Top Biden strategists leave White House to focus on re-election
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Joe Biden has dispatched two of his top White House advisers to reboot his re-election bid amid complaints from Democrats about the lack of star power in his campaign team.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, the president’s deputy chief of staff, and Mike Donilon, his longtime adviser, will focus on his re-election effort full-time as Donald Trump’s swift procession to the Republican nomination inches the country closer to a 2020 rematch.
The reshuffle comes after senior Democrats, including Barack Obama, the former president, urged Mr Biden to send his top-level decision-makers from Washington to his campaign headquarters in Delaware.
Last April, Mr Biden appointed Julia Chavez Rodriguez, who has never run a campaign for public office, to be his 2024 campaign manager.
However, key strategy decisions continued to be made from the White House, leading to criticisms of a cumbersome campaign structure.
While Ms Chavez Rodriguez will remain as campaign manager, Mr Donilon will take the lead on messaging strategy. Ms O’Malley Dillon has been tasked with determining Mr Biden’s best route to securing the 270 electoral college votes required for victory.
Mr Biden said: “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 Biden administration is now on a campaign war footing, with a rematch between the president and his predecessor all but guaranteed.
Mr Biden effectively fired the starting gun on the race after the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night.
He said: “It is now clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. And my message to the country is the stakes could not be higher.”
Mr Biden went on to thank voters who granted him a largely symbolic victory in the state’s Democratic primary on Tuesday night after an unusual write-in effort.
He also made a pitch to the independent and Republican voters who rejected Mr Trump in the Republican race, saying they “share our commitment to the core values of our nation” and calling on them “to join us”.
The Democratic Party upended more than a century of political tradition by putting South Carolina, whose majority black Democratic voters resurrected Mr Biden’s bid in 2020, first in the primary calendar.
New Hampshire officials, however, refused to concede the state’s first-in-the-nation status and continued with their primary.
The Democratic Party penalised the Granite State by refusing to award it any delegates, and Mr Biden refused to campaign or appear on the ballot in the state as a result.
The president prevailed following a campaign for voters to write in his name on the ballot. The move effectively cements his hold on the party’s nomination.
With 56 per cent of the estimated vote counted, Mr Biden had 67 per cent, according to Edison, the US election data provider.
However, a strong showing by a no-hope challenger Dean Phillips, who gained 19 per cent, illustrated an embarrassing apathy for the president among his base.
Mr Phillips, 55, a Minnesota congressman, said that while Mr Biden had won, it was “by no means in a way that a strong incumbent president should” and vowed to continue his challenger bid.
