Recently, after dropping in on National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, he joined the NSC’s all-staff meeting that had been underway. Zients has also wandered across West Executive Drive and into the EEOB, as he did last week for Ike’s Taco Tuesday lunch, the staffers said.
“Jeff is definitely getting his steps in,” one staffer quipped.
Zients is known as an experienced manager comfortable with delegating assignments down the chain of command and setting internal deadlines for goals, results and determining next steps. But he has also spent his early time in the chief of staff role brandishing his accessibility and building relations. It’s not just the random stop-bys and taco noshing. Starting this week, he will start holding town halls on campus to facilitate more direct communication among staff. The first is set for Friday.
The meetings, which will be open to several dozen aides chosen by lottery to attend in person, will provide “an opportunity to hear from senior staff on policy and priorities and for staff to provide feedback to the Chief of Staff and White House leadership,” one White House official told West Wing Playbook.
The plan is for Zients and one or two other senior officials to give a short presentation at the outset and then open things up for roughly 45 minutes of questions, the official said.
It’s not clear how frequently the gatherings will take place, possibly every few months, but more are in the offing to accommodate those who aren’t invited to this week’s, which will take place in the EEOB’s South Court auditorium. And all administration staffers will get a Zoom link to watch live.
The town hall idea comes on top of other traditions Zients has implemented inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., including Wednesday morning bagel deliveries from Call Your Mother, the D.C. franchise he helped start.
Zients has also penned hand-written thank you notes to several staffers and continues to utilize the chief of staff’s office — and outdoor patio — for Friday happy hours. According to people familiar with the gatherings, he’s held recent happy hours for members of the budget team and for those involved in the reopening of the Navy Mess, the basement cafeteria where staffers with access often eat breakfast and lunch.
Zients is a familiar face to many given his work leading the administration’s early Covid-19 response and, last year, a quiet effort to manage staff transitions following the midterms. And at Biden’s request last year, he helped oversee the building and launch of the government website for the administration’s student loan forgiveness program, working with the Office of Management and Budget and Dept. of Education to ensure the site, where people can determine if they qualify, was operational. The role, which has not been reported on previously, was a reprisal of Zients’ initial work with then-Vice President Biden to fix the glitch-prone online healthcare marketplace during the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act roll-out in 2013.
Despite all that history, he also embarks on the staff outreach from the perch of a relative outsider in a White House filled with longtime Biden loyalists. His predecessor, Ron Klain, had worked with the president for decades and had years-long relationships with other staffers and Democratic lawmakers.
Zients, who is an increasingly active caller and texter (although this reporter’s most recent text to Zients went unresponded to 🙁), has worked to keep in touch with staff in the building and a growing number of key allies on the Hill. According to a person familiar with the conversation, he texted Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the leader of the House Progressive Caucus who had a close relationship with Klain, on Tuesday to discuss her Seattle Times op-ed praising Biden’s economic agenda.
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“There’s a transition going on in the administration,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “We were looking forward to developing a good relationship with Jeff Zients, but at this point, we’re not in that place yet. So we’re still working on it.”
Jayapal later added: “We’re getting to know each other, and I’ve been really pleased with how responsive and open they are.”
Inside and outside the administration, there is concern over whether Zients has the political instincts and Capitol Hill relationships to deftly navigate a crucial period ahead of Biden’s anticipated reelection run, according to interviews with 16 administration officials, lawmakers and others with knowledge of the internal White House dynamics, some of whom were granted anonymity for fear of retribution.
Every chief of staff faces critics and criticism, often from within the building. Klain endured the same. But Zients’ emergence provides an early test of whether someone without decades of Biden world experience can help the president navigate the political waters. It also will help illuminate whether someone without an extensive political background can manage one of Washington’s most crucial positions.
Zients has his defenders, who say it’s too early to judge and that the complaints have more to do with getting used to a new management style. They stress he is in constant contact with Democrats on the Hill.
But there are early signs that Zients himself recognizes the learning curve he’s up against. Whereas Klain routinely made his own policy and political recommendations to the president, Zients frequently brings in other senior advisers — including Steve Ricchetti and Anita Dunn.
Three administration officials with knowledge of the matter also have said Ricchetti now regularly sits in the daily chief of staff meetings that Biden used to hold one-on-one with Klain, though they stressed Zients gets solo time with the president, too.
