MANCHESTER, NH - President
Joe Biden
has approved a shakeup of his campaign leadership and will send a top White House adviser to assume functional control of his re-election effort, just as former President
Donald Trump
appears to be taking over control of the Republican primary race to oppose him.
The adviser,
Jennifer O'Malley Dillon
, who was Biden's 2020 campaign manager and has worked as deputy chief of staff in the White House since he became president, will move to Biden's 2024 headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, and will lead the campaign's efforts, according to five people familiar with the conversations.
Mike Donilon
, an adviser who has worked for Biden for decades, will also move to Wilmington and become the campaign's chief strategist.
"I am grateful to Mike and Jen for their service in the White House over the past three years, and I appreciate that, by rejoining the campaign, they are taking another step to ensure we finish the job for the American people," Biden said in a statement released by the White House after
The New York Times
reported O'Malley Dillon's imminent departure.
A protester interrupts U.S. President Joe Biden during a campaign rally focused on abortion rights at the Hylton Performing Arts Center, in Manassas, Virginia, United States, January 23, 2024. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
It's unclear exactly what role O'Malley Dillon will take on the campaign or when the announcement will be made, although it could come as early as later this week.
Julie Chávez Rodríguez
, campaign director since shortly after it began in April,
is expected to maintain that role.
"Our campaign manager is and will continue to oversee the president's re-election efforts, and this campaign will remain focused on defeating
Donald Trump
and MAGA extremism at the polls this November," said Michael Tyler, the campaign's communications director.
The move formalizes a setup in which O'Malley Dillon has overseen the direction of the campaign from Washington for months.
Plan
When the Biden campaign held a retreat in December for staff members at its headquarters, it was O'Malley Dillon who led the proceedings - not Chávez Rodríguez, according to two people who attended the session but were not authorized to speak. publicly about it.
Donors, operatives, elected officials and other Democrats who support Biden have become increasingly concerned about a campaign structure in which major decisions, and even minor ones, were made by White House advisers and carried to carried out by campaign staff in Delaware.
In recent months, former President
Barack Obama
met with Biden at the White House and raised concerns about the bifurcated structure, according to an account of their conversation published by
The Washington Post.
The expected leadership change comes as the campaign is poised to take a
more aggressive stance
to contrast Biden with Trump, who won the Iowa caucuses last week and in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary against Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who is his last major Republican rival.
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