Raimondo says she won't be HHS secretary

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo announced Thursday that she has taken herself out of contention to be President-elect Joe Biden’s health secretary.

“I am not going to be president-elect Biden’s nominee for HHS secretary,” she said during a press conference on Thursday. “My focus is right here in Rhode Island, as I have said.”

Raimondo did not offer any immediate explanation for her decision to drop out, saying she had “nothing else to add on that topic.”

Her decision threatens to scramble Biden’s plans for the HHS secretary role. On Wednesday, people close to the transition told POLITICO that they viewed Raimondo as a leading contender for the job after New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham fell out of favor with Biden’s camp.

Another top HHS candidate, former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, is already planning to return to the surgeon general role under Biden and handle a broader portfolio that includes serving as a top medical expert and public face of the administration’s pandemic response.

Biden had been planning to roll out a slate of senior health care picks as early as Monday that included his choice for HHS secretary.

California politicians skewered for social crimes in the age of coronavirus

OAKLAND, Calif. — California politicians are drawing scorn for the unthinkable: dining out, spending Thanksgiving with relatives and traveling out of state.

Such malfeasance is considered the height of hypocrisy during a pandemic in which leaders have discouraged a long list of social activities. Few places have as many errant officials as California, a deep blue state with some of the strictest rules in the nation — and where politicians have wagged their fingers this fall in an effort to control surging infections.

Just this week, San Francisco Mayor London Breed was shamed for attending a November dinner party for eight at the luxurious French Laundry, the same Michelin 3-star restaurant that drew California Gov. Gavin Newsom to a lobbyist's birthday bash the night beforehand. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo had to admit he was part of a five-household family gathering for Thanksgiving, a high social crime in the ever-strict Bay Area.

The reveals couldn't come at a worse time for leaders whose best shot at curbing coronavirus spread is convincing the public to stay home. California leaders have been unwilling to resort to the strict enforcement methods seen in Europe and Asia and have acknowledged that social pressure is their only weapon — one that has been seriously undermined by each meal with friends and family.

The public has grown furious watching political leaders make the rules and then blatantly break them. Suddenly, a politician’s worst nightmare is no longer the headline about the affair or the sex tape. It’s getting spotted at a restaurant or a packed party.

"After all these months of a pandemic, most people aren’t in a slack-cutting mood," said Jack Pitney, a former operative for the Republican National Committee who teaches politics at Claremont McKenna University. "When politicians are acting in ways that look inconsistent with their policies, people don't have a lot of patience anymore. It’s a reminder that these days the personal is political."

Los Angeles County has struggled to contain the virus all year, and the current wave has especially alarmed local officials. The nation's largest county, with 10 million residents, has banned gatherings for non-essential purposes and prohibited all dining at restaurants, some of the strictest measures anywhere in the United States. Supervisor Sheila Kuehl was eviscerated in the public arena because her meal came just hours after she voted to pass a ban on outdoor dining. Though the ban wasn't yet in effect during her meal, the act upset voters who not only showed up on her doorstep but viciously flooded her with criticism on Twitter.

Elsewhere, the social violations are piling up.

Last month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo had to disinvite his 89-year-old mother, Matilda, from attending Thanksgiving dinner after he faced a backlash when he let slip his plans on the radio. Denver Mayor Michael Hancock had to "humbly ask" for forgiveness after he discouraged residents from traveling for Thanksgiving, then flew to Mississippi the same day to be with his family. And Austin Mayor Steve Adler apologized Wednesday after telling constituents to "stay home" — from a family timeshare in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

The poster children are almost always Democrats. That doesn't mean Republicans aren't dining out and flying out of state, considering a bipartisan stream of California lawmakers flew to Maui for a conference with lobbyists last month despite a travel warning. But Democratic leaders have generally taken the lead in admonishing residents to stay home. Republicans have called for fewer restrictions on activities and have defended their private behaviors as aligned with their beliefs, as was the case throughout the pandemic on mask wearing.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Wednesday seized on the growing parade of California Democrats who've been dining out under what she called "rules for thee, but not for me." The most notable example has been Newsom, who still can't shake the stain of having attended a packed and tony French Laundry dinner with lobbyist friends.