White House officials said Zients bringing aides into meetings reflected his way of creating a more “inclusive” environment.
The White House did not make Zients available for comment. But in an email, Klain defended his successor: “What I’m hearing from old White House colleagues and from key allies on Capitol Hill is that Jeff is off to a great start — building on the progress of the past two years, with effective outreach and open communication.”
A longtime corporate executive who previously co-chaired Biden’s transition and directed the White House’s Covid response team, Zients also served in the Obama administration as director of the National Economic Council. He was tapped to bring his managerial skills to the broader day-to-day operations. But six weeks in, congressional Democrats say the decision making in the West Wing has grown more opaque — spurring confusion over policy priorities and debate over how much responsibility Zients is and should be carrying.
One adviser in close touch with a range of key House Democrats graded Zients’ first months on the job bluntly: “I would give him a C-,” the person said. “It’s a generous C-.”
There are signs that Zients is taking steps to shore up his standing among Hill allies. White House officials say he has done consistent outreach to the Hill in his first weeks, speaking with more than 50 lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and progressives including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
On Wednesday, Jayapal said Zients called and spoke with her for roughly 30 minutes on a number of caucus issues, including the expansion of overtime eligibility for workers. She said he has called before and that Zients also dropped in on her meeting last week with National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard.
Democrats acknowledged that much of the dissatisfaction may be the result of growing pains as White House operations adjust to Zients’ leadership style. While Klain was distinctly hands-on with nearly every issue — taking part in policy debates, staying in close touch with an array of lawmakers and advocacy groups, and occasionally frustrating aides with his demands and the bottlenecking of decisions — Zients has sought to bring more structure to the process.
That means meetings are more formal and decision making follows a more established procedure, compared to the culture that funneled nearly every development through Klain’s office. Zients — a former management consultant — has shortened White House meetings (often described as too lengthy during the Klain era) in an effort to boost efficiency, preferring to check in frequently with individual aides and teams for updates throughout the day.
“The White House is a quick-paced place and from Jeff on down, we are maximizing every minute,” deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said. “So if we have a 15-minute meeting, it’s because the meeting only needs to be 15 minutes. And if the meeting needs to be an hour, he’ll make it an hour.”
Zients also leans on his deputy, Natalie Quillian, for tasks like tracking the implementation of major legislation that Biden believes will underpin his case for reelection, four people with knowledge of the internal dynamics said.
“Ron was unique in his own talents and abilities around how busy and a whirling dervish of activity he could be,” said Faiz Shakir, an adviser to Sanders who kept in frequent touch with Klain. “[Zients] runs it as you would a CEO at a larger corporation: I have people for that, give them space.”
Five officials acknowledged changes and growing pains, but insisted both are a natural part of any major transition.
“When you have the leader leave and another person comes in, of course there’s change. Of course there’s a change in how people work, and organizations adapt to that,” Dunn, a senior Biden adviser, said in a phone interview Wednesday. “Change is not necessarily a bad thing. And it’s not necessarily an improvement from what happened before. It’s just different and they [Klein and Zients] are different, and they both have enormous strengths.”
Worries about Zients have been shaped by a series of White House decisions made shortly after the 56-year-old moved into his new role. On Zients’ second day, most House Democrats opposed a bill seeking to repeal a major revision of D.C.’s criminal code after the administration issued a statement that appeared to support the local overhaul.
But weeks later, Biden reversed his position, vowing on March 2 to sign the repeal if it reached his desk. The announcement upset House Democrats who felt they had taken a tough political vote for no reason. More infuriating, lawmakers and aides said, was the way the White House went about it.
Biden made no mention of his newfound support for the bill during a private meeting with House Democrats only the day before, nor had any White House officials offered preemptive warnings. It was only when Biden met with Senate Democrats the next day that he disclosed his plans. At the time, D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said she learned about the news when asked by reporters during a Congressional Black Caucus press conference. And other fellow Democrats were left unsatisfied after they tried to press White House aides for more information as they read reports about Biden’s conversation with Senate Democrats.
Asked in the aftermath what members needed to hear from the White House, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said the administration needed to have “some honest conversations with people who feel they walked the plank.”
