White House Begins Prepping Chicago Election Staff
Politico reports:
The White House is shuttering its political shop, shipping high-powered aides to a new campaign headquarters in Chicago and accelerating its search for a new press secretary.
It’s all part of a long-anticipated — if unprecedented — attempt by Team Obama to divide itself in half, amoeba-like, as it gears up for a billion-dollar reelection effort.
It falls upon Obama’s flinty, highly disciplined 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe — who moved into the White House 10 days ago as a senior adviser — to connect two operations 600 miles apart.
Plouffe and Co. set things in motion Thursday, shuttling several blue chip operatives to Chicago, led by deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina, Democratic National Committee Executive Director Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and White House social secretary Julianna Smoot.
Dillon and Smoot will become deputies to Messina, who among his other duties supervised the White House political operation. In Smoot’s case, she will be reprising the role as chief fundraiser that she played in the 2008 campaign.
White House political director Patrick Gaspard, long rumored to be on the way out, is leaving the West Wing to take O’Malley’s old job at the DNC.
Gaspard’s staff — a half dozen or so regional deputies and operatives — are expected to be moved out too, with several joining Gaspard, a former union official steeped in New York politics, Democrats close to the situation tell POLITICO.
The appointment of Dillon as Obama’s deputy campaign manager took many at the DNC by surprise. Less surprising was the announcement that Messina will be leaving shortly to run the reelect, a massive campaign expected to churn through a billion dollars.
Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, will soon join the team as an outside consultant, playing much the same messaging and communications role he filled during the 2008 campaign.
