Biden for President
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 20, 2020 

Biden for President and the Wisconsin Coordinated Campaign Announce Additional Staff in the Badger State

Today, Biden for President and the Wisconsin Coordinated Campaign announced additional key staff hires in Wisconsin. The new staff have deep experience in the Badger State, and include alumni from Senator Tammy Baldwin and Governor Tony Evers’ successful 2018 campaigns. They join State Director Danielle Melfi, Senior Advisors Scott Spector and Shirley Ellis, Deputy State Director Garren Randolph, and Communications Director Nate Evans.
 
Tanya Bjork, Strategic Advisor
Tanya is a veteran of the last three presidential campaigns in Wisconsin having served in senior leadership in both Obama campaigns and as a Senior Advisor to the Clinton campaign. Her previous experience also includes Regional Director for EMILY's List, the AFL-CIO, Protect Our Care and Director of Federal Affairs for Governor Jim Doyle.
 
John Laadt, Wisconsin Deputy State Director
John joins the team after serving in a number of roles on the Biden Campaign. He served as Massachusetts State Director, led primary efforts in Wisconsin, and has focused on the state since. Prior to this campaign cycle, he served as Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s campaign manager in 2017.
 
Chris Walloch, Wisconsin Coordinated Campaign Director
A Wisconsin native, Chris successfully led coordinated campaign efforts in Wisconsin during the 2018 campaign cycle to re-elect Senator Tammy Baldwin, elect Governor Tony Evers and Lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes, Attorney General Josh Kaul, and Democrats up and down the ballot.
 
Devin Remiker, Wisconsin Deputy Coordinated Campaign Director
Devin joins the team after leading the DPW’s efforts for the April Supreme Court election, including engineering DPW’s vaunted absentee program. Devin formerly served as Congressman Ron Kind’s campaign manager in La Crosse, DPW’s Political Director, and DPW’s Executive Director for Political Affairs. Devin has deep Wisconsin roots, having been born and raised in Two Rivers, WI before going to University of Wisconsin – La Crosse.
 
Nadiyah Groves, Milwaukee Director
A native of Milwaukee, Nadiyah previously served as the Director of Grassroots Activation for the Milwaukee 2020 Host Committee and on the Public Engagement team for the 2020 Democratic National Convention Committee. In 2018, she worked as Deputy Milwaukee Director for Senator Baldwin’s successful reelection campaign.
 
Elsie Raymer, Wisconsin Political Director
A native Wisconsinite, Elsie previously served as Director of Scheduling and Advance for Governor Evers and for Senator Baldwin's successful 2018 campaign. She joins the campaign after working in Wisconsin for the National Education Association (NEA) earlier this cycle.
 
Matt Dannenberg, Wisconsin Coalitions Director
Matt has spent the last 10 years building coalitions on key environmental and democracy policies. In 2018, he served as Political Director at WI Conservation Voters, and most recently led coalitions to promote the 2020 Census & voter registration statewide. He is a proud member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Watertown Gosling, and a former Badger cheerleader.

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Biden for President
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 24, 2020

ICYMI: Biden for President Announces Key Staff Hires in Wisconsin

Today, Biden for President announced key staff hires in Wisconsin, including former staff for Senator Tammy Baldwin, Governor Tony Evers, and Congresswoman Gwen Moore. Today’s hires reflect the diversity of the state and the campaign’s commitment to amplifying the voices of Wisconsinites, both urban and rural.
 
Danielle Melfi, Wisconsin State Director
Melfi most recently served in Governor Evers’ administration as the Assistant Secretary for the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families. She was the Director of Political Engagement for Senator Tammy Baldwin’s 2018 campaign and the Early Vote Director for the 2016 Wisconsin Coordinated Campaign.
 
Scott Spector, Wisconsin Senior Advisor
Scott Spector has more than two decades of experience working with nonprofits and running campaigns in Wisconsin and across the country. In 2018, Scott managed Senator Tammy Baldwin’s 10 point reelection campaign, one of the largest margins of victory in Wisconsin in the past 20 years. Prior to that Scott served as the Executive Director of Wisconsin Progress, a nonprofit candidate recruitment and training organization. Over his five years running the organization, Wisconsin Progress recruited and trained hundreds of candidates for local and state legislative office in every corner of the state. Scott has managed some of the largest and most successful Get Out the Vote efforts in Wisconsin.
 
Garren Randolph, Wisconsin Deputy State Director
Randolph will be joining the Biden team from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin where he currently serves as the Political Director. He previously served as Political Director for Governor Tony Evers, and the campaign manager for Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and Milwaukee County Sheriff Earnell Lucas.
 
Shirley Ellis, Wisconsin Strategic Advisor
Following the Democratic National Convention, Shirley Ellis will serve as Strategic Advisor. Shirley is a highly respected political operative in Milwaukee having worked for Congresswoman Gwen Moore for nearly 3 decades. She oversees Rep. Moore's district staff and operations.  She brings her deep political network experience and management skills to the team. Ellis will be joining the Biden team upon completion of the Democratic Convention in Milwaukee, where she currently serves as an advisor for the DNCC.
 
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Top Tammy Baldwin aides to lead Joe Biden campaign in Wisconsin
 
Two top political aides to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin will help guide Joe Biden's presidential campaign in Wisconsin.
 