Senior Biden aides admitted to a communication breakdown, blaming inexperience in the White House in dealing with veto threats. Zients has since ordered changes to the communication process, they said.
That puzzlement has only been compounded in recent weeks by lawmakers’ similar struggle to get answers over reports that Biden may reinstitute family detention at the southern border in a bid to limit migration. The prospect alarmed Latino lawmakers and immigration advocates, and came as the lawmakers have also openly criticized the administration’s proposal to clamp down on asylum eligibility.
Zients’ defenders downplayed the complaints, arguing that the shift from Klain was bound to be jarring for some. On top of that, his arrival coincided with a particularly busy period for the White House that prevented Zients from making the typical get-to-know-you rounds. Some Democrats also acknowledged that Biden’s priorities and outreach may need to shift as he positions himself for reelection.
“At the end of the day, as a Democrat, do you want a Democrat in the White House or not?” said Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.). “So you kind of have to swallow circumstances. We don’t like it. I don’t like it. But, you know, you just have to understand that reality.”
While Biden has taken positions of late that have left traditionally progressive groups in dismay — including the approval of a drilling project in Alaska that enraged environmental groups but thrilled labor unions — Zients has also overseen a relatively productive stretch. The president rolled out his latest budget proposal, turning it into a political cudgel against House Republicans, and he and his team are now in the midst of trying to avert a financial crisis after a pair of regional banks failed.
The sprint to stabilize the banking sector following Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse offered a clear example of the management skills that catapulted Zients into the highest ranks of government, allies said.
“It was a race to get things done before the market opened, and he knows this stuff. He’s good at it,” said one Zients supporter who was in touch with him during the effort. “There was nothing that was not decisive and clear.”
More broadly, some in the White House who chafed under Klain’s leadership view Zients as a welcome change, describing an environment that’s become more professional and influenced less by the chief of staff’s own day-to-day priorities.
On the Hill, some Democrats said they’ve felt the positive effects of having new blood at the top of the White House. Rep. Ann Kuster, the chair of the moderate New Democrat Coalition, said Zients called her on his first day as chief of staff and has remained in close touch.
Jayapal said one element of her relationship with Klain she enjoyed was “just to be able to call or text when I need to. And so far that’s been working pretty well” with Zients, too. She called her relationship with the new chief of staff a work in progress, but said she’s eager to see it improve.
“Ron did say to me, ‘Give him a chance, Congresswoman. You didn’t know me either,’” Jayapal said.
Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Washington: US President Joe Biden on Friday appointed his long-term aide Jeff Zients, a former Obama administration official who ran his massive Covid-19 response operation, as the new White House Chief of Staff.
Zients will replace Ron Klain, who has served in the position for over two years now.
Biden said that an official transition ceremony would be held at the White House next week.
The transition is the first major personnel change for an administration that has had minimal turnover at its highest ranks and throughout the Cabinet.
“I’m confident that Jeff will continue Ron’s example of smart, steady leadership, as we continue to work hard every day for the people we were sent here to serve,” he said.
Zients, 56, will be tasked with shepherding White House operations at Biden’s pivotal two-year mark, when the Democratic administration shifts from ambitious legislation to implementing those policies and fending off Republican efforts to defang the achievements.
Zients is also charged with steering the White House at a time when it is struggling to contain the fallout from discoveries of classified documents at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and at his former institute in Washington, which has triggered a special counsel investigation, Associated Press reported.
Biden said he has known Klain since he was a third-year law student.
“He came to work for me on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I knew the moment he started that he was a once-in-a-generation talent with a fierce and brilliant intellect. Just as important, he has a really big heart,” he said.
During the last 36 years, the president said he and Klain have been through some real battles together.
“And when you’re in the trenches with somebody for as long as I have been with Klain, you really get to know the person. You see what they’re made of,” he said.
“When I was elected President, I knew that I wanted Klain to lead the White House staff. He was uniquely qualified given his prior public service. He knows how the government works, how politics works, how Congress and the White House works,” Biden said.
The president described Klain as tough, smart, determined, and persistent as anyone he has ever met.
He assembled the most diverse and the most talented White House team in history and leaned on them to solve impossible challenges, Biden said.
