President-elect Joe Biden has announced longtime aide Ronald Klain will be his White House chief of staff, his first important pick as his administration takes shape.
Klain, who served in the same role for two years at the start of Biden’s vice presidency, was named late Wednesday.
“Ron has been invaluable to me over the many years that we have worked together, including as we rescued the American economy from one of the worst downturns in our history in 2009 and later overcame a daunting public health emergency in 2014,” Biden said in a statement.
He added, “His deep, varied experience and capacity to work with people all across the political spectrum is precisely what I need in a White House chief of staff as we confront this moment of crisis and bring our country together again.”
Biden’s relationship with Klain, 59, hasn’t been without its hiccups. Klain was excluded from Biden’s inner circle for a while after he publicly supported 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton early last cycle, not waiting for the then-vice president to decide whether to mount a White House campaign.
But Klain’s prior federal government experience dovetails with the current political moment.
Former Vice President Al Gore’s chief of staff from 1995 to 1999, Klain was general counsel of Gore’s Recount Committee, a key figure in the legal battle over Florida during the 2000 White House race.
He was also tapped by former President Barack Obama in 2014 to become the White House’s ebola response coordinator. The United States has recorded 1 million new COVID-19 cases in the last 10 days.
President Trump has yet to concede last week’s election as he awaits the outcome of a slew of legal challenges to the results in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
