Buffy Wicks, remember, was the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement who was implicated (along with Yosi Sergant) in orchestrating a propaganda campaign for health care reform with the National Endowment for the Arts. Sergant ended up resigning over this incident, but I believe “Buffy the Integrity Slayer” was more to blame.
Anyway, I’m not sure how this news slipped through the cracks but according to this press release posted by Politico on April 4, Buffy has joined David Axelrod’s old firm, AKPD Message and Media:
AKPD Message and Media today announced that political strategist Buffy Wicks has joined the firm as a vice president. Wicks will join AKPD media buyer Debra Schommer Klein in the firm’s West Coast operation, located in Los Angeles, California.
A veteran of the Obama presidential campaign and White House, Wicks will advise AKPD’s clients on matters of campaign strategy, field organizing, and grassroots mobilization.
“Buffy is one of the most respected political organizers in the country, and she knows what it takes to build a strong and successful relationship with campaign supporters,” said AKPD partner John Del Cecato. “As AKPD continues to serve our local, state, and federal clients across the nation, we’re thrilled to add someone with Buffy’s expertise to our firm.”
Curiously, Wick’s profile is still listed on the constantly-updated White House web site, and I can find no other reports of her departure. So perhaps she is pulling double-duty? Wouldn’t that be a story!
Well, based on this subsequent paragraph from the AKPD press release, I see no reason why she wouldn’t be able to continue her White House duties while concurrently serving as a paid media flack with AKPD: (emphasis added)
Wicks served most recently as the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement for President Barack Obama. Her portfolio included outreach to the progressive community on key presidential initiatives like health reform, financial regulation, and job creation. She led President Obama’s efforts in the area of national service, and was the architect of both the Renew America Together service day activities held during Obama’s Inauguration and the United We Serve initiative launched in 2009.
Apparently in the New Era of Accountability and Transparency, “public engagement” entails the White House engaging with the only segment of the public they give a rat’s ass about – the “progressive community”. This is not only wholly unsurprising, it confirms what I and many others have been claiming for months: that the White House Office of Public Engagement has been run exclusively as an instrument for partisan political organization.
While anti-lobbying laws exist to prevent federal employees from partisan lobbying at taxpayer expense, White House staff are traditionally granted a lot of leeway when it comes to advancing their policy and legislative agenda. But this shameless partisanship on the part of the Office of Public Engagement – an organization whose stated purpose is “making government inclusive” – further demonstrates why this Administration has been just as polarizing, if not more so, than any others that have come before it.
We truly did elect the Organizer-in-Chief to the White House.
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