He finally got company this week in California.

In San Francisco, Breed's office confirmed she dined at French Laundry last month in a party of eight, a meal first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. Her excursion did not violate any restrictions at the time — it came before Napa County, where the restaurant is located, or her own city had clamped down on indoor dining. But the optics of the scene, revealed in the midst of California's worst surge of the pandemic, were damaging.

On Tuesday, Liccardo posted a heartfelt public mea culpa on Twitter for attending a small family gathering on Thanksgiving, after urging the public to forgo such events. It came after he felt an obligation to disclose to a television station that asked what he did for the holiday.

Seeing their leaders model good behavior has become paramount to those struggling with months of lockdown, veteran Democratic political consultant Rose Kapolczynski said.

“They want to know their leaders can relate to their struggles," she said. "And when they get the idea that there are two sets of rules — one for politicians, and one for everyone else — it makes them crazy. And it’s particularly bad now.’’

Jerry Roberts, the former managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, said that the times are long past when leading politicians could be caught with their pants down — literally — in public places and never have to worry about immediate backlash and headlines.

“Social media has made all the difference,’’ he said. “Back then, people saw what they were doing, but they didn’t have the evidence.” Today, the evidence is as easy as hitting a “send” button — and reaching millions — a power that is both liberating and frightening in some respects, he said.

Democrats engaging in hypocritical behavior has been an easy target for Republicans. But they've also drawn tsk-tsking from their own partisans, who have gone out on a limb to defend their rules.

"It’s the whole cancel culture — you can’t make any mistakes, no matter how minor," he said.

Every time a rule-breaking act has been exposed, politicians have felt compelled to issue extensive apologies. It's not only an attempt to seek forgiveness but to emphasize to the public that their rules are still necessary to control coronavirus.

San Jose’s Liccardo felt compelled to issue a five-paragraph mea culpa for attending a small outdoor gathering on Thanksgiving with his immediate family and elderly parents, who are in their 80s. The mayor’s statement detailed the outdoor dining and the family members involved, sparking anger from hundreds on social media who called Liccardo a hypocrite — and praise from constituents who said his honesty was refreshing.

Jim Reed, the mayor’s chief of staff, said Liccardo felt the need to be entirely forthcoming with his constituents.

“The mayor has talked about his shortcoming,’’ he said. But “the larger issue is ... people need to exercise good judgment" while trying to observe rules to protect their health — masks and distancing and minimizing gatherings."

“People are going to want to live, to visit their parents, to do that safely — and still comply with regulations," he said.

Joe Mathews, a veteran California journalist and political observer, said the fallout for the mayor’s offense was overwrought and perfectly illustrated just how much the pandemic has skewed politics and public opinion.

He said people are getting outraged over trifling matters while ignoring bigger transgressions.

"It’s easy to obsess and feel angry, but the real issue is not the private stuff — but the public stuff they’re not doing," Mathews said.

“I don’t care so much that Gavin Newsom has gone to the French Laundry," he said. "but I do care that he has not managed to open my children’s school or get widespread testing or get people’s unemployment checks to them."

Biden top economic adviser facing accusations of mismanagement, verbal abuse

A former colleague of Heather Boushey, a top economic adviser to President-elect Joe Biden, is publicly airing prior accusations that Boushey mismanaged the think tank she runs and verbally abused her and other subordinates, saying she wants to prevent future White House employees from enduring a similar experience.

Claudia Sahm, a former director of macroeconomic policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, Boushey's think tank, published an account of her and other former employees’ experiences working with Boushey on her personal website Tuesday night. She wrote that after her experience, “I learned that Heather’s abusive behavior was a pattern."