“Working together, we have made incredible progress fighting COVID, reviving our economy, rebuilding our infrastructure, and winning the confirmation of almost 100 federal judges, including the first Black woman on the United States Supreme Court. We have taken big steps to tackle climate change, advance civil rights, and address student debt. We’ve been reasserting America’s place in the world, and maybe most important of all restoring faith in our democracy,” he said.
“This progress will be the legacy of this White House team, working under Klain’s leadership,” Biden said, adding that the real mark of Klain’s success is that he is beloved by the team he leads here at the White House.
Biden argued, it is important to fill Klain’s shoes with someone who understands what it means to lead a team, and who is as focused on getting things done.
“I’ve seen Jeff Zients tackle some of the toughest issues in government. When I was the Vice President, I first got to know him at the beginning of the Obama-Biden Administration, working closely on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act implementation as Zients was a leader at the Office of Management and Budget,” he said.
“He was later handed the daunting and complicated task of fixing healthcare.gov, which he did successfully, helping get millions of Americans quality, affordable health insurance,” Biden added.
Biden talked about Zient’s contribution towards the American administration.
“He led the National Economic Council, and shares my focus on strengthening our economy to work for everyone. He helped manage our Administration’s transition into office under incredibly trying circumstances. Thanks to Zients, we had a historically diverse team in place on Day 1 ready to go to work. And he led our COVID response, a massive logistical undertaking of historic proportions,” he said.
“When I ran for office, I promised to make government work for the American people. That’s what Zients does. A big task ahead is now implementing the laws we’ve gotten passed efficiently and fairly,” said the US president.
The decision, which was reported last weekend, comes as Biden prepares for a reelection campaign and braces for House Republican investigations targeting the Biden administration and the president’s son, Hunter.
Zients will take over the role in the coming weeks from Klain, with whom he has developed a close relationship and who is expected to step down early next month. Klain served as Biden’s top aide for more than two years, making him the longest-serving first chief of staff for any Democratic president. Biden said that the White House would hold an official transition event next week to commemorate Klain’s role and welcome Zients.
“While we have accomplished an extraordinary amount, the real mark of Ron’s success is that he is beloved by the team he leads here at the White House,” Biden said.
In a letter to Biden obtained by POLITICO, Klain called his time as chief of staff “the honor of a lifetime,” but said the halfway point of the president’s term represented “the right time for this team to have fresh leadership.”
“We have been ‘counted out’ many times, and yet, we have come back each time to continue making progress for the American people,” Klain wrote, adding he would do “whatever I can do to help your campaign” if Biden runs for re-election.
After holding a number of high-level positions during the Obama administration, Zients was called by Biden at the beginning of his term to run the White House’s Covid response. He left the White House in April after winning internal praise for his cross-government management skills and initial success in helping the administration bring the pandemic under control.
Zients returned to the White House last fall to help Klain prepare for the staff turnover that typically follows the midterms, a task that ended up limited in scope as few senior staff members left.
In his new role, Zients will be expected to manage the day-to-day workings of a White House that is juggling a growing list of delicate issues — including the ongoing war in Ukraine, looming economic challenges, oversight demands from the new House Republican majority and the ongoing scrutiny over Biden’s handling of classified documents.
A former management consultant widely respected for his leadership skills, Zients was an executive at the Advisory Board Company, a Washington-based consultancy, before founding an investment firm that held stakes in a series of health care and financial firms. During the Obama era, Zients did multiple stints at the Office of Management and Budget as its acting director before being tapped to fix the botched launch of HealthCare.gov.
Zients later spent three years as the director of Obama’s National Economic Council. When Biden was elected, he named Zients a co-chair of his transition, before charging him with running his Covid response.
Despite that background, Zients has little in the way of traditional political experience, meaning he is likely to focus his efforts as chief of staff on running the government while a group of other senior aides handle the political dynamics surrounding Biden’s burgeoning re-election campaign.
The transition comes at a pivotal point for the White House, as officials brace for a wave of GOP investigations and confront a policy landscape made tougher by Democrats’ loss of full control of Congress. Klain was a central figure in managing the White House agenda, and cultivating alliances across the Democratic Party that proved critical to a slate of major legislation in the first half of Biden’s term.
