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The power players, latest policy developments, and intriguing whispers percolating inside the West Wing. | | | | |  | | By Eli Stokols and Lauren Egan | 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 Anyone who isn’t a voting member of the White House Correspondents’ Association might still have an easy time imagining what it’s like around the briefing room and press workspace now that the annual election for president is underway. If you’ve seen the movie “Election” with REESE WITHERSPOON starring as the teenage TRACY FLICK who wants to be her high school’s student body president sooooo bad, then you’ve got the idea. Sure, there’s no sabotage by a meddlesome and devious supervisor, or bitter class conflict; instead of handing out homemade buttons, the candidates for WHCA president have papered the press workspace behind the briefing room with campaign posters; and rather than delivering speeches to a school assembly, they email and call colleagues, or engage in hurried conversations in the north driveway outside. But other than that, it’s basically the movie! The current election for WHCA president is shaping up to be a two-candidate race. FRANCESCA CHAMBERS, a USA Today White House reporter and former WHCA board member, was the first to announce her candidacy in an email on May 2 — three weeks before the association opened the official sign-up window for candidates. Chambers, who served in the board’s new media seat for four years, was a candidate for president last year but lost to CNN’s KAITLAN COLLINS by a vote of 240-201. Collins, after being promoted to an anchor job in New York, resigned from the board last fall. On May 30, after WHCA’s call for candidates went out, WEIJIA JIANG, a White House correspondent for CBS News, announced in an email to members that she would also be seeking the WHCA presidency. Although additional candidates have until Friday to join the race, there don’t appear to be any others in the offing. If the election is awkward for other reporters, it’s especially so for the two candidates whose desks — and campaign signs — face one another across a narrow hallway.
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Campaign signs now hang throughout the White House press workspace. | Eli Stokols | Every election is unique. NPR’S TAMARA KEITH, the outgoing WHCA president, essentially ran unopposed, as did AP’s ZEKE MILLER. But in other years, there have been more than two candidates, as there were in 2017 when ABC’s JONATHAN KARL was elected president. Whoever wins this year would serve as president in 2025 under WHCA’s bylaws, which gives the winner two years of time on the board before assuming the presidency. It’s a potentially major undertaking, with the prospect looming of DONALD TRUMP returning to the White House and bringing him an even more adversarial relationship with the press there. And there have been no shortage of squabbles over access between WHCA and the Biden White House, as we’ve written about periodically. Nothing crazy campaign-wise has happened, yet. But the politicking emails and texts are picking up ahead of the two-week voting period that will get underway in a couple weeks. Several members of the press corps have noted that the signs Chambers has posted around the building urge them to “reelect” her, an apparent reference to her past service on the board. In announcing their candidacies, both women vowed to represent the press corps in pushing this and future administrations for more access and to listen to the concerns of journalists from organizations large and small. And both noted the history they would make if elected. “I would be honored to be the first woman of color to lead the WHCA,” Chambers noted, adding that she “would also be the first Black woman to serve as president.” Jiang, who was born in China, also wrote that she “would be honored to become the first woman of color to serve as President of the WHCA.” She lamented that that hasn’t happened some 70 years after two Black women, ALICE DUNNIGAN and ETHEL PAYNE, became the first women of color to join the White House press corps. “I want to pay tribute to their legacy by breaking a new barrier,” Jiang wrote. Two women journalists claiming the mantle of history adds another dynamic to an annual election that, traditionally, has seen voting journalists split along familiar lines: print journalists and broadcast correspondents backing different candidates, foreign correspondents and journalists from smaller outlets backing someone who doesn’t sit comfortably in the briefing room’s front rows. And while any election, on some level, is a popularity contest, the job of leading WHCA is far more substantive and grueling than the organization’s glitzy April dinner would make it seem. Those who have served on the board, which meets frequently with the administration, have said it is an almost all-consuming job that can leave little time for journalism and one that requires level-headedness, solid judgment and discretion. MESSAGE US — Are you REESE WITHERSPOON? 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!
| | | | DON’T MISS POLITICO’S HEALTH CARE SUMMIT: The Covid-19 pandemic helped spur innovation in health care, from the wide adoption of telemedicine, health apps and online pharmacies to mRNA vaccines. But what will the next health care innovations look like? Join POLITICO on Wednesday June 7 for our Health Care Summit to explore how tech and innovation are transforming care and the challenges ahead for access and delivery in the United States. REGISTER NOW. | | | | | | | | | This one is from Allie. How many rooms does the White House have? (Answer at bottom.)