Former subordinates and employees have alleged that Boushey was “phenomenally incompetent as a manager” and had “frequent episodes of yelling and swearing.” The complaints were serious enough that the think tank where she worked hired a management coach to work with her to improve her management style around 2015.

The Biden transition team declined to comment or make Boushey available.

But Dinetta Parrott, who reported directly to Boushey as Equitable Growth's director of development from 2017 to 2020 before leaving for the Brookings Institution, said the criticisms of Boushey don't match her experience. "I just don’t think it’s an accurate depiction," she told POLITICO. "The Heather Boushey that I worked for did not create toxicity and wasn’t demoralizing. Did we have our disagreements? Absolutely, but it was always respectful."

The revelations resurfaced Tuesday night, just hours after the president-elect publicly introduced Boushey as a member of his Council of Economic Advisers. Biden said at the event in Wilmington, Del., that he relied on Boushey's counsel during the campaign regarding "addressing the structural inequalities in our economy" and will "do so again as president."

Later that evening, Sahm, who previously worked as a section chief at the Federal Reserve and as a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration, published her account. She also shared a 2015 internal memo that details how five other employees left the think tank at least in part because of Boushey’s management style, including one who is now serving on the Biden transition team.

Sahm is well known among economists for coming up with a rule while she worked for the Fed to help determine whether the economy is entering a recession. Jay Shambaugh, a George Washington University professor who’s on Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers review team, is one of a number of economists who have praised her work. Jason Furman, the head of the CEA under Obama, connected Sahm with Boushey about the position at Equitable Growth.

She said that she decided to go public after reading the memo herself. “I would have never, ever written that post if I hadn’t found out that I was the last of many,” Sahm said in an interview. “I couldn’t stand by and watch it happen and see her do it to people at CEA. I’m trying really hard not to make this a cat fight even though I know what it looks like.”

Sahm resigned from Equitable Growth earlier this year after what she claimed was retaliation for a June blog post criticizing the economics field for its lack of diversity. Boushey has herself made public critiques similar to Sahm's regarding the lack of diversity in economics.

Equitable Growth declined to comment but denied retaliating against Sahm in a Twitter thread Tuesday night hitting back at her claims. The think tank said she had “several performance issues” and “her supervisor only asked to be given a heads up in advance of any personal posts prior to posting so the press team could be prepared."

“Heather was not Claudia’s supervisor, and Claudia’s former supervisor does not report to Heather,” Equitable Growth tweeted.

Still, the think tank is a relatively small workplace. Its website lists only 50 staffers.

The 2015 memo Sahm shared was written by two officials at the Center for American Progress — which housed Equitable Growth at the time — and first became public after WikiLeaks posted John Podesta’s hacked emails in what American intelligence services determined was a Russian-backed effort to hurt Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election. As Boushey became a bigger star in progressive politics and an adviser to then-candidate Biden, the memo has been quietly traded around and whispered about in economic policy circles.

The memo was addressed to Neera Tanden, who runs the Center for American Progress and is now Biden’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget, and Carmel Martin, a former executive vice president at the think tank who’s now a top policy adviser to Biden. It detailed how Jeremy Smith, Enjoli Timmons, Carter Price, Kate Crawford and Sarah Miller all left the Washington Center for Equitable Growth in rapid succession and linked their departures to “allegations that Heather has difficulty managing staff, appropriately communicating her expectations, and is unprofessional in her conduct.”

Price and Timmons were particularly withering in their assessments of Boushey, according to the memo. “Enjoli stated in exit interview that she was resigning only because Heather was impossible to work for/with and that working under her was stressful and volatile with frequent episodes of yelling and swearing,” two Center for American Progress staffers, Torey Carter-Conneen and Ashley Marvel, wrote in the memo.

They continued: “Carter stated in his exit interview that Heather is ‘phenomenally incompetent as a manager,’ ‘worst manager ever,’ ‘she cannot prioritize’ and that she ‘has constructed artificial bureaucratic hurdles that make it impossible for researchers to function.'”

All five either declined to comment or couldn’t be reached for comment.