While Zients boasts a wide array of relationships in Democratic circles from his past as a party fundraiser and Obama-era official, he’s also regarded with some skepticism from progressives over his private-sector background. Zients has also faced criticism over his handling of the pandemic, which has persisted well beyond his exit as Covid czar.
Yet his stint running the Covid team endeared him to Biden and his top advisers, especially after delivering on the White House’s pledge to secure vaccines for every single American and vaccinate more than two-thirds of adults by the summer. That initial success buoyed Biden’s approval ratings, paving the way for the reopening of schools and businesses — and ultimately, Zients’ path to the chief of staff job.
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Taking the job in a newly divided Washington, Zients will inherit a series of trials:
– Fallout from the discovery of mishandled classified documents at Biden’s residence and former office, which has led to the appointment of a Department of Justice special counsel;
– A slim House Republican majority eager to use the power of the subpoena to launch a series of investigations into the president’s policies, conduct and the lives of those closest to him;
– The likelihood that the newly empowered hard right within the GOP will follow through on threats to play politics with the debt ceiling, endangering the nation’s fiscal health;
– Continued concerns that the economy, which has showed remarkable resilience to this point, could slide into a slowdown or recession;
– Fear that the war in Ukraine, which shows no signs of abating, will turn into a years-long conflict that could further strain U.S. resources and alliances.
All of those challenges will come against the backdrop of Biden’s expected announcement in the coming weeks that he will seek a second term, launching a campaign at the age of 80 that could set him up on a collision course, once more, with Donald Trump.
Zients, who was Biden’s first Covid coordinator, is expected within the White House to largely leave the politics to other senior aides. Though outgoing chief of staff Ron Klain had his hands in the legislative outreach as well, Zients will likely defer to top Biden aides Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Steve Ricchetti and others to handle that while he focuses on the West Wing’s operations and processes.
“He may not be the expert on every one of the 10 or 15 things that work its way into the Oval Office. But I guarantee you that, from what I’ve seen, there’s nobody better than Jeff to manage that,” said Anthony Fauci, Biden’s former top medical adviser who worked closely with Zients. “He knows who to call, who to trust, who to get involved with to see that it gets done.”
Zients’ first task will be to respond to GOP investigations into the classified documents and other matters. The slim Republican majority has previewed a robust slate of probes, including into the Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal and border policies as well as the business dealings of the president’s son, Hunter.
The White House has expressed a quiet confidence about the tests that lie ahead, comforted by the knowledge, aides said, that they have been there before.
Last week, the West Wing celebrated the president’s second anniversary in office and, in a series of social media posts, reflected on what the White House faced in January 2021. When Klain entered the building as Biden’s first chief of staff, the nation was only two weeks removed from the Jan. 6 insurrection and still at the height of the pandemic.
Biden aides think their strategy of ignoring Beltway chatter and focusing on governing led to a sweeping legislative track record, plaudits for Biden’s leadership in defending Ukraine and a surprisingly strong showing for Democrats in the midterms. The administration entered 2023 with real momentum, aides felt, and they don’t believe the document imbroglio will change that.
Still the task facing Zients won’t be easy, or familiar.
The last two times a president has brought him on board to handle a job it was to solve massive problems: Barack Obama enlisted him to solve the troubled healthcare.gov website and then Biden tapped him to run the pandemic response. This time, Zients has been given the task of keeping the White House out of trouble, not rescuing it from it.
Aides believe the strategy of staying the course will work again, even in the face of steady, potentially damaging revelations about classified documents. The steady drip, drip, drip of information led to the appointment of a special counsel and the matter has already become a political problem if not a legal one.
House Republicans have also begun rattling sabers over what will soon be Zients’ priorities. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in order to obtain enough votes to secure the gavel, has empowered a number of Republicans — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — who have demanded that the United States cease or curtail aid to Ukraine, even as Kyiv has been warning about another major Russian offensive.
Moreover, those same extremist forces in the GOP have suggested not voting to raise the debt ceiling if the administration does not enact severe spending cuts. Economists have warned that even approaching a calamity — the debt limit will likely be reached in June — would severely wound the nation’s economy.
Though the House GOP seems certain to be a thorn in Zients’ side, the two years of Democratic control of Washington left Biden with a legislative record that has evoked comparisons to those put forth by Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. And White House aides believe that for many voters, the year ahead will be defined not by Republican probes, but by the implementation of Biden’s accomplishments, including the infrastructure bill and the health care and climate change provisions that were part of 2022’s reconciliation package. Polls suggest that while voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the documents, his overall approval rating has changed little.
