Kamala Harris's stunning defeat in the 2024 election left many Democrats searching for an explanation. Some blamed the racism and misogyny of Latino men, while others suggested (correctly) that Democrats were hopelessly out of touch with normal Americans. But no one has even considered the most obvious reason why Harris lost: She hired Ian Sams, the Forrest Gump of political failure.
Sams joined the Harris campaign in August 2024 and served as "top spokesperson" for the candidate. The bald, bespectacled 35-year-old became a liberal folk hero by going on Fox News and bashing Donald Trump. The Washington Post wrote a glowing profile of Sams that described how the "avid golfer and country music fan" was "greeted with cheers" at Harris campaign headquarters after raising questions about Trump's health during an interview with Fox News host Neil Cavuto. Trump responded by calling Sams "a below average guy, with memorized FAKE NEWS sound bites." Axios also published an affectionate report on the "unassuming" Harris aide "who's getting under Trump's skin."
Did it work? Of course not. Sams has repeatedly proven himself to be incapable of winning. All he does is lose. Prior to joining the Harris campaign, Sams worked in the historically unpopular Biden administration, where he oversaw the White House response to Special Counsel Robert Hur's investigation into Joe Biden's mishandling of classified documents. Remember that? Hur's report, published in February 2024, concluded that Biden was too senile to be convicted because a jury would likely consider him to be a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." Sams promptly attacked Hur for his "gratuitous and inappropriate criticisms," even though most Americans were already well aware that the 81-year-old president was unfit to serve another term. Biden dropped out of the race in July.
This wasn't even the first time Sams lost a campaign with Kamala Harris. Sams was the national press secretary on Harris's failed primary campaign in 2020, which ended disastrously in 2019 before the actual voting started. That campaign is universally regarded as one of the most inept political campaigns in modern history, and contributed in no small part to Harris's defeat in 2024. Sams distinguished himself as a uniquely incompetent spokesman during the primary, posting an image that was widely mocked as one of the dumbest photoshop jobs of all time.
Around the same time, Sams lashed out at BuzzFeed editor Katherine Miller for her "problematic" criticism of Harris's debate performance. "This kind of stuff is just a really horrible look for you guys," Sams texted Miller's boss, Ben Smith. "Frankly, it's whiteness manifest." Smith responded with a brutally accurate assessment of Sams's competence. "Do you seriously not have real problems?" he wrote the angsty spokesman. "This text makes me think you are totally, totally unready for an actual presidential campaign." (Fact check: He was, and still is, totally unready.)
Sams is also a veteran of the Hillary Clinton's disastrous 2016 campaign. He served as communications director for the states of Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Clinton would go on to lose three of those five states. Sams tried really hard, though. He even debased himself by modeling a "Grillary Clinton" apron on the campaign website.
After losing the 2016 election, Sams served as communications director for Tom Perriello, a Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia. Perriello lost the Democratic primary to Ralph "Coon Man" Northam, who would go on to win the general election in 2017. More than a year into his term, Northam faced calls to resign after a photo from his medical school yearbook showed Northam wearing either black face or a Ku Klux Klan hood. In retrospect, the Perriello campaign's inability to uncover the photo was yet another colossal failure that occurred on Sams's watch.
We wish Sams the best of luck in his future endeavors, whatever they may be. His remarkable capacity for failing upward is an inspiration to all. Maybe the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will hire him to oversee the party's efforts to regain control of the House in 2026.
Editor's note: The Washington Free Beacon's definitive list of 2024 election winners and losers neglected to include Ian Sams among the losers. It was a careless omission for which we sincerely apologize.
