Meet the Democrat on Capitol Hill that the White House loathes

(Image credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

last updated 8 January 2015

In The Washington Post's autopsy of what went wrong for Democrats in the 2014 midterm elections, one name popped up over and over again: David Krone, the right-hand man of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Krone basically pinned the entire loss on an inept White House, at one point saying, "I don't think that the political team at the White House truly was up to speed and up to par doing what needed to get done."

The disdain, apparently, is mutual. In a new profile of Krone by Jason Horowitz at The New York Times, we get a colorful glimpse of the acrimonious relationship between Reid's office and the administration, which included a request from Obama himself to exclude Krone from meetings at the White House — a request that Krone overheard as he listened in on Obama's phone call with Reid.

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One person who did not seem bothered at all was Mr. Reid. Without much conviction, the senator, 74, said he did not ask Mr. Krone to hammer the president for him, but also did not regret him doing so. "He didn't make it up, you know," he said in an interview. Asked if he worried that the escalation had damaged the ability of Senate Democrats to work with the administration, Mr. Reid raised his soft voice. "They should just get over it. I have a good relationship with the president. This is all staff driven. Get a life. Forget about this," he said. [The New York Times]

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Ryu Spaeth is deputy editor at TheWeek.com. Follow him on Twitter.