As Biden readies a reelection launch he fills out his team
The top ranks are coming into focus.
President Joe Biden is set to announce his reelection bid Tuesday morning along with two staffers who will be tasked with guiding his campaign.
Julie Chavez Rodriguez, currently a senior adviser to the president and the director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, will serve as campaign manager. And Quentin Fulks, who managed Raphael Warnock’s 2022 Georgia Senate campaign, is also set to serve as deputy campaign manager, according to two people familiar with the decisions but not authorized to speak publicly.
The first two staff hires will allow Biden to once again demonstrate a commitment to diversity and trust in his party’s next generation of talent. Fulks, 33, is Black, and Rodriguez, 45, is the granddaughter of labor icon Cesar Chavez and the highest-ranking Latino in the White House.
At least one other campaign staffer is set to be announced soon as well. Kevin Muñoz, who recently left his job as an assistant White House press secretary, will handle press for the reelection effort initially as it builds out a larger team. None of the other hires on the communications team or their potential roles in the 2024 campaign have been finalized, according to two people familiar with the process.
There have been discussions with former White House press aide T.J. Ducklo to return to Biden world in an official capacity. While Ducklo resigned from an administration job after getting into a verbal altercation with a reporter at POLITICO, two people familiar with the 2024 discussions said there is still a lot of goodwill toward him. That is especially true among senior and other colleagues who feel like they spent time in the trenches during a difficult but ultimately successful 2020 cycle.
“When you screw up — and he did — you apologize and do better moving forward. He has done that,” former White House press secretary Jen Psaki told POLITICO. “None of us want to be judged entirely by our worst days. He is thought of as one of the most talented press people out there who leads with his heart and has been in the foxhole from the beginning of the 2020 campaign and that means something in Biden world. As it should.”
Michael Tyler, an alum of Sen. Cory Booker’s 2020 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, is also being considered for the role of communications director, though no final determination on that position has been made.
Rodriguez has never led a campaign before. But she was a senior adviser and deputy campaign manager on Biden’s 2020 run and is close to the president and well respected by the quintet of top Biden aides expected to help guide the reelection effort: Mike Donilon, Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Steve Richetti and Bruce Reed. She also built up goodwill from her time working in the Obama administration.
“She isn’t the most operational person they could have gone with, but she has close relationships with the president and his staff,” one person who has worked with Rodriguez said. “She gets shit done and doesn’t piss people off while doing it.”
Fulks is a close adviser to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and is participating in a fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Others also in the mix for top jobs are DNC executive director Sam Cornale, DNC deputy executive director and longtime Elizabeth Warren adviser Roger Lau, and Emma Brown, who managed Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly’s successful 2022 campaign.
Sam Stein contributed to this report.