WASHINGTON, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Kamala Harris is preparing

for the fight of her life, if her inner circle is anything to go

by.

The vice president has surrounded herself with a group of

tested operators, many of them Black women who have been

involved in Democratic politics for decades, as she gears up for

a brutal three months of campaigning before the Nov. 5 election.

U.S. Senator Laphonza Butler of California, for one, struck

a bullish tone this week when asked on MSNBC about the prospect

of Harris facing a barrage of sexist and racist attacks.

"Bring it," she said. "Because we are not new to this."

The tight-knit group of advisers are fiercely loyal to

Harris and passionate about her career, with many having

shepherded her since she was a newcomer to Washington when she

joined the Senate in 2017, according to Reuters interviews with

four people with direct knowledge of her closest confidants.

Some of the group privately lobbied Joe Biden to pick a

Black woman - Harris in particular - as his running mate in 2020

at a time when he had only publicly committed to naming a woman,

said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss the matter.

Harris' inner circle include advisers and allies such as

Minyon Moore, chair of the Democratic National Convention

Committee, convention rules co-chair Leah Daughtry, Democratic

National Committee (DNC) member Donna Brazile and Tina Flournoy,

a former chief of staff to Harris, the people said.

They are no strangers to power, with many having served in

Bill Clinton's 1993-2001 presidency.

Harris, an 11th-hour substitute at the top of the ticket

after Biden dropped out, may need all the help she can get, even

though her campaign has made a strong start.

Harris remains untested, politically, on the national stage,

despite being a former senator from the most populous U.S. state

of California. She dropped out of the 2020 Democratic primary

early and she trails Republican rival Donald Trump in some

battleground states in this year's race, according to opinion

polls.

There are signs of a break from the past for Harris in one

area. So far this year, some members of her family - long among

her closest advisers - have played a less prominent role than in

her 2020 run.

Younger sister Maya Harris, who ran that short-lived

campaign, has been mostly absent during key moments this time

round, three of the people familiar with Harris' campaign said.

The advisers and family members included in this article

either declined comment or didn't respond to requests for

comment. The Harris campaign didn't comment.

The 59-year-old vice president faces a tight race and needs

to be prepared for a wave of attacks, Democratic strategist

Anthony Coley said.

Trump has called Harris "crazy," "nuts", "dumb as a rock"

and questioned her identity by suggesting she had previously

downplayed her Black heritage. Some Republicans in Congress

disparage her as a diversity hire. Right-wing activists and

trolls have smeared her online with racist and sexist barbs.

The inner circle is "battle tested in a way that is going to

be helpful over the next 99 days," Coley said.

"It's going to be fast, it's going to be furious, it's going

to be deep. And you have to have people who know how to respond

quickly and smartly to these types of attacks."

The Trump campaign didn't respond to a request for comment

for this article.

'FORCE OF NATURE, FORCE FOR GOOD'

Women with years of experience running the White House

and election campaigning also hold key organizational roles

inside the Harris camp.

Lorraine Voles serves as her White House chief of staff;

Erin Wilson is her deputy chief of staff; Sheila Nix is her

chief of staff on the campaign; Kirsten Allen serves as her

White House communications director; and Rohini Kosoglu is one

of her closest advisers, who has worked for her since her time

in the Senate.

Voles, a veteran Washington communications fixer and

adviser, has been credited by analysts for being a stabilizing

force within Harris' inner circle since May 2022, after turmoil

in her office that included departures in her communications,

national security and other teams.

"Lorraine is a force of nature and a force for good who

looks around corners and plays to win," said Chris LeHane, who

worked with Voles at the Clinton White House.

A deputy press secretary for Bill Clinton, Voles was

subsequently communications director for then-Vice President Al

Gore and for then-Senator Hillary Clinton.

Some of the top male staffers she relies on are Brian

Fallon, a former senior aide to Hillary Clinton who runs her

communications at the campaign; Ike Irby, who served as her

deputy domestic policy adviser at the White House until earlier

this year; and Dean Lieberman, a national security adviser, who

earlier worked for the White House National Security Council.

Democratic strategist Joel Payne said the people around

Harris had experience building coalitions, including the group

of voters that coalesced around the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020

and those who supported Obama in 2008 and 2012.

"These are folks who have that lineage ... to those previous

eras of Democratic politics and an understanding of how to

rebuild those coalitions from the past," he added.

TIES TO WASHINGTON POWER BROKERS

The counsel of figures like Moore, Daughtry, Brazile and

Flournoy lend Harris years of experience from the Clinton White

House and the DNC and the political chops to navigate a party

that did not fully embrace her in the early years she was vice

president.

These women also bring deep knowledge of Washington and ties

to its power brokers. They give Harris an advantage over Trump,

according to Marcia Fudge, a co-chair of the Harris campaign and

former housing secretary in Biden's administration.

"It brings her a level of experience that his people don't

have," Fudge told Reuters.

Trump's campaign is built around a handful of loyal,

little-known political advisers, who helped him sweep away

multiple Republican challengers in the primaries.

Another sounding board for Harris is Senator Butler, a

union organizer who has known Harris since she was San Francisco

district attorney in the early 2000s and served as a senior

adviser to her 2020 campaign. With her union ties, Butler offers

a bridge to the labor community, an important Democratic

constituency for Harris.

This week, the United Auto Workers union endorsed Harris

for president, providing a potential boost for her in the swing

state of Michigan.

Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a political strategy

group, said this team would help Harris portray herself as

politically in the center, while also appealing to left-leaning

voters.

"They understand how to position her as a moderate."

HARRIS HUSBAND: 'PROFESSIONAL WIFE GUY'

Although family members are playing a less prominent role in

this campaign, they are strong supporters.

Harris' brother-in-law - Maya's husband - Tony West, chief

legal officer at Uber ( UBER ) and former associate attorney

general in the Obama administration, has been by the vice

president's side during key moments on the trail this year.

He joined her on trips while Biden's own presidential bid

was collapsing and then again at the Harris campaign

headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, where Harris addressed

campaign leaders and staffers for the first time as the

presidential candidate.

"He's a thought partner, no formal role," said one of the

people with knowledge of the campaign.

Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, remains cheerleader-in-chief.

The 59-year-old former lawyer has hit the campaign trail

hard, visiting abortion clinic in Maine, stumping in New

Hampshire and channeling what Vanity Fair calls "professional

Wife Guy" - the supportive husband.