WASHINGTON – White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield will step down this summer, White House aides said Wednesday, marking the latest departure of a senior Biden administration adviser.
Ms. Bedingfield has long been an aide to President Biden who helped shape the messaging strategy for her campaign and during her presidency. He is expected to attend the White House from outside the administration, although his next position was unclear.
Ron Klain, the president’s chief of staff, credited Mrs Bedingfield for helping Mr Biden win the 2020 election, approving coronavirus infrastructure and stimulus packages and securing Supreme Court nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“He has played an important role in everything the president has achieved, from his second term as vice president, through the campaign and since he came to the White House,” Klain said in a statement.
It will be the latest outing from a White House communications apparatus that has faced growing criticism from members of the president’s own party. Over the past few weeks, Democrats have been pushing Mr. Biden for a more forceful and consistent message in response to multiple mass shootings, the Supreme Court ruling to remove the federal right to abortion and record inflation.
The announcement comes just weeks after Jen Psaki quit her job as White House press secretary for a role on air on MSNBC. A number of younger press aides have also come out in recent weeks, as have some senior staff members. Cedric Richmond, a former senior adviser, left the White House in May to play a similar role on the Democratic National Committee. Jeffrey D. Zients, Tsar Covid of the White House, also left the administration this year.
But Mr Biden has also brought in long-time advisers, a sign that he is preparing for his re-election campaign. Anita Dunn, a senior advisor, has recently returned to the White House from her public affairs firm. Ian Sams, who had been a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, has joined White House staff as a spokesman for the councillor’s office.
Ms. Bedingfield, Mr. Biden’s assistant since he was vice president during the Obama administration, was one of the most visible public faces of his 2020 campaign. As deputy campaign manager and communications director, she has often appeared in television as Mr. Biden’s substitute.
She was tasked with creating support for Mr. Biden after finishing fourth in the Iowa caucuses and fifth in the New Hampshire primaries, raising doubts about his ability to win the election. He then helped draft Mr. Biden’s message of unifying the country, to which he has continued to appeal during his presidency.
As communications director, Ms. Bedingfield has a role that is usually more behind the scenes than that of Ms. Psaki or the current press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre. But when the two were sidelined with the coronavirus, Mrs. Bedingfield made several appearances organizing the White House daily press conference.