President Joe Biden is leaning into a long-standing tradition of rewarding donors and political allies with coveted ambassador positions, doling out nearly half of his appointments so far to nominees with political backgrounds rather than career foreign service backgrounds.
Presidents have for decades reserved ambassador posts in the most desirable locales for those who helped propel them to the White House. In terms of diplomatic appointments, that puts Biden roughly in line with his immediate White House predecessors Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush.
But with nearly three dozen countries still awaiting ambassador nominees, Biden has to date nominated a higher share of politically oriented ambassadors than many previous presidents.
The Washington Examiner’s review of confirmed and nominated ambassadors looked only at ambassadorships to countries, not to multilateral organizations or for causes, like the ambassador for global women’s issues. The review used data from the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization that tracks appointments.
Biden has kept in place 62 ambassadors appointed before he took office and has left 35 countries without an ambassador or nominee. Although the lines in some cases are blurred, with politically connected nominees who have diplomatic experience landing appointments to top spots, Biden has selected roughly 37 nominees with career foreign service backgrounds and 31 nominees with political backgrounds.
“When you look at the case of confirmed ambassadors in the first year of presidencies, Biden is pretty far behind George W. Bush and Obama,” Loren DeJonge Schulman, vice president for research and evaluation at the Partnership for Public Service, told the Washington Examiner.
DeJonge Schulman blamed the high levels of vacancies in part on Biden’s predecessor.
“President Trump had more political appointee ambassadors than prior presidents. Not substantially more, but enough that when all of them resigned in January 2021, it meant there were more gaps in the ambassador core than there had been at the beginning of recent prior administrations,” she said.
On the campaign trail, Biden vowed not to select any ambassadors based on the checks they wrote for his political organization.
“I’m going to appoint the best people possible,” Biden said in December 2019. “Nobody, in fact, will be appointed by me based on anything they contributed.”
Still, the then-candidate did not rule out the idea of selecting people from outside the foreign service to represent the United States at high-profile embassies, saying only that donations “would not be any basis” for his diplomatic decisions.
Deep-pocketed donors have, however, landed some of the most sought-after ambassador posts.
David Cohen, a top Biden fundraiser who gave more than $500,000 to Democrats in the last two election cycles, was named ambassador to Canada.
Cynthia Telles, who has donated more than $140,000 to Democrats since the 2018 cycle, was named ambassador to Costa Rica.
Jamie Harpootlian, the wife of a well-connected South Carolina Democrat and a donor of more than $130,000 to Democrats since 2017, was named ambassador to Slovenia.
Michael Adler, a Biden bundler who held a high-dollar fundraiser for him in 2019, landed the nomination for ambassador to Belgium.
Marc Stanley, a Texas-based Biden bundler, scored the nomination to become ambassador to Argentina.
Douglas Hickey, another Biden bundler who gave thousands of dollars to Democrats during the 2020 election, was nominated to become ambassador to Finland.
Well-connected political types who didn’t necessarily give large sums of money also scored diplomatic posts.
Meg Whitman, a wealthy Republican businesswoman who in 2010 ran unsuccessfully to become governor of California but a decade later threw her support behind Biden during the presidential race, landed the nomination to become ambassador to Kenya.
Joe Donnelly, former Democratic senator from Indiana, was named ambassador to the Holy See.
Jeff Flake, a former Arizona Republican senator who endorsed Biden, was named ambassador to Turkey.
Eric Garcetti, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, was nominated as ambassador to India.
Both political and career foreign service nominees have languished in the Senate, with half as many ambassador nominees confirmed by the end of Biden’s first year in office than former President Barack Obama.
Brett Bruen, a former diplomat who is now the president of consulting firm Global Situation Room, said Biden’s heavy reliance so far on politically oriented nominees has caused some concern in the diplomatic community.
“Instead of building back our diplomacy better, he’s going back to an old, outdated tradition that is not going to help us on the world stage,” Bruen told the Washington Examiner.
“You don’t see career diplomats at the top of the State Department or the National Security Council,” Bruen said. “You don’t see them sent overseas; in fact, over 60% of Biden’s nominees for ambassadorships have been politicals.”
While the Washington Examiner review, which excluded some ambassador posts, found a lower percentage of political appointees, some straddled the line between diplomatic and political appointments.
For example, Biden tapped Thomas Nides, a Morgan Stanley executive who donated to Biden’s campaign, to be ambassador to Israel. But the nomination wasn’t purely political; Nides had previously worked in the State Department at a high level under Obama and has been involved in a number of prominent foreign relations organizations.
Placing well-connected operatives in ambassador positions is not always detrimental to U.S. relations with a given country, either.
DeJonge Schulman said some countries, depending on the specifics of the relationship, prefer having a donor or ally in the U.S. Embassy rather than a career diplomat.
“Many countries value having a political appointee ambassador because it shows that person maybe has the ear of the president or is maybe more influential,” she said.
Bruen suggested Biden may be front-loading his political nominations to ambassador posts while leaving other, crucial embassies empty.
“I think the White House has been prioritizing political considerations, trying to reward donors and friends of the president at the expense of getting the right people, right now, on the ground,” he said.
“As someone who has worked under numerous ambassadors, I can tell you not having a seasoned, steady hand on the ground is really a dangerous situation for our people and for our policies, because this is the person who ultimately has to make decisions about life and death about the vital national security interests of the United States, and you don’t want somebody learning on the job,” Bruen added.
Experts have said the average breakdown of ambassador nominations in a given presidency tends to involve 70% career diplomats and 30% political operatives, although some presidents choose more or less political appointees.
While Biden’s ratio of career foreign service picks is lower and his political picks higher, he still faces a choice for many more ambassador positions across the globe.
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A number of key posts remain unfilled, with no nominee moving through the process, heading into Biden’s second year in office.
Biden has yet to name an ambassador to Ukraine, for example, nor has he selected a nominee for ambassador to Afghanistan.
Saudi Arabia, Italy, Brazil, and many other countries also remain without ambassadors or nominees, as dozens of Biden’s picks continue to await action from the deeply divided Senate.