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Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and quarterback Patrick Mahomes present President Joe Biden with a jersey during a celebration for the Kansas City Chiefs, 2023 Super Bowl champions. | Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images | IT’S BEEN LITERAL YEARS: The Kansas City Chiefs visited the White House Monday to celebrate their 38-35 Super Bowl win against the Philadelphia Eagles, our KIERRA FRAZIER reports. We asked our JONATHAN LEMIRE to remind us of the last time the Pats got a White House visit. He did not return a request for comment. REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD: Before Prime Minister METTE FREDERIKSEN’s motorcade pulled into the North driveway Monday, Chief of Protocol RUFUS GIFFORD, who was waiting to greet her by the West Wing door, came over to say hello to the Danish press corps. The former U.S. Ambassador to Denmark, Gifford starred in a reality show while living in Copenhagen and remains popular there. “He took more selfies with people in Denmark than any ambassador I’ve ever seen,” said ANDERS AGNER PEDERSEN, the editor of the politics-focused website Kongressen. Unfortunately for Pedersen and the 20-person Danish press pool, the sprinklers went on while they were waiting in the driveway outside the briefing room for the White House meeting to end. WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This piece by WSJ’s SARAH CHANEY CAMBON about how “a year after the Federal Reserve began rapidly raising interest rates to tame inflation, the hallmarks of a widely expected recession remain elusive.” Cambon writes that employers “are hiring aggressively, consumers are spending freely, the stock market is rebounding and the housing market appears to be stabilizing — the most recent evidence that the Fed’s efforts have yet to significantly weaken the economy." Communications director BEN LABOLT shared the piece on Twitter. WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This article by NYT’s PETER BAKER, MICHAEL D. SHEAR, KATIE ROGERS and ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS about the president’s fall last week and voters' concerns about his age. “Anyone can trip at any age, but for an 80-year-old president, it inevitably raises unwelcome questions,” they write. “If it were anyone else, the signs of age might not be notable. But Mr. Biden is the chief executive of the world’s most powerful nation and has just embarked on a campaign asking voters to keep him in the White House until age 86.” REVVING UP FOR REELECTION: Now that the debt ceiling chaos has cooled, the president is turning his attention to his reelection campaign, planning fundraisers for the end of the month, our HOLLY OTTERBEIN and CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO report. Biden’s team is in talks with Illinois Gov. JB PRITZKER about hosting a fundraiser at the end of June. The details of the event have not been finalized, but one of the dates being considered is June 28.
| | THINK OF IT AS WATER, BUT WITHOUT THE OXYGEN, AND CLEANER: The Biden administration on Monday unveiled its U.S. National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap, which aims to ramp up clean hydrogen production in the U.S. while also lowering costs, our KELSEY TAMBORRINO reports for Pro s. The roadmap is part of the administration’s larger clean energy efforts, aiming to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by about 10 percent. HA. YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE DONE WITH BIG ECONOMIC THREATS: While the federal government was able to avert a debt default, the next big threat for banks is around the corner, and it involves the $20 trillion commercial real estate market, our KATY O’DONNELL reports. “Some $1.5 trillion in mortgages will come due in the next two years, a potential time bomb as higher interest rates and spiraling office vacancies push down property values,” O’Donnell writes. “And because 70 percent of bank-held commercial mortgages sit on the balance sheets of regional and smaller lenders, a write-down in commercial loans could spell big trouble for the financial system.” FALLING BEHIND: Despite allocating $122 billion to schools nationwide back in 2021 as part of a pandemic stimulus package, NYT’s MADELEINE NGO reports that “there are ample signs that the money has not been spent in a way that has substantially helped all of the nation’s students lagging behind. … Education researchers and advocates say recovering from the effects of remote learning should be the top priority, but it is unclear how much of the funding is helping students across the nation fully catch up.”
| | | | GET READY FOR GLOBAL TECH DAY: Join POLITICO Live as we launch our first Global Tech Day alongside London Tech Week on Thursday, June 15. Register now for continuing updates and to be a part of this momentous and program-packed day! From the blockchain, to AI, and autonomous vehicles, technology is changing how power is exercised around the world, so who will write the rules? REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | | | | Biden’s 2024 pitch highlights pragmatism over Trump’s pugilism (AP’s Zeke Miller) Opinion: Guess How Much This Debt Ceiling Nonsense Is Costing Us (Betsey Stevenson for NYT)
| | | Before jumping into public service, press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE briefly worked for Estée Lauder, the cosmetic company. She worked with the company’s scientists in Melville, New York but soon realized “this was not the career path for me,” she wrote in her 2019 book, “Moving Forward.” “I didn’t even wear makeup at the time.” “My mother and sister, however, adored the free samples I brought home — night creams, perfumes, antiaging serums. The works!” she added.
| | The White House has 132 rooms, according to its website. That includes more well-known rooms like the Oval Office, the Situation Room and the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, “but tucked away in the far reaches of the building are some of the more obscure, less heralded rooms of the White House: the Chocolate Shop, the Game Room, and the Solarium, to name a few,” Insider reports. A CALL OUT — Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents with a citation and we may feature it. Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