Miller is now on the Biden transition’s agency review team for the Treasury Department. The Biden team declined to make her available for comment.

In response to the allegations detailed in the 2015 memo, the Center for American Progress sought to help Boushey improve her management skills by hiring the Management Center, a nonprofit that works for progressive groups and offers “intensive hands-on coaching services,” per its website.

“We spoke with her coach after these most recent incidents and he said she certainly has a distinct management style that they were working to shift but that he would also focus on recruitment in the coming sessions,” Carter-Conneen and Marvel wrote in the memo.

Carter-Conneen and Marvel didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Boushey’s coach was Sam Bell, according to a person familiar with the matter. Bell later founded Employ America, a group dedicated to pushing the Federal Reserve to make job growth a priority.

Reached for comment, Bell referred questions to the Management Center. Jerry Hauser, the nonprofit’s chief executive, confirmed the Management Center had worked with Equitable Growth but declined to say whether it continued to do so.

“In order to protect confidentiality, we don’t share any further details about our client work,” he said.

Obama: I will take Covid vaccine if Fauci says it's safe

Former President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he would gladly take the coronavirus vaccine if top health officials deemed it safe.

The former president said he had full faith in Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, if he backed the latest vaccines as safe and effective. Obama’s remarks, made on SiriusXM’s “The Joe Madison Show” in an interview set to be released Thursday, come as candidates for vaccines have started showing promising signs of effectiveness. Britain on Wednesday granted emergency authorization for a vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

“People like Anthony Fauci, who I know, and I’ve worked with, I trust completely,” Obama said. “So if Anthony Fauci tells me this vaccine is safe, and can vaccinate, you know, immunize you from getting Covid, absolutely I’m going to take it.”

He continued: “I promise you that when it’s been made for people who are less at risk, I will be taking it. I may end up taking it on TV or having it filmed, just so that people know that I trust this science.”

Obama said he was cognizant of suspicion in the African American community toward the rapidly developed vaccines, particularly considering the country’s history of medical malfeasance and abuse. He cited the Tuskegee syphilis study, in which federal medical researchers observed impoverished Black men with syphilis for 40 years without notifying them of their diagnoses and withholding treatment.

But Obama urged people of color to take the vaccine if it is approved and dubbed safe, noting the higher rates of infection and death among Latino, Indigenous and Black Americans.

The global coronavirus pandemic has led to an unprecedented race to develop effective vaccines — processes that generally take years. Pfizer, whose vaccine is slated to go under consideration by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this month, is already shipping out doses to distribution sites to be available immediately should it be granted authorization.

More than 13 million Americans have been infected by the disease and over 272,000 have died.

Ray McGuire to enter New York City mayor’s race

NEW YORK — Wall Street executive Ray McGuire is running for mayor — literally.

Six weeks after leaving his job as a vice chairman at Citigroup, the 63-year-old Manhattan resident plans to launch his campaign Wednesday with a video featuring him jogging through city streets as Spike Lee narrates a tale of New York’s pandemic-era struggles.

“The world has changed, my fearless New Yorkers,” Lee says after the video opens with a clip of McGuire pacing in sweats through a desolate Times Square. “Twenty-four-thousand of our neighbors have died from Covid. A million of our sisters and brothers were thrown out of work.”

Over the melody of Wynton Marsalis’ “Deeper than Dreams," the famed film director runs through an account of establishments shuttered by the coronavirus — barbershops, restaurants, Broadway theaters — as cameras zoom in on boarded-up stores and food lines of masked New Yorkers.

The harrowing portrait of New York City is one McGuire says he is uniquely positioned to recast, with a rags-to-riches life story and a campaign war chest that his team said has already surpassed $2.3 million — more than any of his leading competitors have raised, as of the most recent public filings. Unlike other Democrats vying to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio next year, McGuire will forgo the city’s public matching funds program, allowing him to spend an unlimited amount, but likely alienating him from voters who are turned off by the role of big money in politics.