Scott Spector was named senior adviser and Danielle Melfi was selected as state director, the Biden campaign announced early Wednesday.
 
Spector and Melfi both worked on Baldwin's 2018 campaign when she easily won re-election.
 
“I couldn’t be more excited to see Vice President Biden’s campaign team comprised of some of the best Democratic talent Wisconsin has to offer,” Baldwin said in a statement released by the campaign. “Scott Spector and Danielle Melfi led my 10-point re-election campaign and their unparalleled knowledge of the Badger State is exactly what the Vice President needs to win Wisconsin in November.”
 
Spector previously served for five years as executive director of Wisconsin Progress, a nonprofit candidate recruitment and training organization. He was also a campaign adviser to Appeals Court Judge Lisa Neubauer, who in 2019 lost a close race for state Supreme Court to Justice Brian Hagedorn.
 
Melfi worked in the administration of Gov. Tony Evers as assistant secretary for the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families.
 
Biden's team announced two other key hires: Garren Randolph as deputy state director and Shirley Ellis as a strategic adviser.

Randolph, political director of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, was political director for Evers in 2018, and the campaign manager for Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and Milwaukee County Sheriff Earnell Lucas.

Ellis is a longtime political aide to U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee. She'll join the Biden campaign after the Democratic National Convention, where she currently serves as a senior adviser.

The campaign also announced its headquarters will be based in Milwaukee.


AP: Joe Biden turns focus to Wisconsin with battle-tested hires
 
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is turning to a quartet of experienced Wisconsin political operatives to lead his campaign in a state that helped deliver President Donald Trump an Electoral College majority four years ago.

The former vice president’s campaign unveiled the team to The Associated Press on Wednesday. Wisconsin, where Trump won by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016, joins newly emerging battleground Arizona as the first two states where Biden has named his campaign team.
 
Two veterans of Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s successful 2018 reelection campaign will run Biden’s Wisconsin operation. Danielle Melfi, who was Baldwin’s political engagement chief, is Biden’s new state director. Scott Spector, who managed Baldwin’s campaign, will serve Biden as senior adviser.

Garren Randolph will be Melfi’s deputy. He served as political director for Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ 2018 victory over then-incumbent Scott Walker, a Republican whom Democrats had tried twice before to knock out of office.

Shirley Ellis, a longtime adviser to U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, will join Biden team as a strategic adviser focused on Milwaukee. She currently runs Moore’s district staff and is helping plan the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee. She will join Biden’s campaign formally after the August convention, according to the campaign.

Baldwin praised the team as “some of the best Democratic talent Wisconsin has to offer,” and she singled out Melfi and Spector for “unparalleled knowledge” of how to win in the closely divided state.

Democrats’ Wisconsin operation will be based in Milwaukee. Randolph and Ellis are Black and will play key roles in the city, where a large portion of the state’s Black population lives.

The latest announcements are part of the battleground rollout that campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon has promised for weeks. Top Biden advisers said they’ve intentionally recruited state leadership teams with previous relevant success.

In Arizona, Biden’s senior adviser Andrew Piatt managed freshman Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s campaign. Biden’s Arizona state director is Jessica Mejía, who’d previously run his primary campaign in California, where he finished a surprisingly strong second as part of his Super Tuesday surge that saw him win 10 out of 14 state primaries and take control of the Democratic nominating fight.

Together, the first two states disclosed reflect Biden’s dual approach to building an Electoral College majority – Wisconsin as one of the Upper Midwest states that slipped away from Democrats in 2016, Arizona as a rapidly shifting Sun Belt state that has been a GOP lock for decades. It’s part of what O’Malley Dillon touts as an “expanded map” with “multiple paths” to the required 270 electoral votes.

Yet O’Malley Dillon has had to reassure nervous Democrats who remember Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign devoting resources to states including Arizona and Georgia, only to fail there while also losing Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by fewer than 100,000 votes combined. Those three states handed Trump the White House despite Clinton’s national popular-vote advantage of nearly 3 million.

The Wisconsin team, especially, is intended to show that the Biden campaign’s talk of a wide map isn’t at the exclusion of traditional battlegrounds.

Recruiting from Baldwin’s team pulls in architects of Wisconsin Democrats’ most successful campaign in decades. Baldwin entered 2018 on every national list of vulnerable Democratic incumbents. She won by double digits, putting together Democrats’ ideal coalition in the state: strong minority and liberal turnout in the cities, expanded support in battleground suburbs where Trump has lost ground and limited GOP margins across the rest of the state.

Baldwin won about 90,000 more votes statewide than Clinton won two years before – an impressive feat given that presidential elections typically have considerably higher turnout than midterm elections. Notably, Baldwin won several southwestern Wisconsin counties that Trump flipped in 2016 from President Barack Obama’s 2012 footprint.

Biden’s emphasis on Milwaukee, meanwhile, reflects O’Malley Dillon’s insistence that reclaiming Democrats’ Upper Midwest “Blue Wall” isn’t just about white voters in small towns. In 2016, Clinton won Milwaukee County by an even wider percentage margin than Obama managed in 2012. But her raw vote total in the state’s most Democrat-rich county fell about 39,000 votes shy of Obama’s — far exceeding her statewide deficit to Trump.

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