Vice President Kamala Harris never met former President Donald J. Trump has not met or spoken, but the woman who runs his debate preparations has spent a lot of time thinking about how to respond to what the Republican candidates say during the onstage clash.
Kay Harris’s outside counsel, Karen L. Dunn, a high-powered Washington lawyer, has coached Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidates for debate in every election since 2008.
She has been described by others who have worked with her as a skilled handler of the candidates she coached and politicians with high egos. By all accounts, she has a rare ability to tell them what they’re doing wrong and how to fix it — and how to inject humor and humanity to sell herself to voters watching the debate.
“It’s a combination of tough love,” Hillary Clinton, whom Ms. Dunn helped prepare for the presidential debates in 2008 and 2016, said in an interview Thursday. “She’s not afraid to say, ‘That won’t work’ or ‘That doesn’t make sense’ or ‘You can do better.’ But it also gives encouragement, like, ‘Look, I think you’re on the right track here’ and ‘You need to do more of that.’
Ms. Dunn’s emergence as leader of Ms. Harris’ debate team comes at a critical moment in both the presidential race and Ms. Dunn’s professional life.
While she doesn’t prepare top Democrats for debates — in addition to her previous four cycles of involvement at the presidential and vice-presidential levels, she has worked with Senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Cory Booker of New Jersey — Ms. Dunn is top-notch. Lawyer for some of America’s leading technology companies.
The start of next week is a bumpy road for him.
On Monday, Ms. Dunn is due in federal court in Alexandria, Va., where she is expected to give an opening statement to the federal government’s Google. Another antitrust case against a tech giantWhich can lead to the breakup of a famous American company. The next night in Philadelphia, Ms. Dunn’s latest debate student — Ms. Harris — will square off against Mr. Trump in the biggest night of the vice president’s political career so far.
The two roles reflect Ms. Dunn’s ascension among the top leaders of Washington’s political and legal communities — and show how intertwined the nation’s business and government interests are.
While she will represent Google in court starting Monday, Ms. Dunn will be joined by Attorney General Merrick B. will sit among Justice Department lawyers working for Garland, who Assisted in her wedding in 2009 And, of course, there is a senior law enforcement official in the federal government of which Ms. Harris is the vice president.
“If these were legal cases, she would be morally prohibited from doing what she’s doing,” said Matt Stoller, research director of the American Economic Liberties Project, a progressive nonprofit group that studies monopolies. “It’s clear you can’t serve both sides.”
Steven LubetMs. Dunn, an emeritus professor of legal ethics at Northwestern University’s law school, said Ms. Dunn was well within her rights to oppose the government in court and help Ms. Harris argue.
“Lawyers in private practice are always volunteering in political campaigns,” Professor Loubet said. “There is no conflict between preparing for the coaching debate and representing the client in the event of a government protest.”
Ms. Dunn, 48, began her career in politics working as a legislative correspondent on Capitol Hill for Representative Nita Lowy of New York. In 1999, she was hired as a second staffer for Mrs. Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign. She became communications director and remained in Mrs. Clinton’s Senate office, working with her during and after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
She left politics briefly to attend Yale Law School and Mr. Garland and then Justice Stephen G. Worked as a law clerk for Breyer. By 2008, she was again working for Mrs. Clinton on her presidential campaign, and after Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination that year, she helped with his debate preparations. When Mr. Obama won the election, he took a job in the White House Counsel’s Office. She later worked as a federal prosecutor in Virginia.
“She’s someone who sweats the details as a lawyer, but she has an ability to see the big picture in her communications, and that’s a really rare quality,” Mrs. Clinton said. “If you’re preparing a client for court, you have to be able to get the most positive performance out of your client, and that’s the same for a debate.”
Ms. Dunn returned to help prepare for Mr. Obama’s 2012 debates and then worked with Ms. Clinton again before the debates during the 2016 primary and general elections — three face-offs with Mr. Trump that set her up for the fall. She then led Ms. Harris’ sessions for her 2020 debate with Vice President Mike Pence.
Besides working for Google, Ms. Dunn has represented Uber and Apple. She also helped Cue Amazon founder Jeff Bezos When he was called to testify before Congress.
