Dan Pfeiffer, President Obama’s senior adviser, is planning to leave the White House in early March.
“Dan has been beside me on every step of this incredible journey, starting with those earliest days of the campaign in 2007,” Obama said Wednesday. “And through it all, he’s been smart, steady, tireless and true to the values we started with. Like everyone else in the White House, I’ve benefited from his political savvy and his advocacy for working people. He’s a good man and a good friend, and I’m going to miss having him just down the hall from me.”
Pfeiffer is an Obama loyalist, one of the few senior staffers who has remained in the administration since the president entered the Oval Office.
His departure has long been rumored. He will leave around the same time as another senior Obama adviser, John Podesta, who is expected to play a central role in Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
A White House official said Pfeiffer only recently told Obama of his planned exit.
“He told the president he was going to leave the day after State of the Union address on Air Force One en route to Boise,” a White House official told the Washington Examiner. “This is, of course, something he’s been thinking about for a long time — but given the position of strength we are in right now, he is now comfortable moving on.”
According to the White House, Pfeiffer is the longest-serving staffer from Obama’s 2008 campaign and last current White House official from the 2008 senior campaign circle.
The White House credited Pfeiffer as an architect of Obama’s digitally focused messaging strategy. The White House official said Pfeiffer would continue to analyze the president’s digital efforts before leaving in “early March.”
