MANCHESTER, N.H. — Sen. Kamala Harris’ campaign has almost completely shuttered its New Hampshire campaign, with no visible activity at any of her offices in the state.
The campaign confirmed it is largely abandoning New Hampshire, keeping only a skeleton crew and canceling an upcoming visit. Harris also will not file in person to be on the ballot, a tradition that garners local media attention.
“The campaign has made a strategic decision to realign resources to go all-in on Iowa, resulting in office closures and staff realignments and reductions in New Hampshire,” said spokesman Nate Evans. “The campaign will continue to have a staff presence in New Hampshire but the focus is and will continue to be on Iowa.”
At her Portsmouth office, a large chalkboard could be seen through the window that reads, “105 days until Feb. 11.” That would have been Oct. 29, the day before Harris’ campaign announced it would lay off dozens of people and redeploy others to Iowa as she hemorrhaged cash. The office was checked four times throughout the day, and each time the doors were locked and lights were out.
A hundred miles away in Keene, the office in a storefront on Main Street was dark, chairs were folded up, and a bag of Cheetos and Halloween candy sat on one of a number of empty tables at the front of the office.
An undated sign on the door read, “Sorry we missed you, we are all out canvassing!”, according to a tweet from Jake Lahut, a Keene Sentinal reporter. It gave the number of John Enkler, who identifies himself as a field organizer for Harris in a social media profile. He declined to comment.
In Nashua, one of the state’s biggest cities, the only evidence left that Harris had an office there was one line — “Kamala Harris” — on a listing of offices on the fifth floor. A small glass window into Suite 501 showed it to be empty. There was a “Space Available” sign outside the building, though it appeared there were other empty offices in the building.
The campaign’s field organizers working in the state were all laid off Thursday, per a campaign source. The remaining skeletal staff will work out of Manchester.
The office there appeared closed and empty during two visits in the morning, but a light was on later in the day. A man walked out in the early afternoon and said the campaign was going well. There were still dozens of bright yellow lawn signs, a big drawing of the phonetic pronunciation of "Kamala" and information about how to receive text messages from the campaign.
New Hampshire has never been seen as a priority for Harris, though until this week she had insisted that she intended to compete vigorously here.
Doug Emhoff, Harris’ husband, helped open the office in August, speaking to supporters in front of a wall full of purple and orange campaign posters that are now gone. It was one of four offices she opened in the state. The campaign touted each opening, earning local media coverage from daily newspapers in each city.
Harris has gone all-in on Iowa after a continuing slump through the summer and now fall. The campaign took off after launching in front of a crowd of 22,000 people in Oakland, but is now retrenching in an effort to conserve resources.
The top-tier Democratic candidates have dozens of staffers on the ground here, some over 60, with offices in each of the ten counties throughout the state.
