Liberals take on Biden’s likely Pentagon pick
Welcome to POLITICO’s 2020 Transition Playbook, your guide to one of the most consequential transfers of power in American history.
FLOURNOY MOVES TO PROTECT HER LEFT FLANK
The odds-on favorite to be President-elect JOE BIDEN’s Defense secretary has some work to do to win over liberals. And she knows it.
Just days before Election Day, MICHÈLE FLOURNOY convened a call with a number of progressive foreign policy groups, POLITICO has learned. Some of the participants had raised concerns about Flournoy in a Sept. 22 call with top Biden foreign policy aide TONY BLINKEN. She was too hawkish, had too many connections to military contractors, and had been too lenient on Saudi Arabia while it waged war on Yemen during the Obama administration, they argued.
Weeks later, Flournoy reached out and assured the convened groups that she opposed the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia that could be used in Yemen, according to a participant on the call. A spokesperson for Flournoy declined to comment.
DISSENT FROM THE LEFT: Flournoy, who served as undersecretary of Defense in the Obama administration, is the consensus choice among establishment Washington, but there have been murmurs of dissent from the left.
Liberal Reps. MARK POCAN (D-Wis.) and BARBARA LEE (D-Calif.), wrote a letter this week asking Biden not to nominate a secretary of Defense who has ties with defense contractors, an implicit shot at Flournoy.
Several progressive groups this week also blasted Biden’s recently announced 23-person “agency review team” for the Pentagon, citing their ties to contractors. Many of the people on the review team are close allies of Flournoy’s and hail from think tanks or consulting firms heavily financed by leading defense companies, including CSIS, New America and the Center for a New American Security, which Flournoy co-founded.
According to a study published last month by the Center for International Policy, nearly half of CNAS’ funding came from Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, the study found.
ROBERT WEISSMAN, president of consumer advocate group Public Citizen, told POLITICO: “This looks like the Democratic version of the military-industrial complex.”
More from Alex and BRYAN BENDER here.
PROGRESSIVE SCOUTING REPORT: This morning, more than 40 left-wing groups led by the Elizabeth Warren-aligned Progressive Change Institute sent the Biden transition a roster of over 400 job candidates for posts in the administration. These aren’t potential Cabinet nominees but rather people who could fill what they call “the most powerful positions nobody’s ever heard of” — roles at the alphabet soup of obscure bureaucracies that have tremendous power. The public-facing version of the roster is here.
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Pro Exclusive
When it comes to the Biden administration, climate change activists are thinking far bigger than the conventional environmental roles like EPA administrator or Energy secretary — they’ve got economic policymakers in their sights, as well. ZACK COLMAN has MORE.
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Building the Biden Administration
UPDATE THAT RESUME: Want a job in the Biden administration? The transition’s website is now open for applications.
KING EMERGES AS DNI CONTENDER — Biden is considering choosing Sen.ANGUS KING of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, to serve as his director of national intelligence, NATASHA BERTRAND and LARA SELIGMAN report. King is a prominent member of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees, but plucking him from the Senate could make it harder for Democrats to keep hold of his seat. Maine Gov. JANET MILLS, a Democrat, would appoint his replacement, though his successor would have to run for reelection in 2022. If King remains in the Senate, he won’t face reelection until 2024.
Lara also has the goods oninitial conversations Biden’s team has had with people who once worked for JIM MATTIS — the former Defense secretary who resigned in protest from the Trump administration in 2018 — about helping the president-elect’s transition and possibly serving in his administration. One former Trump administration official familiar with the discussions said Biden’s team was reaching out to former Pentagon officials because they don’t expect the current leaders there to be especially helpful to them. A Biden transition official denied that potential jobs in a new administration had been discussed.
Lunar landing? JACQUELINE FELDSCHER asked Rep.KENDRA HORN (D-Okla.), who lost reelection last week, about a report that she’s in the running to be Biden’s NASA administrator. “If opportunities present themselves in the Biden admin, I would be open to serving,” she said.
‘THE LARGER THE BANK, THE MORE NERVOUS THEY ARE’ — The review team Biden has assembled to liaise with the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and other financial regulatory agencies is stocked with a who’s who of Wall Street critics, ZACHARY WARMBRODT reports. Led by GARY GENSLER, a veteran of the Obama administration, it includes former Democratic congressional aides who played a major role in drafting tougher laws for financial firms after the subprime meltdown and later fought efforts to water them down. Another member, DENNIS KELLEHER, has rattled bank executives for years as the head of one of Washington’s leading financial reform groups, Better Markets.
TL;DR — Listen to Alex break down the transition on POLITICO Nerdcast, with host SCOTT BLAND.
Transfer of Power
JOHN KELLY SAYS TRUMP WILL ‘NEVER ACCEPT DEFEAT’ — Add JOHN KELLY, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, to the list of people who want the Trump administration to acknowledge Biden won the election so his team can start interacting with federal agencies. While Trump doesn’t necessarily need to concede, “you lose a lot if the transition is delayed,” Kelly told DANIEL LIPPMAN. “It hurts our national security because the people who should be getting spun up — it’s not a process where you go from zero to 1,000 miles per hour,” he added.
“I know Mr. Trump better than most people do,” Kelly went on. “I know that he’ll never accept defeat and, in fact, he doesn’t have to accept defeat here. He just has to do what’s best for the country and in the country’s interest.”
RON KLAIN agrees. In his first interview since Biden tapped him as his White House chief of staff, Klain told MSNBC’s LAWRENCE O’DONNELL Thursday night that Biden’s transition team has been “working very effectively, moving forward on business” despite the Trump administration’s refusal to recognize his victory. But Klain also had a warning for GSA head EMILY MURPHY: “As time passes, the unreasonable position of the administrator of the General Services Administration, to refuse to ascertain that Joe Biden is the apparent winner of the election, as the statute requires, will have an impact.”
EXPLAINER: The non-partisan Presidential Transition Center lays out all the things the Biden transition can’t do until the GSA confirms that Biden is the winner. Read here.
What We're Reading
Biden team considering Bharara, Gensler to run SEC (Bloomberg News)
More concerns about corporate types on Biden’s agency review teams (The New York Times)
Sen. Ron Johnson: Some Biden cabinet picks might “have to be opposed” (The Hill)
What Biden’s Education Department might look like (The New York Times)
Charles Koch wants to work with Biden on ‘as many issues as possible’ (The Washington Post)