The morning after his poor debate performance, President Biden appeared at a campaign rally and then went dark, retreating to Camp David and avoiding political damage control.
One of the people pushing him to be more aggressive against public doubts about his health is Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair. Within days, the Democratic governor was summoned to the White House for a meeting, and a campaign rally was scheduled for Wisconsin.
Although Ms. O’Malley Dillon is not a member of Biden’s innermost circle – a place reserved for family members and aides who have been with the president for decades – he has emerged in this political crisis as a key figure keeping the Biden campaign on track. and drive forward.
They are involved in all elements of campaign strategy and tactics, except for the most important question: Should Mr. Biden stay in the race?
“He has no doubts about whether he should continue,” said Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s former White House chief of staff, who returned to the campaign to lead preparations for the presidential debate. “His advice focused on how to effectively advance the campaign.”
While the title of campaign manager is still held by Julie Chavez Rodriguez, who helped launch Mr. Biden’s re-election bid last year, Ms. O’Malley Dillon has been the functional head of the deal since earlier this year, leading the channel for top donors and political allies. He and Jeff Zients, the White House chief of staff, were the only two staff members at Mr. Biden’s meeting last week with the Democratic governor.
Disdainful of the press and focused on the internal tasks of the campaign, Ms. He refused to be interviewed and rarely gave his consent to be interviewed on the record.
In an extended interview since taking on Mr. Biden’s campaign, he told the Puck news site the day before the debate that he had no doubts about the outcome of the November election.
“Joe Biden is going to win, period,” he said.
Since the debate, Ms. O’Malley Dillon has taken the name of the Biden campaign every morning email all-staff, which sends daily instructions to organizers in the country’s war and gives updates on the thinking of senior leaders at the headquarters in Wilmington, Del.
In an email last week, he and Ms. Chavez Rodriguez told campaign staff that the polls for Mr. Biden were not as bad as the news media portrayed, highlighted the campaign’s latest fundraising numbers, and asked staffers to expand. latest television commercials.
“He’s making sure that every staff member has a clear window on the current command,” said Michael Tyler, the campaign’s director of communications. “He understands the needs of everyone on the same page now.”
Rarely known as Pollyannaish in the midst of political turmoil, Ms. O’Malley Dillon is not seen by former colleagues as someone who would suggest any course for Mr. Biden beyond staying in the race.
Michael LaRosa, a former press secretary for first lady Jill Biden, said he believed O’Malley Dillon was not blind to Mr. Biden’s political problems or his family’s insistence that he stay in the race.
“They saw the writing on the wall,” Mr. LaRosa said. “He also knows how he and his family see the reality of the situation.”
O’Malley Dillon, 47, is a Boston-born Democratic political veteran. He has worked for every Democratic presidential nominee since Al Gore in 2000, except for Hillary Clinton — and he briefly volunteered in New Hampshire for Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign.
He worked on both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns but didn’t enter Biden’s orbit until March 2020, when he was brought in to professionalize what had been a ragtag operation still on the cusp of capturing the Democratic nomination. After winning, he became deputy chief of staff at the White House.
Earlier in the 2020 campaign cycle, he had moved his wife and three children to El Paso to run the presidential campaign of former Representative Beto O’Rourke.
There, according to people involved in the campaign, he clashed with the candidate and there was no disagreement as his campaign struggled. He tried to persuade Mr. O’Rourke to look more presidential with his choice of clothes, and to deliver a less improvisational stump speech than he was used to giving during the House and Senate campaigns in Texas.
“He’s one of those hard-working guys,” Mr. O’Rourke said in an interview Monday. “He’s very dedicated, very committed and when he comes in, he’s all in.”
So everything for Mr. Biden this time means pushing back on the campaign by phone calls from fellow Democrats to end his campaign and allow someone else to become the party’s nominee against former President Donald J. Trump.
But few people know better than Ms. O’Malley Dillon on the ins and outs of the party’s rules that made Mr. Biden, after winning almost all the delegates in the primary season, unable to throw them out without consent.
Among other roles, he is the former executive director of the Democratic National Committee. And as party leaders split into rival factions backing Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders after Mr Trump’s 2016 victory, Ms. convention superdelegates.
Larry Cohen, a Sanders acolyte who co-chaired the committee with Ms. O’Malley Dillon, said he now understands that Mr. Biden will have to continue until July 19. That’s when the Democratic Rules Committee. The National Convention will meet to set a date before August 7 for the party to officially nominate Mr. Biden – two weeks before the convention begins in Chicago.
“They know the rules, they know the process,” Mr. Cohen said Monday. “He knows that even a week from now it will be too late if he doesn’t come out this week. And he will go beyond that.
After helping Mr. Obama win re-election, Ms. O’Malley Dillon started Precision Strategies, a Washington political shop that took on corporate clients including General Electric and IBM as well as major labor unions.
In 2015, he was the chief strategist for the Liberal Party of Canada when Justin Trudeau was elected prime minister for the first time.
In October, Ms. O’Malley Dillon wrote a victory summary of the company’s work for Mr. Trudeau’s party titled: “Lessons for 2016 From North of the Border.” He writes about organizational structures and voter contact campaigns imported from the Obama team into Canadian politics.
But he also spoke about the importance of running an optimistic campaign that does not focus only on the negative about the enemy.
“Remember, Donald Trump,” he wrote. “While evil and pessimistic rhetoric may be at play early on, optimism almost always wins out in the end.”
almost.
Rebecca Davis O’Brien contribute reports.