In what may be a signal to opponents of the Second Amendment, presidential candidate Joe Biden has hired Robert “Beto” O’Rourke’s former campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon to lead his campaign.
“This is a conversation that has been happening over the course of weeks and was confirmed today it will be announced. And I think everyone who is either family or in senior-level positions in the campaign understands that it’s happening,” a source told CBS News.
Biden and O’Rourke were together before the Texas primary, where the frontrunner praised his former opponent and, specifically, his stance on the Second Amendment.
Biden said O’Rourke would be “the one who leads” Biden’s gun control efforts if he is elected to the White House.
But O’Rourke’s campaign strategy on grabbing guns fell flat even with Democrats. O’Rourke dropped out in November — before a single vote had even been cast.
FiveThirtyEight reported:
O’Rourke’s tumble in the polls was also accompanied by fundraising difficulties. Having been a prodigious fundraiser in 2018, he seemed capable of attracting the resources to run a top-level presidential campaign, and he showed early promise by raising $6.1 million in the first 24 hours of his campaign, the second best opening day after only former Vice President Joe Biden. But fundraising dollars started drying up shortly thereafter. He had raised only $13 million by the end of the second quarter, and added just another $4.5 million in the third quarter.
His debate performances didn’t help him recover either; in fact, his most recent performance seemed to have hurt him. After the October debate, O’Rourke’s net favorability among Democratic primary voters fell by about 6 points in our post-debate poll with Ipsos, the biggest decline for any of the 12 candidates on stage. His place at future debates was in serious jeopardy, too. O’Rourke was two qualifying polls shy of making the November debate and had yet to register a single qualifying survey for the December debate.
Now, the very same person who oversaw that will now be shepherding Biden to the November election.
“This is a very positive step, to appoint somebody with the broad perspectives that she brings of working within the party and in presidential election cycles,” the anonymous source told CBS News. “The campaign needs a decisionmaker — a single point of management. It didn’t have one. It was needed.”
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @KyleOlson4.
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