Biden set to shift top aide to lead campaign

O’Malley Dillon to move to Del.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — President Biden has approved a shake-up of the leadership of his campaign and will dispatch a top White House aide to take over functional control of his reelection effort just as former president Trump appeared to seize control of the Republican primary contest to oppose him.

The aide, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who was the campaign manager for Biden’s 2020 campaign and has served as a deputy chief of staff in the White House since he became president, will move to the Biden 2024 headquarters in Wilmington, Del., and direct the campaign’s efforts, according to five people familiar with the discussions.

It is unclear precisely what title O’Malley Dillon will take at the campaign or when the announcement will be made, though it could come later this week. Julie Chávez Rodríguez, the campaign’s manager since shortly after it began in April, is expected to retain that title.

“Our campaign manager is and will continue to oversee the president’s reelection efforts, and this campaign will remain laser-focused on defeating Donald Trump and MAGA extremism at the ballot box this November,” said Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director.

The move formalizes a setup in which O’Malley Dillon has for months overseen the campaign’s direction from Washington.

When the Biden campaign held a December retreat for staff members at its headquarters, it was O’Malley Dillon who led the proceedings — not Chávez Rodríguez, according to two people who attended the session but were not authorized to speak publicly about it.

O’Malley Dillon, considered one of the party’s most astute political operatives, grew up in Jamaica Plain and Franklin, Mass., and graduated from Tufts University.

Donors, operatives, elected officials, and other Democrats supportive of Biden have been increasingly worried about a campaign structure that had major and even minor decisions being made by White House aides and carried out by campaign personnel in Delaware.

In recent months, former president Obama met with Biden at the White House and raised concerns about the bifurcated arrangement, according to an account of their discussion reported by The Washington Post.

The expected leadership change comes as the campaign is set to shift into a generalelection posture and a more aggressive effort to contrast Biden with Trump, who won Iowa’s caucuses last week and New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday.

Another of Biden’s top advisers, Mike Donilon, will also depart the White House and join his reelection campaign, according to The Washington Post.

Donilon is expected to play a central role in the campaign’s messaging and paid media strategy.

‘‘Mike and Jen were essential members of the senior team that helped President Biden and Vice President Harris earn the most votes in American history in 2020, and we’re thrilled to have their leadership and strategic prowess focused full time on sending them back to the White House for four more years,’’ Chávez Rodríguez said.