Democratic strategist Charlie Baker has joined Hillary Clinton’s campaign as chief administrative officer, a campaign official told Bloomberg Politics.
A founding partner in Dewey Square Group, a political strategy firm close to the Clinton campaign, he has a long history in presidential politics dating to Michael Dukakis’s 1988 campaign and Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. He was also a senior adviser to the 2004 John Kerry campaign.
Baker’s hiring is particularly significant. He is one of the most respected, veteran strategists in the Democratic Party and will reassure a lot of old hands that Clinton has an additional experienced operative on board with longstanding and high-level presidential campaign experience, while many of Clinton’s other senior aides are relatively new to presidential politics.
Baker combines a disciplined sense of strategy with a Boston brawler’s feel for hard-nosed tactics. A person familiar with Baker’s portfolio says that among other matters, he will deal with legal issues, the Democratic National Committee and national convention, and party constituency.
Baker was on the board of Priorities USA Action, a super- PAC that supported Barack Obama in 2012 and is expected to support Clinton in 2015, but has resigned from that position, the campaign official said.
To contact the authors on this story: Jennifer Epstein at jepstein32@bloomberg.net Kerry Luft at kluft2@bloomberg.net