Original Biden campaign officials feel Obama staffers are cutting them out of administration jobs

The conventional wisdom, Politico's Ryan Lizza reports, is that President-elect Joe Biden is stocking his White House with campaign officials and longtime aides. Frontline administration picks like Ron Klain, Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, and Antony Blinken, are all examples of that, but below the top level, discontent is reportedly growing.

Per Politico, there's a sense among original campaign staffers — those who signed on to Biden's team for the Democratic primaries and stuck with him while he struggled early in the contest — that Obama administration veterans are taking over the transition and will leave them behind.

"The Obama staffers are now cutting out the people who got Biden elected," an anonymous senior Biden official told Politico. "None of these people found the courage to help the [vice president] when he was running and now they are elevating their friends over the Biden people."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The longtime Biden campaign staffers also reportedly fear that later-arriving colleagues, who joined up after Dillon took over the campaign in March when Biden became the frontrunner, have priority. As another Biden adviser put it, "people who were not part of winning the hard-fought primary were placed before people who were part of that. If you noticed, [Dillon's] people are being taken care of." Read more at Politico.