• Biden names White House appointees:
He says team will ‘help us build back better’
Among them, Rep. Cedric Richmond and campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon.
President-elect Joe Biden announced Tuesday the appointment of nine White House aides, including counselors and senior advisers, as he continued to flesh out his staff despite President Donald Trump’s continued legal challenges on the results of the election.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign manager, will become deputy chief of staff. Steve Ricchetti, a longtime Biden adviser and lobbyist, will become counselor to the president. Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, who was national co-chairman of Biden’s campaign, will become senior adviser to the president and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.
Mike Donilon, chief strategist for the campaign, will become a senior adviser to the president. And Dana Remus, the campaign’s general counsel, will become counsel to the president.
“I am proud to announce additional members of my senior team who will help us build back better than before,” Biden said in a statement. “America faces great challenges, and they bring diverse perspectives and a shared commitment to tackling these challenges and emerging on the other side a stronger, more united nation.”
The announcements followed Biden naming Ron Klain as chief of staff last Wednesday. Biden was expected to nominate Cabinet members in the coming days.
The latest appointees are:
• O’Malley Dillon, who was only the second woman to lead a successful presidential campaign, after Kellyanne Conway for Trump. O’Malley Dillon had managed former Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s rival campaign for president before joining Biden’s campaign.
O’Malley Dillon previously served as deputy campaign manager for thenPresident Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection, executive director of the Democratic National Committee and battleground states director for Obama’s 2008 race. She was also a founding partner at Precision Strategies, a Democratic consulting firm.
“We have hard things to do, and with his leadership, we can do them together for the American people,” O’Malley Dillon said in a tweet, calling it “absolutely the honor of my life” to work for Biden.
• Ricchetti served as chief of staff to Biden during his second term as vice president and deputy chief of staff for operations for then-President Bill Clinton. Between government jobs, Ricchetti’s lobbying firm represented groups including the American Hospital Association, Health Insurance Association of America, drugmakers such as Eli Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer and Sanofi-Aventis, General Motors and communications firms such as AT&T and Nextel. Before joining the campaign, Ricchetti was managing director of the Penn Biden Center.
• Richmond, who announced Tuesday that he would leave Congress after 10 years, served on the Ways and Means Committee, which deals with taxes, trade deals, Social Security and Medicare. He previously served as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. Richmond said as part of the new administration he would talk to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., or Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., at any time.
“You can’t govern if you don’t win,” Richmond said. “We control the House and our agenda is far more aggressive than what the Republicans want to do.”
• Donilon, who oversaw television advertising, speechwriting and polling for the campaign, previously served as counselor to Biden when he was vice president. Donilon, a media strategist for decades, worked previously on six presidential campaigns and more than 25 campaigns for Senate, House, governor and mayor. Donilon was also managing director of the Biden Institute and assistant professor at the University of Delaware.
• Remus had been general counsel to the Obama Foundation and the former president’s personal office. During the Obama and Biden administration, she served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy counsel for ethics. She was previously a law professor at the University of North Carolina and she clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
• Julie Rodriguez will become director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. She had been deputy campaign manager and worked as traveling chief of staff for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. She also worked as state director for Harris.
• Annie Tomasini will become director of Oval Office operations. She served as Biden’s traveling chief of staff during the campaign. Tomasini has served the Biden family for over a decade in several positions, including as deputy press secretary when he was vice president and press secretary when he was a senator from Delaware.
• Julissa Reynoso Pantaleon will become chief of staff to first lady Jill Biden. Pantaleon, who is a partner at the law firm of Winston & Strawn, had served as U.S. ambassador to Uruguay and as deputy assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere in the U.S. Department of State.
• Anthony Bernal will become senior adviser to Jill Biden. He had served as her deputy campaign manager and chief of staff in the campaign, after working for the family for years.