“When I look at where we are, New York is broken and divided. New Yorkers are scared,” McGuire said in an interview on Tuesday. “Scared of losing jobs, violence in the neighborhood, scared of getting Covid.”

“This is about the survival and the future of the greatest city on the planet and it’s a city that I love,” he added. “There’s no cavalry, there’s no plan B. This is it.”

McGuire grew up in Dayton, Ohio; raised among biological and foster siblings by a single mother who earned a modest living as a social worker. He was attached to his grandparents, his church and his education, which helped vault him to Harvard University and Wall Street.

He said his personal experience as a low-income Black child provides him a connection to Democratic primary voters in New York City, even as his corporate background will turn some off.

“Too many kids in New York saw the same empty cupboards that I saw growing up,” he said. “When I’m mayor, I won’t rest until every child in the city gets the best education possible. I see myself in each of these children.”

To that end, McGuire floated an early policy proposal — requiring every student be able to read by the third grade. He said he would employ certified college students to boost this effort in public housing centers, libraries and churches across the city.

“I’d be prepared to be held accountable for this,” he added.

Politically, McGuire would tack to the center, emphasizing the need for partnerships with the private sector and development deals to expand jobs as unemployment climbs. He said he would have pushed to bring Amazon’s headquarters to Long Island City and a rezoning in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park. Both economic development plans were in the works, but eventually scuttled by community opposition and most of his opponents criticized the proposals during a recent mayoral forum.

He admonished a push to “defund” the NYPD, saying he would insist on “better police with accountability, not fewer police.”

“I know when I take my suit off and walk in any neighborhood, and if I put my sweats on, I could be the next George Floyd or Eric Garner, and one of our kids could be Tamir Rice,” he added.

Prominent organizations like Communities United for Police Reform, the Working Families Party and Democratic Socialists of America are calling for steep cuts to the NYPD’s roughly $6 billion budget — in some cases by at least $3 billion. But even candidates vying for their support, like City Comptroller Scott Stringer and former City Hall attorney Maya Wiley, have been careful to avoid the word “defund.”

As some groups are demanding a lighter police presence, other New Yorkers are concerned about a rise in crime, which both McGuire and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a former cop himself, have emphasized.

McGuire’s mayoralty would be a boon for many business leaders who have expressed dissatisfaction with the current field of candidates, particularly after seven years of a chilly relationship with de Blasio’s administration.

But business executives rarely sway voters in Democratic primaries, and are in fact often a liability for candidates.

McGuire has put together a team of established Democratic operatives: Basil Smikle, former executive director of the state Democratic Party, as campaign manager; Andrew Sullivan, who worked for New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, as general consultant; Tyquana Henderson-Rivers, who worked on the Queens campaigns of Melinda Katz and Donovan Richards, as senior strategist; Shari Yost Gold and Amanda Bailey, who worked for Kamala Harris, as fundraiser and finance director; and Lupe Todd-Medina and L. Joy Wiliams, who have worked in Brooklyn politics, as senior advisers.

John Del Cecato, who created a famed video featuring de Blasio’s son Dante in 2013, has been brought on to handle ads and Muta’Ali Muhammad, who directed HBO’s documentary on Yusef Hawkins, directed McGuire’s launch ad. It was created by senior adviser for the campaign's digital operations, Mark Skidmore, who has worked for de Blasio, President Barack Obama and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Obama: Criminal justice reformers ‘lost a big audience’ with defund the police rhetoric

Former President Barack Obama suggested in a new interview that “defund the police” was little more than a “snappy slogan” that polarized many Americans and was ineffectual at producing broader reforms to the criminal justice system in the United States.

In an interview that aired Wednesday on Snapchat’s “Good Luck America,” Obama likened young activists to shoe companies marketing sneakers or musicians promoting their records, arguing that such efforts to galvanize commercial support are “no different in terms of ideas.”

