Biden’s transition team gets to work

WILMINGTON, Del. – Presidentelect Joe Biden’s transition team didn’t wait for a verdict in the presidential race before getting to work.

Well before Saturday’s victory for Biden, longtime aide Ted Kaufman had been leading efforts to ensure the former vice president can begin building out a government in anticipation of a victory.

The transition can be a frenzied process even under normal circumstances.

Before Saturday’s decision in the race, an odd political limbo had taken hold. The Biden team was moving forward but couldn’t tackle all that needed to be accomplished, while President Donald Trump was claiming without evidence that the election was being stolen from him.

It was at least somewhat reminiscent of the 2000 presidential race and that year’s postelection legal fight over the recount in Florida. After more than a month, the dispute between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore was decided by the Supreme Court – truncating the transition period to just 39 days before the inauguration.

Clay Johnson, who headed Bush’s transition team, said Biden’s advisers couldn’t “wait to be sure that the president-elect really is the president-elect.”

Johnson said that in June 1999 – about 17 months before Election Day 2000 – Bush approached him about heading the possible transition, having seen his father go through the process 11 years earlier. Prior to Election Day, Bush had already settled on Andy Card to serve as chief of staff both for the transition and at the White House.

Johnson thought they were ahead of schedule. But then came the recount.

The Bush team was unable to conduct FBI background checks on potential Cabinet members and other appointees with no official winner declared. Instead, it used a former White House general counsel from the Reagan administration to conduct interviews designed to screen for potential problems that might have turned up in background checks.

“You have to assume you are it and not be presumptuous, but they better be working hard as if they are it,” Johnson said of Biden’s team. “And they should have started doing that last Tuesday night.”

Biden’s campaign has refused to comment on the transition process. His closest advisers say the top priority will be announcing a White House chief of staff, then assembling the pieces needed to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

The transition process formally starts once the General Services Administration determines the winner based on all available facts. That’s vague enough guidance that Trump could pressure the agency’s director to stall.

It’s also unclear if the president will meet personally with Biden. Obama met with Trump less than a week after the election, but there was no dispute about his having outperformed Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College.

Whenever the process starts, Biden will have to cope with the coronavirus, which has killed more than 230,000 Americans. He has promised to use his transition period to meet with the governors of every state and ask them to impose a nationwide mask-wearing mandate. He has said he plans to go around any holdouts to secure such rules from county and local officials.

Another key decision will be how Biden deploys his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris. His campaign has indicated Biden will establish a White House-level coronavirus task force as Trump did, but it’s not clear if he will tap Harris to run it. Vice President Mike Pence heads the current panel.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a former Biden presidential primary rival, said he expects Harris to be “a real partner” to Biden and hopes to see her “managing major issues of importance.”