“It Was ABUSIVE And Exploitive” – Katie Hobbs’ Former Campaign Staffers Who Resigned in “MASS EXODUS” Question Whether or Not Hobbs Deserves To Be Governor
Radical Left Democrat Katie Hobbs’ campaign for Arizona Governor is facing a “mass exodus” of employees quitting over her inability to provide a healthy work environment.
This has left several former staffers questioning whether or not they will vote for Katie Hobbs and if she even deserves to win in the general election.
This comes after Hobbs was twice found guilty of racial discrimination against Talonya Adams, a black woman and former Democratic staffer in the Arizona Senate who Katie Hobbs fired due to race. Adams later called on Katie Hobbs to resign from the Secretary of State’s office and drop out of the race for governor.
As reported by Arizona Agenda on Substack, eight staffers had already resigned before the August 2nd Primary Election, crediting a hostile work environment “created by a new campaign manager who was brought in to turn the campaign around following a cycle of poor fundraising and bruising media coverage over Talonya Adams, a Black woman who Hobbs fired from the Senate after she raised issues of pay equity.”
The Hobbs campaign announced campaign manager Nicole DeMont’s hiring on March 15th, and within about four months, nearly ten staffers quit!
Hank Stephenson reported,
In the past five months, two-thirds of Democrat Katie Hobbs’ gubernatorial campaign staff have left, and several describe the campaign as an emotionally abusive atmosphere that got so bad, they were forced to upend their lives and plans mid-election and seek employment elsewhere.
Hobbs’ inability or refusal to rein in campaign manager Nicole DeMont, coupled with the candidate’s history of management troubles at the state Senate, call into question Hobbs’ aptitude to lead the state’s workforce, should she be elected to the Governor’s Office, the former staffers say.
“It’s unfortunately not a good indicator of Katie’s leadership,” one former staffer said. “There are 40,000 employees in this state, and she wasn’t even on top of what was going on at her campaign office.”
Since DeMont was hired in March, eight people have left the campaign out of a total of 12 staffers.
The team was initially excited about DeMont coming on, one staffer said, and many of the changes she made helped right a ship that had gone adrift for lack of a permanent campaign manager.
But it was DeMont’s authoritarian style, demeaning comments and paranoia that they were plotting against her that ultimately led to the exodus, the staffer said.
“I welcome tough management — I think a lot of people do,” one former staffer told us. “But what she did wasn’t tough. It was abusive and exploitive.”
The former staffers depict an atmosphere where they were scared to ask for time off for doctors’ appointments. They describe being talked down to and berated for not fulfilling expectations that weren’t effectively communicated and for not being able to stick to plans that were changed on the fly. They say they experienced distrust for the existing staff that translated into intense micromanagement.
Staffers had a running joke that the campaign manager hid a nanny cam in the office to keep an eye on them when she was away. When she would leave the office for lunch, they would breathe a collective sigh of relief, several said.
On several occasions, the deputy campaign manager apologized to the staff for DeMont’s behavior. And the former staffers say that they were so demoralized by the new leadership that employees were helping each other look for new jobs from the office.
They say Hobbs has shown either a lack of awareness about the problem in the face of a massive staff exodus, or a willingness to allow a senior employee to demean and belittle others in order to maintain momentum on her path to the Governor’s Office.
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it,” one said. “And I can’t figure out which (scenario) is worse.”
Campaign staff regularly work more than 50-60 hours per week, sometimes for several weeks at a time without a single day off, and people get burned out.
And campaign managers, generally speaking, are not known for being nice. They’re judged on races won, not friendships made.
But Hobbs’ campaign, post-DeMont’s hiring, was especially bad, the former staffers said.
“A lot of campaigns have this issue, but I don’t think anyone’s had, not that I’ve seen or heard of, this many staff leave in such a short amount of time because of one person,” one former staffer said. “It was crazy. There was just this complete mass exodus of staffers leaving.”
The Hobbs campaign wouldn’t make Hobbs or DeMont available for an interview.
“Since joining our team in March, Nicole has built a campaign that will win big on Tuesday and be ready to take on and beat either out-of-touch Republican in November,” campaign adviser Joe Wolf said in a prepared statement. “Campaigns are tough, and turnover — especially leading up to the general election — is common. We appreciate every staffer and volunteer who has given their time to this campaign, and it’s thanks to their dedication and hard work that Katie Hobbs will be Arizona’s next governor.”
But staffers fleeing from the Hobbs Campaign began leading up to and before the primary election, not the general election, as Hobbs’ adviser claimed.
The report continued,
Mike Haener, a supporter and lobbyist, argued the campaign has been more responsive, and is on better footing, since DeMont took over. Before she was on board, emails he sent to try to connect people with the campaign went into a “black hole,” he said.
“To me, there was a complete failure, from the campaign manager on down,” he said. “And that changed when Nicole got there.”
It’s worth noting that while shakeups and meltdowns are a staple of campaign life, it’s exceedingly rare for former staffers to talk about it. There are incentives to stay silent and risks to speaking out.
But now more than ever, young campaign staffers are demanding healthier workplace environments. And as Democrats struggle to maintain their position as the party that supports workers, their ground troops argue that it’s especially important for campaigns’ actions to reflect those values. Hobbs’ campaign failed that challenge, the former staffers say.
“At press conferences we talk about treating workers with respect,” one former Hobbs staffer said. “At what point are we as the Democratic party going to say enough is enough and actually practice what we preach?”
Some of their complaints are petty, they acknowledge, like the time that DeMont invited everyone out for dinner and drinks and “forced bonding time,” then made the staff pay for their own meals. Or the planned “retreat” that was supposed to be out of town, but ended up being more like an after-hours lecture at the office. But those small things added up, and eventually broke down the feeling of camaraderie that holds a campaign together.
The former staffers we spoke to all say they still want Hobbs to win in November, given the alternative. But several said they wouldn’t personally vote for her after their experiences on her campaign, and they’re not convinced she deserves to win.
“People who are going to vote for Katie deserve to know what kind of leadership she’s going to bring,” one said. “And even if it’s not her, it’s the people that she has continuously chosen to surround herself with and chosen to lead her teams.”
According to a supporter, the Hobbs campaign was a “complete failure” before DeMont was hired. Katie Hobbs is clearly so incompetent that she can’t run her own campaign, let alone an entire state with thousands of employees.
It also appears that DeMont was hired in a desperate virtue signal by Katie Hobbs when she announced that her top campaign leadership is “all women of color.” It probably wouldn’t look good for her to fire another woman of color, considering her past history of racism.
As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier today, Hobbs is closely tied to the Sojourner Center in Phoenix, a domestic violence shelter where Hobbs previously worked. Former employees of the Center made shocking allegations to The Gateway Pundit, claiming that safety concerns, child abuse, and other serious rule violations were swept under the rug by unscrupulous or incompetent supervisors.
One source also described a hostile work environment at Sojourner Center, where staff members were demonized and demoralized by superiors.
These are just more reasons why Katie Hobbs is TERRIFIED of a debate with Trump-Endorsed Kari Lake.
So, What’s it like to work for @katiehobbs? In her ex-staffers own words:
“Demean & belittle others”
Yikes. Hobbs’ general election campaign is off to a great start! https://t.co/IZAy29sHn9
— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) August 8, 2022
Katie Hobbs is an incompetent psychopath who only cares about herself and not the people of Arizona.
The post “It Was ABUSIVE And Exploitive” – Katie Hobbs’ Former Campaign Staffers Who Resigned in “MASS EXODUS” Question Whether or Not Hobbs Deserves To Be Governor appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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Author: Jordan Conradson