Biden hires veteran strategist to help in Georgia

President Joe Biden’s campaign tapped veteran strategist Jonae Wartel to help lead his reelection effort in Georgia, one of the most crucial battlegrounds in the 2024 election.

Wartel, a Marietta native who will serve as the campaign’s senior adviser for Georgia, was a key aide to U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock’s 2020 and 2022 races and served as the party’s runoff director in 2021, when victories by Warnock and Jon Ossoff flipped control of the chamber.

She was tapped at a critical time, as Biden looks to rebuild the coalition that propelled his narrow victory over Donald Trump in Georgia four years ago.

Wartel joins a core of Georgia operatives with senior roles in Biden’s reelection effort.

Quentin Fulks, an Ellaville native who managed Warnock’s 2022 win, is Biden’s deputy campaign manager. And Michael Tyler, who was born and raised in Atlanta, is the campaign’s communications chief.

“There is nobody who knows Georgia quite like Jonae,” Fulks said. “And it’s not hyperbole to say that our state is blue in no small part due to her decades of tireless organizing, political expertise and steadfast belief in investing in Georgia Democrats.”

Tyler called Wartel an “immensely talented and deeply experienced” Georgia strategist who will help the campaign reenergize voters who backed Biden’s victory in 2020, when he became the first Democrat to capture the state in nearly three decades.

Wartel has been involved in state Democratic politics for more than a decade. She was an aide to Stacey Abrams’ bid for governor in 2018 and worked for the Democratic National Committee, along with presidential campaigns in 2008, 2012 and 2016.