In 2021, Ms. Dunn Won a landmark lawsuit in Virginia It found organizers of a 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville liable for injuries to counter-protesters. She won over $25 million in damages and was featured prominently HBO documentary about the case.
Ms. Dunn, who is volunteering her time for the Harris campaign, was made available for this article, which describes her principles of successful political debate. Interview with The New York Times In July 2019.
At the time, two dozen Democratic candidates were participating in crowded presidential primary debates that were split over multiple nights. Ms. Dunn, who was not aligned with a candidate in the primary, said each contender’s goal was to create a winning moment, preferably at the expense of someone else.
“To have a moment in discussion, you have to actually engage with another person on stage in a way that’s challenging for that other person,” she said. “If someone comes after you and you counterpunch effectively, you win the moment. If you’re the so-called front-runner and someone punches you and you counterpunch and win the exchange, you own the moment.”
People who have participated in debate preparations with Ms. Dunn described her as not only meticulous about the briefing materials presented to candidates and campaign aides but also obsessive about avoiding leaks from within the sessions.
Ms. Dunn does not transmit discussion materials electronically, insisting on separate printed materials for each preparation session. Each participant is then required to destroy or return the briefing books at the end.
It was Ms. Dunn who suggested that Ms. Clinton spoke of insulting Mr. Trump about a beauty pageant contestant’s weight and Remind the audience of a woman’s humanity.
“He called this woman ‘Miss Piggy,'” Mrs. Clinton said. “Then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’ because she was Latina. She has a name, Donald.”
Mr. Trump fumbled, trying to interrupt. “Where did you find this?” he said.
Mrs. Clinton pressed on.
“Her name is Alicia Machado, and she became a US citizen, and you can bet she’s going to vote this November,” she said, in what was then a signature debate moment.
Mr. Warner, the Virginia senator who hired Ms. Dunn to prepare for debates in his 2014 and 2020 campaigns, said that while his other advisers could recognize where they fell short, Ms. Dunn was able to step up. . and gives concrete suggestions on how to improve its performance.
“In preparing for a debate, in many ways, you are at your most vulnerable,” Mr. Warner said. “I’ve had other people try to help, and if I’m in a big-time debate or a big-time presentation, there’s no one I want by my side more than Karen Dunn.”
In Pittsburgh, Ms. Dunn Harris is leading a debate team that includes Rohini Kosoglu, a former policy director who was Ms. Harris’ chief of staff in the Senate; Tony West, Ms. Harris’ brother-in-law; Sean Clegg, chief strategist of Ms. Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign; Brian Fallon, top communications assistant to the vice president; Sheila Nix, chief of staff of the campaign; Lauren Walls, Chief of Staff in the Office of the Vice President; David Plouffe, senior adviser to the campaign; and Cedric Richmond, a former congressman who is advising Ms. Harris’ campaign.
Philip Raines, the Democratic operative who helped Mrs. Clinton prepare for her 2016 debates against Mr. Trump, Returned with his trump suit To portray the former president.
The team is expected to hold a 90-minute dress rehearsal, complete with lectures, television lighting and questions from a rotating team standing in for David Muir and Lynsey Davis, the ABC News anchors moderating Tuesday’s debate. Those sessions will be filmed, with Ms. Dunn and others reviewing the footage to show Ms. Harris where she can improve.
Starting with Bill Clinton in 1992 and Joseph R. Ron Klein, who has prepared several Democratic presidential nominees, ending with Biden Jr., has worked with Ms. Dunn over several election cycles.
Mr. Klein described one of her strengths as being comfortable enough to completely overrule a candidate’s initial approach. This happened when Mr. Obama failed in his first debate against Mitt Romney in 2012. After that appearance, Mr. Klein and Ms. Dunn encouraged Mr. Obama to speak faster and in a less professorial tone.
“So I need to be hammy,” Mr. Obama, who has never warmed to the idea of striking a casual tone while in office, told the pair. Mrs. Dunn then coined a phrase that persuaded her to speak with less formality and more familiarity: “Ham-and-cheese delivery,” she replied.
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