Bay State native Rufus Gifford of Concord, Massachusetts, was hired yesterday by former Vice President Joe Biden as deputy campaign manager for the former US Vice President’s 2020 presidential campaign.
The openly gay former top advisor to Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, Gifford also served as US ambassador to Denmark from 2013 to 2017.
Born in Boston, Gifford grew up in Manchester-by-the-Sea, graduated from St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, and earned his undergraduate degree from Brown University in Rhode Island. More recently, he was one of the favorites in the highly contested Democratic primary for Niki Tsongas’s US Congressional seat (which ultimately went to LGBTQ ally Lori Trahan).
Back in 2017, he told Boston Spirit, no matter what happened in that race and what he’d do next, he just wanted to be “part of the political debate going forward.”
In his new role with the Biden campaign, Gifford will focus on “finance, external outreach and coalition building, according to campaign officials familiar with the move,” reported The Washington Post yesterday, which went on to say:
“Rufus will focus on places where finance intersects with policy and political work and will also occasionally serve as a spokesperson for the campaign,” said one person familiar with the move, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the hire was not yet public.
The hiring is the second major move by Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s recently appointed campaign manager, in less than a week. She replaced the chief executive at the Democratic National Committee Friday with Mary Beth Cahill, a party adviser and former campaign manager for the 2004 Democratic nominee, John F. Kerry.
The Biden campaign has also recently brought on Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s former fundraisers, Michael Pratt and Colleen Coffey, as senior advisers. The pair worked for Warren going back to her 2012 Senate bid and briefly worked on her presidential campaign, but left when she decided not to hold any high-dollar fundraising events.
Along with Gifford’s stellar political background, he acknowledges the LGBTQ perspective he brings to the work he does, telling Boston Spirit, back in 2017, “Growing up on the North Shore in a very traditional family, it wasn’t a culture where I fit in. It made me figure out who I was in this world. It made me work hard. It made me fight. It made me take risks. It made me want to leave home and see the world. It made me want to meet people who are different. In that way, my sexuality so much informed who I became professionally.”
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