Send tips here | Subscribe to West Wing Playbook Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Payne MICHAEL HOCHMAN isn’t the typical candidate to be White House deputy staff secretary. The staff secretary’s office — which decides what decision memos, lists of potential personnel, schedules, briefing books, correspondence, speech drafts, and more end up on the president’s desk — usually attracts Beltway types who have served in past administrations and on the Hill. That’s the case for current staff secretary JESSICA HERTZ, who worked in the Obama administration and then went to a powerhouse D.C. law firm before landing at Facebook’s D.C. office. Hochman, however, has spent the past several years as a lawyer in private practice in Wilmington, Del., dealing with issues as parochial as a surprisingly intense 2016 dispute over a restaurant liquor license (Hochman’s client won). But he does have experience that makes him stand out. Hochman was BEAU BIDEN’s college roommate and fraternity brother at the University of Pennsylvania, and he remained close to the president’s elder son until Beau died of cancer in 2015. Hochman was also a Biden bundler who raised at least $100,000 for JOE BIDEN’s 2020 campaign and its allies. Beau and Hochman — or “Hoch” (pronounced “Hock”), as Beau often called him — decided to train for their first marathon after Beau’s diagnosis in 2013. Beau was ultimately too sick to run but Hochman came to his bedside after completing the race and gave him the finisher’s medal. The gesture was remembered. Joe wrote in his 2017 book “Promise Me, Dad” that Hochman said, “We did it, Beau,” as he placed the medal on Beau’s chest and Beau squeezed his arm. “‘The medal is more his than mine,’ Michael said to Val, who was staying with Beau that day,” Biden wrote, referring to his sister, VALERIE BIDEN OWENS. “‘He was the wind at my back.’” Now Hochman serves as one of the key intermediaries between Beau’s father, the president, and the rest of the Biden administration. PETER RUNDLET, who had Hochman’s job at the outset of the Obama administration, explained the role of the staff secretary’s office this way: “You don't own anything, but you see everything. And you have to be an honest broker and make sure that all the stakeholders that need to see something, and weigh in on it before the President sees it have a chance to do that.” Former staff secretaries include Supreme Court Justice BRETT KAVANAUGH, Rep. SEAN PATRICK MALONEY (D-N.Y.), and Democratic Party powerbroker JOHN PODESTA. Hochman’s presence in the West Wing is demonstrative of how Beau still affects Joe’s presidency — from personnel decisions to policy moves like the withdrawal from Afghanistan. It’s also the latest example of the close-knit, hyper-loyal Biden World — many of whom have been in the president’s orbit for decades. Besides his friendship with Beau, Hochman was a spokesperson for Biden’s 2002 Senate re-election campaign. Hochman’s law firm — Monzack, Mersky, Browder and Hochman — is headed by MEL MONZACK, one of Biden’s longtime confidantes. When Biden received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2017, he said, “I look around the room, and I see great friends ... Guys like Mel Monzack.”) But it’s Hochman’s relationship with Beau that is his strongest tie to the senior Biden. The two had a bit of an odd couple routine, friends say. Hochman is a complicated food orderer — you know the type — so whenever they were dining out together, Beau would warn the server that it would take a while and Hochman would probably send it back anyway. When a legal client of Beau’s asked if Beau knew any nice, promising, eligible men whom he could introduce the client’s daughter to, Beau quipped, “I don’t, but maybe I’ll set her up with my friend Hochman,” a story Hochman repeated at a close gathering of family and friends after Beau died. "For people who don't know him, they should know what a tremendous person he was as a friend, as a father, as a husband and as a statesman," Hochman said at the time. "He was the best man I've ever known.' Hochman and Monzack did not respond to interview requests. The White House declined to comment. SCOOP: The White House is planning to announce on Friday that Biden will nominate former Rep. XOCHITL TORRES SMALL (D-N.M.) to be undersecretary of rural development at the Department of Agriculture, according to two sources familiar with the plans. It’s a restoration of a job that was effectively done away with in the Trump administration. Agriculture Secretary SONNY PERDUE tried to eliminate the Senate-confirmed undersecretary position in 2017 and then left it vacant even after the 2018 farm bill reinstated it. Torres Small is the second lawmaker who lost reelection last year whom Biden has moved to add to the administration, along with former Rep. GIL CISNEROS (D-Calif.), whom he nominated in April to be under secretary of Defense for personnel and readiness. The White House declined to comment. PROGRAMMING NOTE: West Wing Playbook will not publish on Friday because we are off for Juneteenth. We'll be back Monday. PROGRAMMING NOTE 2: After six years of writing daily newsletters (including more than seven months co-authoring this newsletter), Theo is transitioning to a new beat covering K Street and the battles over Biden’s infrastructure package (cough, traitor, cough). Follow his coverage here. He’ll still contribute to West Wing Playbook but we are going to be welcoming a new co-author next week: TINA SFONDELES. Give her a follow here! Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you ERIKA MORITSUGU? 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. You can also reach Alex and Theo individually. | 
