Happy Friday, Women Rulers! I’m so excited to share with you some big magazine pieces on Monday that I’ve been editing, along with some help from Elizabeth. I don’t want to give too much away, but tune in to POLITICO on Monday morning. Thanks to Maya Parthasarathy for her help putting together this newsletter.

This week, USA TODAY and Suffolk University released a poll that found a startlingly low approval rating for Vice President Kamala Harris: 28 percent. That’s lower even than Vice President Dick Cheney, who was previously known as the least popular vice president in modern American history.

Why are voters turning on Harris? It might be too soon to take that 28-percent figure as the definitive one, POLITICO White House correspondent and Playbook author Eugene Daniels told me. But her approval numbers are certainly slipping, and it’s important to understand why, said Daniels, who covers Harris. He explained to me what’s behind the drop, what it means for her future, what it means for other women who hope to one day occupy the highest office — and whether the vice presidency is actually a good stepping stone for them to get there.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Katie Fossett: Why do you think Kamala Harris’ poll numbers are slipping like this?

Eugene Daniels: I think one, it’s because the vice president is completely tied to the president. And we’re seeing Biden’s numbers dwindled and dropped really quickly. But there is a lot of talk about this USA TODAY poll, where she hit 28 percent. That’s one poll. We haven’t seen a bunch of numbers like that.

But we have seen the numbers are dwindling. We see that her average right now is in the low 40s, about 41 percent, based on an LA Times aggregate. When she did the Guatemala trip is when you really start to see a drop in her popularity and her job approval. I think that is fascinating, because it tells us that having a really difficult issue to work on, like immigration, is “dangerous,” quote-unquote, for poll numbers. It’s one of those issues that, no matter what, people are going to have some kind of strong, strong emotion about.

This is a woman who has been attacked by Republicans all year. They have spent a lot of time making sure that every problem that Biden has is her problem. Even if there is an ad about Joe Biden, there is a picture of her. So there are all these little things that have happened over this time; so much money has been spent by Republicans saying, “This woman is the border czar, where is she? Where’s Kamala?” And those have all had an effect on Biden’s poll numbers and then her poll numbers.

And there is obviously racism involved, and we know how women politicians are treated in this country. So she is kind of the first test case in national office of what that looks like.

Fossett: Can you put her numbers into context with those of other vice presidents’?

Daniels: Her average is kind of lower than usual. The 28 percent is really low, and I think that was even lower than Dick Cheney, who was a vice president with historically low polling numbers. But there is more scrutiny on her than [there was on] the white men who came before her, because, one, you have a figure of historic consequence. And so that makes people think, “OK, she should be out there more. She should be doing more.” And then because of Joe Biden’s age, it is expected that she is going to run [for president] and [people think] “we’re stuck with this in 2024, maybe 2028.”

And then at the same time, you have an administration that has been from the very beginning very ambitious about the things they’re going to do. And if you don’t get it done immediately, people kind of turn on you. People aren’t really feeling that the country is in a good place. That speaks to the larger polling issue with this administration. They have all these things they can point to: They have great jobs numbers that came out last Friday; more than 100,000 jobs more than all those smart people at the New York Stock Exchange said was going to happen. You have low unemployment overall. You have shots in arms. Many kids can get vaccinated now. So these are things that are really good. But if people don't feel that — if they see inflation, continue to see that gas prices are up and milk is expensive — there’s going to be a disconnect from that message. And if the administration’s numbers are bad, her numbers are going to be bad.

Fossett: Do you think that this will be a serious problem for her and her career? She’s the first female vice president, and so this has the potential to be a really bad cautionary tale.

Daniels: I don't know if we know the answer just yet. I will say that there are lots of people in her world that are supportive of her, such as donors of hers, that are worried, especially because she has taken on or been given these extremely difficult tasks that, for example, can’t be done through reconciliation. Like voting rights. So that is causing frustration for people who want her to run and think she would be a good president. But at the same time, there’s a lot of time from now until then.

