Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration and Harris campaign. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren Since Vice President KAMALA HARRIS launched her candidacy, the Wilmington, Delaware-based campaign operation that she inherited from President JOE BIDEN has ballooned in size. That’s to be expected. There’s almost always an increase in campaign staff in the final few weeks of an election cycle. And that’s especially true this time around as Harris and her top advisers, flush with campaign cash, have added people to the operation who are more familiar with her than the Biden bros who were calling the shots before. But the influx of staff over the past few months has had the unintended consequence of causing a bit of a housing crunch in the Wilmington rental market. As more staff began moving to Wilmington over the summer, it was hard to find a downtown apartment rental near the campaign office. Sure, there were options in nearby Trolley Square, where you could eat Opa! Opa! for dinner every night and never miss out on karaoke at Trolley Tap House. But living there meant you couldn’t walk to work. You definitely could not get away with not having a car. And some eager young staffers told West Wing Playbook they had FOMO over the vibrant downtown living experience, which one newer campaign aide enviously described as “very college dorm room-esque” (why anyone would miss that lifestyle is beyond us). Long-time Wilmington staffers have tried to help out their new colleagues where they can. They’ve circulated spreadsheets in various Slack channels asking staff to list their roommate preferences in hopes that a suitable room would become available. Sometimes emails are sent out about housing vacancies or about a local Democrat who is offering a spare room to campaign staff in need. But Harris staffers who spoke with West Wing Playbook said that the demand is clearly surpassing supply, with some newer staffers joking (or maybe not; we can’t really tell) that at this point they’d sleep on a living-room floor. Friend of the newsletter and former Delaware deputy attorney general DIRK DURSTEIN said he chatted with some Harris staffers about staying at his house, but they ultimately opted for something closer to the office. “I hope somebody was able to absorb all those TikTok twentysomethings. Like everywhere, rents here are high,” Durstein said. The new crush of campaign aides has also thrown off the equilibrium among staffers who have been living in Wilmington for months. While original staffers used to be able to come and go from their downtown apartments with relative anonymity, those days are long gone. Now, staffers are suffering from the social anxiety that comes from not being able to do a single thing without at least one coworker knowing about it. “Up until January it was pretty safe. You could go down to the lobby looking a little hungover, maybe not looking your best and get your mail and go. But every time I go into my apartment, I see somebody I work with, or ride the elevator with someone I work with,” said one Harris campaign staffer, who has not adjusted well to the increase in Democratic staffers they’ve been forced to interact with outside of work hours. “Some people love it,” the person added. “Personally, I need as much distance from work as possible. When I’m not there, I don’t need to see you.” Staff who have come on board in the past few weeks have also had trouble finding short-term lease agreements. With just seven weeks left before Election Day, no one is interested in a standard year-long rental. Instead, some staff have turned to Home Exchange, Airbnb or hotels. They scour Expedia or other budget booking sites every week to find the best week-night rates at nearby hotels, rotating between a roster of chain hotels such as the newly renovated Sheraton Suites or Courtyard Marriott (just be careful of the bed bugs). Those who can splurge the $350 per night go for Wilmington’s trendiest spot, The Quoin Hotel. Others have decided that they’re just going to suck it up and do it the Biden way: commuting daily via Amtrak between Wilmington and their D.C. homebase. MESSAGE US — Are you A WILMINGTON HOMEOWNER WITH A SPARE ROOM? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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