Kamala Harris united Democrats. Her campaign is still weakened.

Kamala Harris’ campaign is facing internal tensions as a team of new senior strategists takes over an operation largely staffed by people hired when Joe Biden was the Democratic nominee, according to six people, including aides familiar with the dynamics.

Longtime Harris loyalists also chafe at the continued presence of some Biden aides known for disparaging the vice president, three of the people interviewed said.

The current friction is the result of an unprecedented reshuffling of the Democratic ticket less than three months before the election, a daunting task that requires integrating two political worlds while selecting a vice presidential nominee and battling former President Donald Trump.

And that requires negotiating a new structure at the highest levels of the organization.

Jen O’Malley Dillon, a former White House official and Biden campaign manager, told Harris in a phone call that she needed specific assurances that some of the campaign’s new players — including David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s former campaign manager — would not dilute her decision-making power, two of the people told POLITICO. Those people, like others who detailed the campaign’s internal dynamics, were granted anonymity to relay private conversations.

Last week’s call came after advisers in the vice president’s inner circle pushed to hire Plouffe, whom Harris wanted on her campaign to provide advice.

POLITICO was the first to report the Harris team’s interest in Plouffe, and the first to announce his hiring more than a week later. After O’Malley Dillon’s call with the vice president, the Harris campaign marked Plouffe’s arrival among a long list of new staffers whose titles, according to an aide and a close ally, don’t necessarily convey their prominence or proximity to Harris.

They described Plouffe’s title — senior adviser on the path to 270 and strategy — as severely understated given that those duties are typically the purview of a campaign manager.

They also noted with suspicion that campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a former Harris 2020 contender who has held key White House and Biden sphere positions, was given the new specific task of focusing on the Sun Belt states of the American West as well as Latino voters, given Harris’s increased competitiveness in those states and her deep experience. They viewed this as a demotion that further erodes her overall power.

A senior Harris aide refuted those claims. He noted that Chavez Rodriguez’s new duties are in addition to his current position, and that the new senior advisers, including Plouffe, all have defined portfolios. In his case, that involves working closely with O’Malley Dillon and others to execute state-by-state campaign strategy, in addition to advising Harris.

Other hires include veteran strategist Stephanie Cutter, as senior advisor on messaging and strategy; Mitch Stewart, senior advisor on key states; and Jen Palmieri, senior advisor to second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

“There’s no question that when you have 2,000 people and you’re changing who’s at the top of the ticket, it’s going to take some time to make sure that everybody’s seated, and we still have some work to do on that,” O’Malley Dillon said in an interview. “But I think ultimately, when you look at what this campaign has accomplished in such a short period of time, and how people have gone from working with the president at the top of the ticket to immediately going to the vice president at the top of the ticket, it shows at its core a very strong support for the vice president and a strong collaboration.”

O’Malley Dillon retained his influence over the organization. Like other members of the Biden family, all the department heads retained their leadership roles. But some Biden staffers who had previously worked on Harris’s case saw their positions changed and their status diminished just as the first warning signs of disunity began to emerge from the Wilmington, Delaware, headquarters.

All this comes as the campaign, designed to think and speak like Biden, has had to adapt dramatically to Harris, its new standard-bearer. That has created factions of Biden loyalists within his team, some of whom have spent years privately criticizing Harris’s political skills and instincts, and her own team, which she has worked so hard to integrate.

At the same time, Harris’ top advisers have made clear that any changes would be “additive” and that those leaving the campaign would do so voluntarily. In other words, aides who spent years working for Biden would keep their titles and, in some cases, their workloads.

Sheila Nix, Harris’ senior adviser and chief of staff, released a statement comparing the campaign’s progress to what is happening with Trump.

“This is a team that, in just a few weeks, changed candidates, added a running mate, saw hundreds of millions of dollars flow in thanks to a historic outpouring of support from millions of voters, and crisscrossed the country talking to voters — all while the other guy became increasingly deranged and dangerous from his perch at Mar-a-Lago,” Nix said. “The story here is what we were able to do in a remarkably short period of time to build a winning campaign — period.”

The anxiety within the campaign may yet dissipate in the three months to November, but aides also worry that their scale and importance could escalate and lead to problems in the chain of command. Harris ran a chaotic operation during her 2020 presidential primary campaign, which she allowed to fester, causing bottlenecks and dysfunction throughout her organization. In the first two years of her vice presidency, she also saw several staff departures and internal fissures that reinforced the idea that she could not properly build and lead a harmonious team. But Harris and her team have worked hard to overcome all the old drama, and the shortened 2024 campaign is the latest test of whether she can keep up the momentum.

A handful of people close to Harris told POLITICO they fear the growing tension within the campaign staff could spill over to the vice president, saying that’s unfortunate and unfair given the progress she’s made in recent years in building a cohesive and loyal unit.

But some Harris loyalists have heard former Biden aides grumble under their breath about now having to work for her. And considerable anger is directed at top digital strategist Rob Flaherty, whose title includes deputy campaign manager.

Flaherty and his aides stumbled over an early version of a Harris launch video based on the theme of “freedom,” according to a person involved in the process. The person said the earlier version featured shots with mostly black women in the background, which threatened to pigeonhole Harris as having a narrow appeal rather than demonstrating her ability to unite voters across communities.

The original video had to be outsourced by the Democratic National Committee, which relied on an outside creative team to remake it.

A second person who worked on the video said Flaherty was one of several editors on the spot, which was produced on a tight deadline and ultimately hailed as a major success. The campaign responded to Flaherty’s request for comment.

In a statement, Shelby Cole, the DNC’s chief mobilization officer and Harris’ former digital director, said staffers at all levels “put everything they could into this campaign,” adding that the resulting public support for the new ticket is “a reflection of the team I am so proud to be a part of.”

And O’Malley Dillon credited Flaherty with playing a crucial role in the campaign’s transition when Harris took control, including overhauling the website and pushing out a torrent of new content. She acknowledged that the campaign includes former 2020 rivals, but said many of the same people have been working side by side for at least a year now.

But raw emotions over the rapid shift persist. Another Harris aide pointed to the role the digital operation played in Biden’s campaign — in the wake of his disastrous June 27 debate — which included a fundraising pitch that argued that switching to another candidate, including Harris, would make Democrats “less likely to win.”

Harris’ aide said they also observed longtime Biden-turned-Harris spokesman TJ Ducklo disparaging Harris.

Michael Tyler, Harris’ communications director and Ducklo’s campaign boss, said no one was talking badly about his candidate. “No,” he said, “that’s not going to happen.”