There’s this vice presidential historian, Joel Goldstein, and he and I were talking yesterday, and what he said to me is that most of the people who want to be president would want to be vice president first. It puts you in the room. It gives you more gravitas when you’re talking on a debate stage, when everyone’s talking about policy issues, and you can actually say, “Yeah, well, I've worked on that policy issue with the president of the United States. And here’s what I know.” Al Gore ... it obviously didn’t work out for him, but look at George H.W. Bush, or look at Biden. It is a good jumping off point. But we’ve never tested it with a woman, and we’ve never tested it with a Black person or a person of color. I think it is going to be fascinating, whenever she does end up running again, how people grade what she did as vice president.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS -- Tune in next Wednesday, November 17, at 4 p.m. for Women Rule’s inaugural Women Rule: The Exchange community event, “Leading in the New World of Work.” We’ll have some great guests: White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki will join us to talk about what life is like inside the White House, especially for working mothers, and the latest developments with the Biden agenda. Rep. Maria Salazar will talk about how she sees the Republican agenda helping working women and the party’s efforts to recruit women to run for office. And economist and Republican policy adviser Abby McCloskey, Executive Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance Ai-jen Poo, and Lisa Osborne Ross, U.S. CEO of Edelman, will chat about how businesses and governments are reimagining the future of work for women. Sign up for the event here!! ... (Read more about The Exchange, a new membership program for Women Rule that POLITICO announced this week)

“She Wants to Fix One of Louisiana’s Deadliest Jails. She Needs to Beat the Sheriff First,” by Jessica Pishko for Politico Magazine: “This month, Incarceration Transparency, a project out of the Loyola University New Orleans law school, released a database documenting 15 deaths at the Orleans Justice Center between 2014 and 2019. ...

“These deaths add to long-standing concerns about the safety of the approximately 900 people housed in the Orleans Justice Center (once called the Orleans Parish Prison), which falls under the control of New Orleans Sheriff Marlin Gusman. Gusman, who has held his seat since 2004, has long faced criticism from prison reform advocates, starting with his oversight of the facility during Hurricane Katrina. In 2008, the jail ranked among the deadliest in the nation. The next year, the Justice Department issued a report on what it said were unconstitutional and dangerous conditions inside the jail. In 2012, Gusman was sued, and the jail was placed under a consent decree, subjecting it to federal monitoring until it can bring confinement conditions up to legal standards.

“Through it all, Gusman kept getting reelected, largely with support from New Orleans’ political establishment. Now, though, for the first time since 2014, he has a serious electoral challenger: progressive candidate Susan Hutson, who hopes to oust Gusman in the election this coming weekend with support from criminal justice reform groups around the city.”

“Nevada Democrat seeks to become first openly transgender statewide elected official,” by Holly Otterbein for POLITICO: “Democrat Kimi Cole is announcing Wednesday her bid to become Nevada’s lieutenant governor — and break barriers for the transgender community in the process.

“Cole, the chair of the Nevada Democratic Rural Caucus, would be the first openly transgender statewide elected official in the country if she won, according to her campaign.”

“‘We’re setting some precedents, obviously,’ said Cole, who shared her launch first with POLITICO. ‘But it’s not the key issue. People will focus on something like that and put a label on it and think they know what’s going on. I’ve been working around the state and across the aisles for so long.’”

“The $30 billion woman: Megadonor Miriam Adelson leaps back into politics,” by Alex Isenstadt for POLITICO: “LAS VEGAS — Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson — the widow of casino mogul and longtime GOP kingmaker Sheldon Adelson — is staging a return to politics, positioning herself to be a force in the 2022 midterms and beyond.

