Joe Biden and his team have just hired another one of his former Democratic competitors.
According to CNN, Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg has joined Joe Biden’s transition team. If Biden were to win the presidential election, this team would help with government appointments and actions during the switchover between administrations.
Within the transition team, Biden created a 15-person advisory board. This is where former Mayor Pete Buttigieg was brought into the fold. Some notable names and faces joining Buttigieg include former national security advisor Susan Rice; Sally Yates, the former deputy attorney general; and Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general under Obama.
The advisory board, however, is only a part of the major organizational changes that Joe Biden’s made in the past few days. Biden also added four co-chairs to the transition team. For these co-chair positions, Biden tapped Anita Dunn, a senior campaign adviser; New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, who was being considered for the vice-presidential nomination; Jeffrey Zients, a former economic adviser to Obama who revitalized the HealthCare.gov website during the last administration; and Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond, the national co-chair of the Biden campaign. These new co-chairs join Delaware Sen. Ted Kaufman, who has been a longstanding confidant to the presidential candidate.
Again, this transition team was established to make the shift of administrations as smooth as possible. Though, some assistance from the Trump administration is necessary. In order to ensure that, Biden’s transition team signed a memorandum of understanding with Trump’s General Services Administration plotting out how they would work together in that possible future.
“We are preparing for this transition amid the backdrop of a global health crisis and struggling economy. This is a transition like no other, and the team being assembled will help Joe Biden meet the urgent challenges facing our country on day one,” Ted Kaufman said in a statement, according to Reuters. “The co-chairs, advisory board, and senior staff are a diverse group of experts who are committed to helping a possible Biden-Harris administration beat the public health crisis and put Americans back to work in good-paying jobs.”
Other new transition team members include Teresa Romero, the United Farm Workers president; Lonnie Stephenson, president of the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers; and Tony Allen, president of the HBCU (Historically Black College or University) Delaware State University.
