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Denzil_DC

(7,187 posts)
Sat Nov 7, 2020, 02:35 PM Nov 2020

Here's to unsung heroes



“She Is a Master”: Joe Biden’s Campaign Manager Told the Political Future—And Was Right

Jen O’Malley Dillon, the first woman to manage a winning Democratic presidential campaign, has somehow managed to keep a low profile. But her deft behind-the-scenes direction just cost Donald Trump the presidency.

...

There is, of course, plenty of credit to go around inside the Biden and Democratic worlds. The candidate leaned on old hands Ron Klain, particularly when coronavirus hit the country; Mike Donilon, a consultant who has been with him since 1981; and Steve Ricchetti, who has significant ties to the corporate world. Lawyers Bob Bauer and Dana Remus assembled hundreds of attorneys to fend off Trump’s attempts at suppressing votes. Anita Dunn (who happens to be married to Bauer) was elevated to run the campaign at a pivotal moment, taking control after Biden’s dismal fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses; she was especially influential in crafting communications strategy during the general election campaign. Symone Sanders was with Bernie Sanders in 2016; her jump to Biden three years later shored up his connections to progressive, Black, and younger Democrats. In Pennsylvania, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman’s plan to chip into Trump’s rural-vote margins worked, while activists boosted Biden’s margins in Philadelphia and its suburbs. In Georgia, Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo didn’t waste their time moaning about Abrams’s bitter 2018 gubernatorial-race defeat, instead constructing a key Peach State turnout and voter-protection operation. In Wisconsin, state Democratic Party chairman Ben Wikler fought off a hostile Republican legislature and judiciary and flipped a crucial state.

Yet no one did more than Dillon, the rare and most powerful new kid in Biden’s inside circle, who today becomes the first woman to ever manage a winning Democratic presidential campaign (and the first of any party, if you don’t count Kellyanne Conway’s nearly three months atop Trump’s 2016 run, when she replaced Paul Manafort). Dillon, 44, worked her way up through the Democratic-campaign ranks as a field organizer, moving from John Edwards to Barack Obama in 2008, then becoming executive director of the Democratic National Committee before rejoining Obama in his 2012 campaign. Beto O’Rourke’s hiring of Dillon, in March 2019, to run his primary campaign, was considered a major triumph for the former Texas congressman, but he still never got traction. When O’Rourke dropped out, Biden pounced. He knew Dillon from his vice presidential years. Last March, Dunn reached out to Dillon first, before Biden heavily recruited Dillon to head his general election machine. “Jen is a brilliant strategist who knows the battleground states like the back of her hands, and who knows the Democratic Party mechanisms and infrastructure down to what type of data infrastructure needs to be built to reach persuadable voters,” says Ben LaBolt, who was an Obamaworld colleague. “She is a master of both the brass tacks of traditional campaigning and the modern, digital ways of campaigning.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/joe-biden-campaign-manager-told-the-political-future-and-was-right




Stacey Abrams garners praise from Democrats for mobilising voters, as Biden inches ahead in Georgia

Around 800,000 new voters have been added to Georgia's voting rolls since 2018, says Ms Abrams

Stacey Abrams did not deny her anger when Republican Brian Kemp was declared the winner of the Georgia governor's race two years ago, after a bitter contest marred by widespread irregularities and allegations of voter suppression.

Instead, she channelled that anger into the work she had started years before to organise and mobilise an army of voters to break the Republican Party's lock on state politics and create a government that looked more like the new Georgia.

That army, anchored in metro Atlanta and in smaller pockets of predominantly black cities and counties, helped to push former vice-president Joe Biden several thousand votes ahead of President Donald Trump in the state this week. ...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/stacey-abrams-georgia-democrats-election-biden-voters-b1668721.html


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Here's to unsung heroes (Original Post) Denzil_DC Nov 2020 OP
K&R! SheltieLover Nov 2020 #1
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