With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Payne Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here! Have a tip? Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. When Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN has traveled the globe to meet his counterparts from countries like Russia, India, Japan, South Korea and Canada, the seat next to him has been occupied by a quiet 40-ish-year-old Yale graduate with a fair complexion and a seemingly constant case of bed head. At a certain angle, the senior Blinken aide could have been mistaken for the president’s national security adviser JAKE SULLIVAN. And for good reason. The aide is Jake’s little brother, TOM SULLIVAN, who serves as deputy chief of staff for policy at the State Department (the same position he held at the end of the Obama administration). The Sullivan family has become its own small web of power in the Biden administration. Besides Jake and Tom’s prominent roles, both of their spouses have senior positions — at the Health and Human Services Department and the Justice Department, respectively. Jake’s wife, MAGGIE GOODLANDER, clerked for Supreme Court Justice STEPHEN BREYER and Judge MERRICK GARLAND before becoming counsel to Garland in the attorney general’s office. And ROSE SULLIVAN, who worked with Tom in Sen. AMY KLOBUCHAR’s office, is the principal deputy assistant secretary for legislation at HHS after a stint lobbying for companies like Google/Alphabet, Airbnb, CVS Health and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. (Her old lobbying firm KDCR Partners amended several disclosure filings in March to clarify she did not lobby HHS, which would have prevented her from taking the job under Biden’s ethics rules.) Tom also did a tour in the private sector during the Trump administration. He became the quasi-chief of staff for the international public policy team at Amazon under Obama administration alum DAVID ROTH and worked closely with SUSAN POINTER, Amazon’s vice president of international public policy and government affairs. Former colleagues describe Tom as the ultimate D.C. staffer: competent, low-drama, press-shy, and gives one helluva briefing. He has an M.A. in international affairs from the University of Chicago and has worked under establishment luminaries like the late LES GELB, the former State and Defense department official who collaborated with Biden on issues like the Iraq war (the two were prominent champions of partitioning the country into three). When Gelb was the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Tom worked for him as a research associate from 2003 to 2005, according to an archived State Department biography from the Obama administration. In keeping with his reputation, Tom declined to comment through a State Department spokesperson. The department declined our requests to speak with Tom’s colleagues. They also didn’t respond to requests to confirm his age. He’s so low-profile that his Legistorm profile has a picture of the wrong Tom Sullivan. Tom, his wife, and Jake all come from Klobuchar-world. Tom, Jake and Rose are all Minnesota natives; Tom and Jake’s father, DAN SULLIVAN, worked with Klobuchar’s father, the columnist JIM KLOBUCHAR, at the Star Tribune. At various points from 2007 to 2015, Jake was the senator’s chief counsel, Tom was her deputy chief of staff, and Rose served as her chief of staff. At the outset of her presidential campaign in 2019, a number of news outlets published accounts by former staffers who alleged Klobuchar was an abusive boss. All three Sullivans signed a supportive open letter in response. “We remain grateful for our time in Senator Klobuchar’s office and still consider Amy a mentor and friend,” the letter from former Klobuchar staffers read. “Sadly, this was not fully conveyed in the recent news reports.” The feeling appears to be mutual, as Klobuchar told us in an interview that she counts herself a “huge Tom Sullivan fan.” Tom worked on Klobuchar’s 2006 Senate campaign in an extremely glamorous role — driving the van behind the campaign bus in case it broke down, setting up chairs, etc. — but he did it with aplomb, the senator recalled. After both Sullivans eventually followed Klobuchar to D.C., Tom became more interested in foreign affairs and accompanied her on many of her trips overseas. “I guess I trained him for the Tony Blinken trips,” she said. The senator remembers one long Asia trip that included Republican Sens. JOHN McCAIN (Ariz.) and LINDSEY GRAHAM (S.C.). McCain often insisted on everyone eating together and was struck by how Sullivan, even in foreign locales, somehow stuck to Midwestern cuisine. “Tom would always order the most Minnesota-type food, and McCain was always giving him grief,” she said. “You can have this, they’d have weird, who knows what, sushi and Tom would always be ordering, ‘I’ll have chicken and rice’ every time.” The quirky diet was a sign of character, she said. “To me it was just another example of his steadiness and just kind of the no-drama, does the work and does it for all the right reasons,” Klobuchar said. “He would always be able to get every answer throughout his time working for me in the Senate.” Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you RACHEL CHIU? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. 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