“If you believe, as I do, that we should be able to reform the criminal justice system so that it’s not biased and treats everybody fairly, I guess you can use a snappy slogan, like ‘defund the police.’ But, you know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done,” Obama said.

“The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?” he added. “And if you want to get something done in a democracy, in a country as big and diverse as ours, then you’ve got to be able to meet people where they are. And play a game of addition and not subtraction.”

The former president is the latest prominent Democratic leader to express disapproval of the politically divisive phrase, which gained greater recognition over the summer amid nationwide protests against racial injustice and police brutality. Supporters of defunding the police have called for taxpayer dollars to be redirected away from law enforcement and toward mental health services and other social safety net resources.

President Donald Trump and down-ballot Republicans seized on calls to defund the police ahead of the 2020 election in an effort to paint Democrats as anti-law enforcement and insufficiently tough on looters and rioters.

And following disappointing finishes last month by Democratic House and Senate candidates in competitive races across the country, many members of the party blamed the GOP messaging for their losses, contending that Democrats did not do enough to distance themselves from “defund the police” rhetoric.

Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter activists who support systemic changes to law enforcement have pushed back against Democratic accusations that “defund the police” cost the party at the polls.

Democratic congressional leaders including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) have rejected the phrase, as has President-elect Joe Biden — who pointedly said he does not support defunding police and campaigned on a criminal justice plan calling for an additional $300 million in funding to police departments.

Biden backs up Tanden as Republicans attack her tweets

President-elect Joe Biden suggested in an interview published Wednesday that outrage from Senate Republicans over his pick for White House budget director is hypocritical and insincere, defending Neera Tanden amid outcry from the lawmakers whose votes she will need for confirmation.

The remarks from Biden came in an interview with Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, during which the president-elect was asked whether “nasty tweets” — Tanden has been sharply critical of Republican officials on social media — should be disqualifying for potential nominees to his incoming administration.

“That disqualifies almost every Republican senator and 90 percent of the administration,” Biden said. “But by the way, she’s smart as hell. Yeah, I think they’re going to pick a couple of people just to fight [over] no matter what.”

Reports emerged over the weekend that Biden planned to nominate Tanden, a former senior policy adviser to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, as director of the Office of Management and Budget. The president-elect introduced Tanden as his OMB director-designate at an event on Tuesday in Delaware.

Since her initial announcement, Senate Republicans have protested Biden’s pick to lead the powerful executive branch agency, complaining about old social media posts from Tanden. A prolific Twitter user, Tanden is president of the Center for American Progress, a prominent liberal think tank.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), one of Tanden’s more outspoken Republican opponents, described her this week as “radioactive” and said her intended nomination by Biden is “really a misstep by the administration.”

“It’s pretty crazy to me to think that she can go back and … eliminate all the tweets that she’s sent out over the last, whatever, months, years,” Cornyn said.

In formally unveiling his economic team on Tuesday, Biden praised Tanden as “a brilliant policy mind with critical practical experience across government.” For her part, Tanden expressed her belief that government should “serve all the American people — Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike.

Tanden has received markedly more public pushback than the other intended nominees announced by Biden in recent days, who have been mostly regarded as neither too centrist by Democratic progressives nor too left-leaning by the party’s moderates.

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have also been upset by Tanden’s selection, casting her as a Clinton loyalist who helped tank his presidential ambitions.

Biden’s transition team is anticipating fierce confirmation battles over his Cabinet picks, and preparing for Republicans’ possible slow-walking of his nominees by focusing on naming candidates for government roles that do not require Senate approval.

Of course, the fate of the president-elect’s Cabinet and likely that of his legislative agenda is dependent on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), with whom Biden has boasted about being able to strike deals in the past.

“There are a number of things that when McConnell controlled the Senate that people said couldn’t get done, and I was able to get them done with [him]. I was able to get them to, you know, raise taxes on the wealthy,” Biden told the Times.

“I think there are trade-offs, that not all compromise is walking away from principle,” he added. “He knows me. I know him. I don’t ask him to embarrass himself to make a deal.”