“President Biden is on the side of working families in standing against House Republicans’ unprecedented middle class tax increase, inflation-worsening tax giveaways for the rich, and legislation to raise gas prices,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates.
Looming over all of the challenges in Zients’ new inbox will be Biden’s announcement about 2024. Though some people close to the president say he has not fully made up his mind to run again, most in the White House expect Biden will announce his candidacy soon, potentially even next month, giving Zients the task of running a White House while coordinating a sprawling re-election campaign.
“Klain faced this unbelievably daunting menu of challenges during the first two years but now comes the hard part,” said Chris Whipple, who wrote the book “The Gatekeepers” about White House chiefs of staff. “Zients has got to manage the current classified documents furor but also put the right time in place and make sure the president is ready for the marathon to come.”
Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.
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It set Zients, who won internal praise for his managerial prowess, on course for his next high-profile job as Biden’s newest chief of staff.
As Biden’s top aide, Zients will now be expected to bring his logistical and organizational expertise to a West Wing facing another inflection point. As the president prepares for a likely reelection bid, he is also under intensifying scrutiny over his handling of classified documents. Republicans in control of the House are vowing a series of investigations, while the administration is trying to navigate an increasingly delicate set of economic dilemmas.
Zients’ appointment is also likely to magnify yet another inconvenient reality: That despite his extensive work to get Covid under control, the virus continues to spread and kill thousands of Americans each week.
His critics contend that the Covid team under his leadership did too little to limit the virus’ spread, prioritizing economic concerns like quickly reopening businesses ahead of the public health steps needed to give the U.S. a shot at eradicating the disease.
“Obviously, it’s pretty disappointing,” Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project and a chief critic of Zients’ past as an investor in various health care corporations, said of his selection as chief of staff.
Detractors also charge that Zients allowed the administration to grow overconfident and complacent at critical junctures, allowing Covid to bounce back and deepening Americans’ distrust of the federal response.
But Zients also has plenty of supporters, public and private, who stress that he is a uniquely talented internal operator capable of solving the government’s toughest challenges, even if he lacks the lengthy political experience. They point to his leadership of the Covid response as evidence of it.
“Getting the right decision made and getting it made quickly, that was a hallmark,” Andy Slavitt, a former senior adviser for Biden’s Covid response, said in his praise of Zients’ communication and execution skills. “It’s the unsexy stuff, but he thrives at that.”
A former Obama administration official, Zients built a reputation in Democratic circles as the go-to Mr. Fix-It after turning around the HealthCare.gov website following its botched launch in 2013. He would go on to stints running the National Economic Council and Office of Management and Budget, developing a close relationship with Biden in the process.
Biden appointed him to run the Covid response shortly after winning the 2020 election, charging Zients with orchestrating a sprawling response that cut across several federal departments.
Zients led the development of a step-by-step process for tackling the pandemic, producing a nearly 100-page National Covid-19 Preparedness Plan in the administration’s first days.
The Covid team scored a string of initial successes, accelerating the manufacturing of vaccines that had only begun to roll out months earlier and securing enough shots for every American.
The resulting national vaccination campaign represented one of the largest public health mobilizations in decades — an undertaking that eventually hit its goal of vaccinating more than two-thirds of adults by that summer.
The widespread rollout won extensive praise and appeared at the time to put the U.S. on track to stamp out the virus. Instead, it set up Zients and his White House team for a setback that would dent the nation’s confidence in the Covid response.
Shortly after Biden declared the pandemic in retreat at a July Fourth celebration, the Delta variant drove a fresh outbreak of cases — catching Zients’ team off guard and prompting a scramble to reorient a response effort that officials had believed they’d soon be able to wind down.
The outbreak contributed to falling approval ratings for Biden, and ratcheted up partisan opposition to the Covid response that would prove among the biggest obstacles to managing the pandemic threat. And while administration officials praised Zients’ calm management of the response to Delta, the administration took increasing heat from outside health experts over the perception it had no immediate plan to bring the virus back under control. That criticism intensified a few months later, when another Covid wave caught the White House unprepared to manage rising demand for tests.
