(Bloomberg) --
Democratic presidential candidate
Joe Biden named a new campaign manager Thursday as he prepares for what is expected to be a bruising general
election campaign against President Donald Trump.Jen O’Malley Dillon, an Obama administration veteran who managed Beto O’Rourke’s failed presidential campaign and has assisted Biden’s team in recent weeks, is becoming Biden’s campaign manager. The current manager, Greg Schultz, is expected to continue on, focused on organizational planning for the general election and external outreach to donors and others. Anita Dunn, a top adviser who’d taken on a larger role after Biden’s fourth-place showing in Iowa, will remain as a senior adviser.Biden said in a statement that he is “thrilled” that O’Malley Dillon is joining his team. “Jen is bringing her considerable talent and insight to this team. She will be a tremendous asset to a campaign that is only growing and getting stronger as we prepare to take the fight to
Donald Trump this fall,” he said.The former vice president has an all-but-insurmountable lead in delegates toward the Democratic presidential nomination, but rival Bernie Sanders is still campaigning against him.The staffing moves come amid concerns about how Biden’s team would grow to face Trump after operating in a cash-strapped and sometimes disorganized campaign.Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a close Biden ally, praised the move, telling Bloomberg News that O’Malley Dillon “has great talent and as the campaign scales up across the country and welcomes supporters from the other candidates who have endorsed VP Biden, she will be a skilled leader of the campaign.”O’Malley Dillon, 43, was executive director of the Democratic National Committee during Barack Obama’s first term and a deputy campaign manager on his 2012 re-election campaign. Should Biden clinch the nomination, she would be one of just a few women to ever serve as a major-party nominee’s general election campaign manager. Trump’s final 2016 campaign manager,
Kellyanne Conway, was the first woman to lead a winning presidential campaign.Biden’s campaign has said it expects that after all delegates from the last two weeks of primaries are allocated, he will have a lead over Sanders of roughly 160 delegates. He is expected to expand that edge with contests favorable to him next week in the delegate-rich states of
Arizona,
Florida, Illinois and Ohio.“Should our broad base of support remain — and we have seen no signs that would indicate otherwise — it will be nearly impossible for Sanders to recoup his current delegate disadvantage,” the Biden campaign said in a memo released Thursday.(Disclaimer: Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, also sought the Democratic presidential nomination. He endorsed Joe Biden on March 4.)(Updates with Biden comment in third paragraph)To contact the reporters on this story: Jennifer Epstein in
Washington at jepstein32@bloomberg.net;Tyler Pager in Philadelphia at tpager1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Max BerleyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.