Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Eli | Email Lauren It is far from the glitziest job in President JOE BIDEN’s Cabinet. But you wouldn’t know it from all the (mostly unemployed) people offering to be the next Labor secretary. After this week’s confirmation that MARTY WALSH will be leaving the post to run the National Hockey League Players’ Association, several people wasted no time putting their names out there as potential replacements. There’s former New York City mayor and 2020 presidential also-ran BILL DE BLASIO, who, according to the New York Post, is “lobbying to succeed” Walsh. And former House Speaker NANCY PELOSI “has been making calls on behalf of former New York Rep. SEAN PATRICK MALONEY to be the next secretary,” according to an NBC News report, citing two people familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus is pushing the White House to promote Walsh’s deputy, JULIE SU. “Deputy Secretary Su has dedicated her career to the promotion of workers’ rights and fair labor practices and to advancing equity and opportunities for all workers, including ones from historically underserved communities,” the group said in a statement earlier this week. “She would be a stellar, exceptionally qualified candidate to be Secretary of Labor and would deliver results for American workers and the Biden-Harris Administration immediately upon her confirmation.” Two things work in Su’s favor: She’s already fully integrated into the department (although she still would require Senate confirmation) and she would allow Biden, who has vowed to make diversity a priority in filling out the executive branch, to appoint his first Asian American Cabinet member. Another plus: she isn’t an object of widespread derision as de Blasio is by, well, most of New York City — or as Maloney has become with a lot of rank and file Democrats following a difficult stint last year running the party’s House campaign apparatus. “While you don’t often elevate a deputy to the secretary job, in this case it would be hard for the administration not to elevate her given the political pressure from the Asian American groups,” one former department official told West Wing Playbook. “But Biden cares a lot about labor issues so this is going to be a more personal selection than some other Cabinet posts.” The White House is already amid a transition under new chief of staff JEFF ZIENTS, who is reshuffling the economic team. There is some chatter about GENE SPERLING, the idiosyncratic Biden economic adviser, as a potential candidate for the Labor gig. Tasked in 2021 with overseeing the implementation of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, Sperling, in recent months, “doesn’t seem to have much to do,” as one administration official put it to West Wing Playbook. Zients’ ascension to chief of staff has led to some discussion of how to use other looming personnel decisions to mollify progressives, who are in no way enamored of Zients, a long-time entrepreneur and management consultant. That has been a factor, according to two sources familiar with the matter, in making LAEL BRAINARD, the deputy chair of the Federal Reserve, the frontrunner to replace BRIAN DEESE atop the National Economic Council, but no final decision has been made there. Given the importance of organized labor to Democrats politically, it’s almost a guarantee that Walsh’s replacement will be someone with progressive bona fides who can still get confirmed in a narrowly divided Senate. No Republicans voted for Su when she was confirmed in 2021 after the Democrats’ two swing votes, Sens. JOE MANCHIN of West Virginia and KYRSTEN SINEMA of Arizona, backed her. But it’s not clear they would do so again if she’s nominated for the much more powerful post leading the department. Manchin is contemplating a reelection bid in deeply red West Virginia and Sinema, who’s also in cycle, is now an independent after leaving the Democratic Party. When he was running Biden’s transition following the 2020 election, Zients approached Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.) about leading the Department of Labor. But Sanders, unlike de Blasio and Maloney, has a job at the moment and said he’s not interested in the position. MESSAGE US — Are you MARTY WALSH? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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