Beto O'Rourke hires Obama delegate chief Jeff Berman

[brooklynite]

Politico

Beto O’Rourke has hired Jeff Berman, Barack Obama’s delegate selection director and a delegate strategist for Hillary Clinton in 2016, as senior adviser for delegate strategy, the campaign said Thursday.

The hire comes as O’Rourke, after a highly unstructured U.S. Senate campaign last year, moves to piece together a more traditional operation for his presidential run. Berman was an instrumental force on Obama’s 2008 campaign, helping guide Obama's effort through the Democratic primary’s complex delegate landscape.

Jen O’Malley Dillon, O’Rourke’s campaign manager, said in a statement that Berman was “one of the first people I reached out to when I came on board because delegate strategy is so critical to our overall strategy.”

O’Rourke’s El Paso, Texas-based campaign has been marked by operational uncertainty since March, when O’Rourke entered the race before installing O’Malley Dillon. Two strategists who worked on O’Rourke’s Senate campaign, Becky Bond and Zack Malitz, abruptly departed earlier this year, as first reported by BuzzFeed.

[dalton99a]

1. Bond and Malitz are still with his campaign as volunteers

Incidentally both Beto and Berman have been comparing the Trump White House to Nazis

[Indygram]

2. I thought I read that they either couldn't or didn't want to do all the travelling for national race

But I can't remember for sure because I have no idea where I read about them switching to volunteers.

[dalton99a]

3. The campaign said there was an understanding that their positions were temporary

in other words, O’Malley Dillon was going to bring in more seasoned staff with national experience