The resurgence raised a fresh round of questions about Zients’ leadership, and whether he was exercising too much control over decision making that Biden had once vowed repeatedly would be guided by science and the opinions of his public health experts.
But even as he maintained influence, Zients also largely escaped the scrutiny that other top health officials like Anthony Fauci, Biden’s former chief medical adviser, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky received over their roles in the response.
Part of what helped Zients was his leadership style. He remained a low-key presence, rarely appearing on television or making himself the face of major initiatives even as he oversaw nearly every significant decision about the pandemic response. Within the White House, he also cultivated a close relationship with Biden and outgoing chief of staff Ron Klain — while also winning over staff with his ability to deftly manage the levers of government and avert internal conflicts.
By the time Zients announced his departure in March 2022, the virus was on the downswing once again. More importantly, officials said at the time, he had built out the infrastructure for an enduring response reliant on continued access to vaccines, treatments and tests.
That infrastructure is about to be put to the test, as the administration prepares to wind down its emergency response. And as Zients returns to the White House, it’s among the wide array of policy priorities and political imperatives that Biden is entrusting him with once again.
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Zients served as the White House’s Covid-19 coordinator until he left last April. While Zients is not a scientist, he came to the task force with a range of management experience and was charged with working across government agencies to curtail the coronavirus outbreak.
Zients won internal praise for his management skills and initial success in bringing the pandemic under control.
He was the first chief performance officer in the Office of Management and Budget
In 2009, then-President Barack Obama created a position for Zients in the Office of Management and Budget called chief performance officer. The role required Zients to head an effort to streamline government and cut costs.
Zients invested in Call Your Mother bagels
Zients was known to have invested in D.C.’s popular “Jew-ish” deli Call Your Mother. Zients also acted as “adviser and mentor” for the bagel shop, where a lot of the recipe tasting took place in his home.
He unsuccessfully competed for ownership of the Washington Nationals
In 2005, Zients was part of a group of investors that included Fred Malek and Colin Powell, who tried to buy the Washington Nationals the first time around but lost out to the Lerner family.
He made Fortune magazine’s 40 under 40 list
In 2002, Zients was ranked 25th on Fortune magazine’s list of the 40 richest Americans under age 40. At the time, the magazine estimated his wealth at $149 million, leaving him one place above Julia Roberts and two behind Elon Musk.
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Zients has maintained close ties to departing chief of staff Ron Klain and other senior Biden aides dating back to the Obama administration, when he did stints atop the National Economic Council and Office of Management and Budget.
In recent months, Klain had tasked Zients with overseeing a project to prepare for the expected staff transition that typically occurs following the midterms. The move underscored Zients’ status as an administration insider and broadened his familiarity with the staff he’ll soon lead. The president, a person familiar with the decision said, views Zients as a “master implementer.”
But what Zients has in organization acumen he lacks in extensive political experience. He will likely be relied on to manage the day-to-day workings of the White House, allowing other senior advisers to focus more on Biden’s expected reelection campaign, one person familiar with the matter said.
While he’s cultivated a wide array of relationships within Democratic circles, Zients has also been the subject of rising criticism from the party’s progressive wing over his background in management consulting and handling of the pandemic, which has persisted well beyond his exit as Covid czar.
In a statement released by the Revolving Door Project, Zients was characterized as someone who “has become astonishingly rich by profiteering in health care” companies and who embodies the “corporate misconduct” that the executive branch needs to penalize.
“We have long argued for a ‘corporate crackdown’ on behaviors that violate federal laws and harm the American people in order for corporations to become richer. Those are the practices that have made Zients rich,” the organization’s founder and director, Jeff Hauser, said in the statement. “We’re deeply worried that Zients will prevent the administration from exercising power righteously on behalf of an already cynical populace.”
But Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, gave Zients the benefit of the doubt in his ability to cultivate a constructive relationship.
“Ron Klain has been an open ear and even-handed engager of actors across the Democratic Party,” Green said in a statement. “Whomever the next chief of staff is, that will be the continued hope and expectation. There will likely be an early relationship and trust-building stage.”
Zients’ selection is also likely to disappoint some Democrats who saw Klain’s exit as a prime opportunity for Biden to appoint a woman or person of color as his top aide.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