“Adelson, who with her husband formed the Republican Party’s most powerful donor couple for the last decade, quietly held meetings in her Las Vegas home with a select group of GOP leaders and potential 2024 presidential candidates in the last few days. It represents a coming out for the 75-year-old Adelson, who has kept a low political profile since her husband’s death in January, turning down requests for sit-downs with candidates and keeping her multibillion-dollar checkbook shut. …

“According to a person familiar with the talks, the list of figures Adelson met with this week included House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Rick Scott, who are helping to guide the party’s midterm efforts. She also huddled with a group of Republicans regarded as potential presidential hopefuls in 2024: former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Vice President Mike Pence, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.”

Women are expected to make up 16 percent of the veteran population by 2040. In 2000, they made up only 6 percent. They are the fastest growing group of veterans.

Read more here.

“Moms with access to remote work were most likely to leave their jobs in pandemic, new research shows,” by Chabeli Carrazana in The 19th: “When loss of child care and the pandemic collided, the already shaky foundation that kept mothers in the workforce cracked completely. But until recently, it was unclear where those fissures occurred and which mothers in particular fell through the cracks.

“New research published by the U.S Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis in October dives into the nuance of exactly how mothers’ economic prospects changed as a result of mass child care closures, and how those challenges persist more than 18 months since the onset of the pandemic.

“After March 2020, women left the labor force in numbers so high it set off the women’s recession — the first time in American history when women have left or been forced out of work at higher rates than men. The loss of jobs in lower-paid, consumer-facing positions predominantly held by women drove some of that drop-off, but what was more difficult to quantify were the forces that were driving women to leave the workforce altogether — and how much child care was to blame. One in three child care jobs were lost at the start of the pandemic, and the industry is still clawing its way back.

“According to the new study, the loss of child care specifically drove out college-educated moms with a bachelor’s degree or more advanced degree who were in jobs where telework was an option.”

“What to Do About Employees Who Consciously Exclude Women,” by Jamie L. Gloor, Gudrun Sander, and Alyson Meister for Harvard Business Review: “‘Unconscious bias’ and ‘inclusive leadership’ have become diversity buzzwords. This makes sense given recent research highlighting how related trainings — when facilitated and implemented properly — are key ingredients for cultivating and sustaining a diverse and inclusive workforce. But what should companies do about leaders who continue to display unquestionably conscious bias?

“These are the conscious “excluders,” who despite various corporate interventions, continue to treat some folks differently due to their social group membership. These few often highly influential people may help explain the recent stagnation in progress toward gender equality in organizational leadership. In fact, our latest study of 90 companies and more than 320,000 employees in Switzerland showed that the share of women in leadership positions only increased 1% over the last five years. But this trend is not specific to Switzerland; it’s echoed in statistics across the globe. New research specifically pinpoints bias and exclusion as stalling mechanisms in our progress toward greater gender diversity in STEM.

“Maybe you know someone like this: The professor who refuses to hire any female doctoral students or invite other women from the department to after-work drinks ‘because his wife gets jealous [or dishonored].’ It could be the finance guy who — despite having no women on his team — complains that there’s no chance he’ll get promoted now because ‘they all go to women.’ Perhaps it’s the business owner who refuses to hire young women because ‘they all get pregnant and leave,’ causing an inconvenience for employers. Or it’s the board member who insists that women still perform the lion’s share of caregiving ‘because that’s how it’s always been’ and ‘they’re just better at it.’”

Amela Wilson, former senior vice president at Mercury Systems, has been named CEO of space services company Nanoracks. ... Steph Guerra has been promoted to senior policy adviser for biosecurity in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. She most recently was policy adviser for biosecurity in OSTP. ...

Allie Traynor is now a senior analyst at Renaissance Strategic Advisors. She previously was a manager at Signal Group in the national security practice. ... Tricia Schmitt Abumohor is now deputy associate director of the international affairs division at the Office of Management and Budget. She most recently was the director of the office of budget and resource management at the United States Agency for International Development. ...

The Association for Women in Science promoted Meredith Gibson to the role of interim chief executive officer, effective Jan. 1, 2022.