Symone Sanders, a senior adviser and chief spokesperson for Vice President Harris, is leaving her position at the end of the year, according to two administration officials with knowledge of the matter, part of an exodus of staffers from the vice president’s embattled office.
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Sanders, who previously served as a senior adviser for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, has been one of Harris’s most vocal and public defenders during the first year of her historic vice presidency. But the office has been beset by concerns about messaging discipline and staff dysfunction.
Sanders did not return a call seeking comment. The departure was first reported by Politico.
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Sanders’s departure is the second from the vice president’s office to be revealed in recent weeks. In November, Harris’s communications chief Ashley Etienne, a veteran of the Obama administration, announced that she would leave.
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Peter Velz, director of press operations, and Vince Evans, deputy director of the Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs in the vice president’s office, have also told others in the vice president’s office that they are leaving, according to two administration officials. Both are expected to take new jobs in or close to the administration.
In a statement to The Post, a spokesperson for Harris said: “Symone has served honorably for three years. The President and Vice President are grateful for Symone’s service and advocacy for this Administration. She is a valued member of the White House and a team player — she will be missed."
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Harris, the nation’s first female vice president and the first person of Black and Asian descent to hold the post, has faced criticism that she hasn’t done enough to address the issues in her portfolio, including addressing attacks on voting rights and tackling the root causes of immigration. She has also battled claims of staff dysfunction and concerns about message discipline.
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Weeks after taking office, Harris was criticized by Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) after doing an interview with a West Virginia television station about the benefits of President Biden’s coronavirus relief package.
Biden asked Harris to address the root causes of migration from the “Northern Triangle” countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, but critics have tried to brand Harris as Biden’s border czar and tie her to chaos at the U.S. southern border.
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Her first international trip — to Guatemala and Mexico as part of an effort to address the root causes of migration — was marked by an exchange with NBC News’s Lester Holt where she awkwardly said she would go to the U.S.’s southern border with Mexico — something Republicans and other critics had been calling for her to do for some time.
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Sanders has accompanied Harris on all three of her international trips, including one to the Northern Triangle countries this summer, and a trip to Paris last month. She has been at the center of Harris’s defense against criticisms.
Sanders, 31, a Black political strategist, was a spokesperson for the 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) but became a senior adviser to Biden in his 2020 bid for the White House, a race that played out amid racial unrest following the police killing of George Floyd. Black voters emerged as key to Biden’s victory.
During her career, Sanders had made no secret of her White House ambitions. In her 2020 memoir, “No, You Shut Up,” she wrote: “One day I want to be White House press secretary.”