Team Reid prepared vice president’s top adviser to meet historic moment

Want to know about Kamala Harris? Just ask Megan Jones.

Jones will tell you the vice president is a strong, empathetic leader with an unwavering dedication to public service.

It’s not something Jones has learned recently. 

She’s been on Team Kamala since Harris ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and later became President Joe Biden’s running mate.

Jones has remained at Harris’ side as a staffer for the vice president and now as a senior adviser with Harris’ presidential campaign.

Jones, a former adviser to the late Democratic U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, said the Silver State will play a key role in determining who wins the White House. And Harris has what it takes to win Nevada, she said.

Can you share an overview of yourself and your career?

I was born and raised in Las Vegas, had an internship with Sen. Reid during college and came back to Las Vegas to take part in his race in 1998, where he won by just 428 votes. And I saw what those votes meant. 

It meant stopping Yucca Mountain. It meant standing up for working families. It meant bringing clean energy to Nevada and addressing the climate crisis. It meant that workers in Las Vegas had an advocate in the Senate, not just in name only, but a true advocate who worked for the people. 

He was the best teacher on how to create a team that was loyal, that worked hard, that put people first.

When I met then-Sen. Kamala Harris, she was putting together her team for the 2020 Democratic primary, and she came to Nevada to meet with some constituents, groups — including labor. I went to watch her speak, and I was just captivated. One, by her knowledge of the issues — not just the fact that she was smart and capable and strong, that’s a no-brainer — she’s a United States senator from the largest state in the country. But the way that she distilled the issues down into a way that voters, everyday people, understood the values that she would be representing on their behalf. 

Her campaign motto was “for the people.” That’s based on the fact that her career has been dedicated to public service — whether that’s a prosecutor, as the DA in San Francisco, the attorney general for (California), a senator or vice president — she has always fought for the people.

I decided to work for her in that 2020 primary and really got to know how she viewed the work of public servants. And it wasn’t unlike Sen. Reid’s view of public service. 

Sen. Reid told me that out of all 22 candidates, Harris was the only one who asked Landra Reid for her advice. Nobody else did that. 

That is reflective of who Vice President Harris is and how she makes sure that everybody is at the table and feels valued. It was a small thing. Landra Reid was the most influential person in Sen. Reid’s life, and Vice President Harris knew that her opinion was just as important as Sen. Reid’s. I feel very lucky to have been in that meeting and to have witnessed their interaction. 

How has Harris’ relationship with Nevada evolved? How might her presidency benefit Nevada? 

Our theory of the case on Nevada before she became the nominee is still our theory of the case now. And that is to get there as much as possible, to talk with voters there. Her first trip of the new year in 2024 was to go meet with the Culinary Union, and so she knows what it takes to win (Nevada). 

She does that work, not because she wants to win an election, but she wants to go fight for the people of this country. Nevada is a microcosm, as Sen. Reid said many times. If you can win in Nevada, you can win anywhere. She understands the issues Nevadans face in a way that Donald Trump never will. 

Trump came to Nevada not too long ago and said in front of an audience sweating in 104-degree heat that he did not care about any of them. He just cared about their vote. I mean, he was more honest in that moment than I think he’s been in quite a long time. 

The stakes couldn’t be higher and the contrast could not be clearer between the president, the former president and the vice president of the United States and who works on behalf of the people. Nevadans can see pretty clearly what her values and positions are and what her accomplishments and what her vision is for the future, and that he’s rolled back our rights. He’s rolled back reproductive freedom to a place where my daughter has fewer rights than I do. 

We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that every voter on the ground in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Georgia all know the stakes of this race and what a Harris presidency would mean for them.

What is different between Harris’ run for presidency in 2020 versus her run this cycle?

Her messaging around being for the people and being authentic to who she was on fighting on behalf of the people, her core values have not changed since 2020. The Democratic electorate in 2020 were looking for some sense of stability and some sense of someone they knew would get them past the four chaotic years of Trump. 

It was always probably going to come down to Biden and Bernie (Sanders), and the vice president would be the first to say that President Biden’s presidency, with her as his partner, has been transformative, historic. He’s done more in four years than many presidents have done in two terms, including the first gun safety legislation done in 30 years. And doing that with bipartisan support — that’s amazing. Passing the Inflation Reduction Act with the largest investment in climate ever. Passing the Infrastructure Act, which was, again, bipartisan, which has created jobs all over the country and has revitalized buying American and an American supply chain. 

Talk more about how your senior adviser position has changed after Harris announced her run for presidency.

I was (Harris’) director of public engagement and intergovernmental affairs at the White House for a year and a half. Then in January, I became her senior political adviser on the campaign as the vice presidential nominee. When this all switched, I became her senior political adviser as the presidential nominee, which is a whole different ball of acts. 

(Harris) has been building the team, and she has been putting in the work to build the infrastructure of support for a long, long time on behalf of the ticket. She’s convened over a hundred events on reproductive freedom since the fall of Dobbs. She did a college tour in 2023 where she spoke to over 15,000 students in seven states. She’s done a Black empowerment economic tour in five states. 

We have been doing the work to build the support, and when it was time to turn on the gas unexpectedly in the car that we were all building, it was ready to go. Thankfully, the campaign infrastructure that we all also were building at the same time for the Biden-Harris ticket was so robust with around 2,000 staff and all of these field offices and record-breaking fundraising even before she became the nominee. That was all the infrastructure that was being built simultaneously with her help.

We’re all drinking from a fire hose a little bit, but we are organized, ready to go into this new phase. It’s exciting to be a part of history, and it’s also truly an honor to be this up close to and involved in making decisions and executing decisions and working on her behalf. 

It’s changed in that I can never catch up on my emails or my phone calls or my texts. I have a lot of new friends coming out of the woodwork who want to help. But it’s been very exciting to be part of history.

I felt that way when I started working for her at the White House a couple years ago, as well. Every day, we would walk through the West Wing, down the vice president’s hallway, and there were photos of her recent trips, big jumbo photos on the wall. And you were very aware that she’s the only woman that has ever had those photos up on that wall. There wasn’t a day that I worked at the White House that I didn’t pinch myself that I was working for the first female vice president of the United States.

[email protected] / 702-990-8923 / @haajrahgilani