The Teamsters’ concerns are being echoed by allies of Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who contend Harris—under West’s advisement—is spending too much time attempting to win the support of Wall Street and Silicon Valley billionaires while ignoring the Democratic Party’s more economically progressive voter base.
“I don’t begrudge West and the Harris campaign for trying to have business outreach going on,” said long-time Sanders advisor Faiz Shakir in a recent interview. “But you don’t simultaneously see an outreach to those wanting to unrig the economy,” he lamented.
While West’s record as a DOJ attorney under the Clinton and Obama governments suggests he largely supports far-left progressive views on social and cultural issues, his record demonstrates his embrace of globalist economic interests. Progressive political activists are especially alarmed at continuing discussions regarding what role West may play in a Harris White House.
Kamala Harris’s embrace of technology billionaires like Reid Hoffman, Mark Cuban, and Reed Hastings is doing little to assuage progressives’ concerns regarding her close political relations with her brother-in-law. Hoffman, a visitor to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, is pushing Harris to oust the aggressively pro-antitrust Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan—a darling among the progressive left and even some on the populist right.
EMBRACING THE CHENEY FAMILY.
While tensions over West’s role in building a more pro-globalist, pro-Wall Street Harris campaign has caused increasing strain with economic progressives, the Democratic Party presidential nominee’s enthusiastic welcoming of support from warmonger and former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney may prove a bridge too far.
A recent report from Semafor suggests any gains made among more right-leaning voters by Harris’s embrace of Dick Cheney—whom she called “an American patriot”—is likely to be offset by her continued slide among white working-class voters.
While serving under President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney was frequently the subject of Democratic Party leaders’ ire. The former Vice President played a critical role in pushing the U.S. to go to war against Iraq—peddling false claims that the Middle Eastern country’s then-dictator, Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Likewise, Harris has also welcomed the support of Dick Cheney’s daughter, former Congressman Liz Cheney. The former Wyoming lawmaker appeared alongside Harris on Wednesday in Ripon, Wisconsin—the birthplace of the Republican Party. Cheney lost her re-election bid in 2022 after being defeated in the state’s Republican congressional primary by a two-to-one ratio.
