Biden’s top White House advisers will move to campaign

By CNN Newsource

Published January 23, 2024 7:38 PM

By MJ Lee, Jeff Zeleny, Edward-Isaac Dovere and Arlette Saenz, CNN

(CNN) — President Joe Biden’s campaign is preparing to make a full pivot to the general election with some of the president’s top advisers in the West Wing set to move over to the reelection campaign, as it watches former President Donald Trump’s quick consolidation of the GOP primary.

Biden’s 2020 campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, will transition to his reelection efforts as campaign chair, according to a senior Biden adviser. Her departure from the White House could come sooner than previously thought, another senior Biden adviser told CNN, because of what the Biden campaign sees as Trump’s quick move to the Republican nomination.

O’Malley Dillon has served as White House deputy chief of staff since Biden’s inauguration.

According to the adviser, another top Biden White House adviser who is in the president’s inner-most circle of aides, Mike Donilon, will also move over to the campaign, becoming its chief strategist. Donilon will be focused on the campaign’s messaging and paid media strategies, campaign officials said.

The moves, set to take place in the “coming weeks” per campaign officials, clearly signal that the Biden campaign is already in general election mode.

“This is the time when the campaign needs to have all hands on deck,” one senior Biden adviser said.

In a statement, Biden praised O’Malley Dillon for leading his “winning campaign in the midst of a historically challenging environment” in 2020 and argued, “no one knows my voice and values better” than Donilon.

“I’m thankful to Mike and Jen both for their service in the White House these last three years, and I am grateful that in rejoining the campaign, they are stepping up one more time to ensure we finish the job for the American people,” the president said.

Shifting some West Wing staff to Biden’s 2024 headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, has been under discussion for weeks. It is intentionally designed to quiet the concern from leading Democrats – including those in former President Barack Obama’s orbit – that the campaign has not adequately prepared for the fight ahead, one senior Democratic adviser said.

They will work in conjunction with Julie Chavez Rodriguez, who will remain campaign manager, the officials said.

“Mike and Jen were essential members of the senior team that helped President Biden and Vice President Harris earn the most votes in American history in 2020, and we’re thrilled to have their leadership and strategic prowess focused full-time on sending them back to the White House for four more years,” Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.

Chavez Rodriguez, who was previously the director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, had been the target of private criticism of some staff in Wilmington and among leading Biden supporters beyond.

Some aides and top donors alike complained of a lack of direction and believed that top Biden advisers’ decision to choose someone for the job without previous campaign management experience demonstrated that they were not sufficiently serious about the challenges ahead for the 2024 campaign.

Chavez Rodriguez’s defenders tend to acknowledge her shortcomings in the job, but argue that she was at a disadvantage with most of Biden’s inner circle in the West Wing, who have to date retained control of all significant decisions for the campaign at the expense of not empowering the person with the title of being in charge.

That includes O’Malley Dillon, who, despite telling many privately she had no interest in another stint as Biden campaign manager, was guiding decisions about strategy and operations in addition to her duties in the White House.

According to a senior Biden adviser, it is also possible that Anita Dunn, one of Biden’s closest advisers, would eventually move over to the campaign. But that would not happen imminently, they said.

Trump has largely consolidated the GOP primary field in the first two nominating contests, something the Biden campaign had long planned for and viewed as an eventuality. The current president remains wracked with low approval ratings and polling in key battleground states reflects a tight potential rematch with his predecessor.

O’Malley Dillon will be among those working to change minds as voters begin to tune in. As CNN first reported earlier this month, the Biden campaign’s internal research shows that most of the undecided voters that the campaign is targeting – nearly three-in-four of them – do not appear to believe that Trump is likely to be the Republican presidential nominee.

These moves, a source familiar said, will coincide with Biden spending increasingly more time on the campaign trail as he looks ahead to the general election.

He held his first joint rally alongside Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday with a focus on abortion rights in Northern Virginia, and on Wednesday, he is set to appear alongside the United Auto Workers as the union’s elusive endorsement is looming. He travels to battleground Wisconsin ahead of a weekend trip to South Carolina, where the first Democratic primary of the cycle will be underway on February 3.

CNN’s Betsy Klein contributed to this report.