The University of Delaware’s Biden Institute hosts union bosses, corporate chiefs, and a slate of former Obama officials on staff and on an affiliated policy board in a structure that obscures the organization’s donors and salaries, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Current advisory board members include former Obama digital strategist and ACRONYM board member David Plouffe, ex-Republican strategists Juleanna Glover and Steve Schmidt, Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry, former Biden chief of staff Bruce Reed, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz — among others.
Launched in 2017, the institute is housed within the university’s Biden School of Public Policy but is exempt from public records disclosures because it is privately funded. Biden’s alma mater receives more than $100 million in taxpayer funding.
By contrast, similar university-affiliated public policy organizations established by political figures in Arizona and Kansas are required to abide by public records law and therefore must disclose their donors.
Biden, a Delaware senator for 36 years, declared the institute’s mission to solve “the nation’s toughest domestic problems” and sought to draw lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. “I think the public is so sick and tired of the political carnage going on that if I could sit with a Mitch McConnell of the world, before the whole world watching, and see how we can interact and get things done, I think it will generate that kind of consensus on a local level as well,” Biden said at the time.
Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, is among the institute’s senior leadership. Owens previously ran his campaigns for president, vice president, and senate.
