Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses party organizations and campaign finance.
Shortly after Kamala Harris took control of Joe Biden’s campaign, her top advisers began holding senior staff meetings unlike any that had happened before.Tyler Pager at WP:
New strategists appeared on Zoom calls with the Wilmington brass, and a transformed decision-making process took over. The competing power centers that had defined Biden’s world — a headquarters staff, a White House operation and a coterie of Biden loyalists who operated with one foot outside both structures — had been flattened into a single high council, reporting to a single boss, campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, who spoke most days with the candidate.
Harris blessed the unified structure, giving O’Malley Dillon the power to hire and direct a new layer of top talent from Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns for president. The vice president also gave marching orders: I don’t care where you are coming from, she told the new team, according to a person familiar with the statements. We don’t have time for drama. We will just do what we need to do.
As former congresswoman Liz Cheney repeatedly and publicly spoke out over the last year about the dangers of a potential return to the White House by former president Donald Trump, Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the then-Biden campaign, quietly reached out to her.
Over multiple phone calls, she conveyed to Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and staunch conservative, how much the Biden campaign appreciated her comments and tried to gauge whether she would be open to publicly supporting the Democratic nominee. Then Vice President Kamala Harris rose to the top of the ticket and the campaign leadership felt an endorsement was within reach, so Harris called Cheney herself.
As former congresswoman Liz Cheney repeatedly and publicly spoke out over the last year about the dangers of a potential return to the White House by former president Donald Trump, Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the then-Biden campaign, quietly reached out to her.
Over multiple phone calls, she conveyed to Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and staunch conservative, how much the Biden campaign appreciated her comments and tried to gauge whether she would be open to publicly supporting the Democratic nominee. Then Vice President Kamala Harris rose to the top of the ticket and the campaign leadership felt an endorsement was within reach, so Harris called Cheney herself.
And there was a bonus for the Harris team: Two days later, Cheney announced that her father, former vice president Dick Cheney, would also be voting for Harris.
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O’Malley Dillon has worked to cultivate relationships with Republicans like former congressman Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), a vocal Trump critic who has endorsed Harris. The Harris campaign has hired Austin Weatherford, Kinzinger’s former chief of staff, as its national director for Republican engagement, tasked with coordinating outreach and engagement with conservatives.
“The Harris-Walz campaign has been putting Republicans front and center in our GOP outreach to explain, in their own words, why they are putting country first and supporting Vice President Harris,” Weatherford said in a statement. “Those Republican voices are critical to create a permission structure that allows conservative-leaning voters to feel more comfortable voting for a Democrat for president.”
