First head rolls after Biden’s weak Iowa finish
February 5, 2020
DES MOINES — Joe Biden’s campaign has parted ways with its Iowa field director, two days after the former vice president came in an embarrassing fourth place in the primary caucus state.
Adrienne Bogen, who headed field operations for Biden, will not stay on the campaign, even as other members of senior leadership were asked to head to other early states or to assist in Super Tuesday operations.
According to several sources within the campaign, Bogen is the first staff casualty following Biden’s disappointing showing in the state.
“We had precinct captains who didn’t know how to run a caucus. And a few didn’t even show. We lost friggin’ people on the second ballot of voting in the caucus! Someone’s head had to roll,” said a top-level Biden campaign staffer.
Some of the precinct tallies from election night showed Biden losing support after the first alignment, a sign of weak support or poorly trained precinct captains or both.
With 71 percent of caucus precincts reporting, Biden appears on track to finish in fourth place, behind Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Bogen’s departure is the first sign that the campaign is under pressure to address deficiencies after Biden’s poor Iowa showing. The partial numbers out of Iowa show him with just under 16 percent of the raw vote. That’s just three percentage points ahead of Amy Klobuchar, who surged in the last week of the campaign.
The preliminary caucus results show that Biden struggled to gain viability in counties across the state. That’s despite the former vice president’s high name recognition and the campaign’s focus on the state in the closing months before the caucuses.
Bogen last worked as the field director for the Florida gubernatorial campaign of former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, who lost in a crowded Democratic primary to Andrew Gillum. Some of her friends from Florida said she was being scapegoated and that she had privately complained about the dysfunction of the campaign, which she blamed on higher-ups.
“The Biden campaign is desperate to blame everyone for his problems in Iowa — the state party, Donald Trump, Adrienne — and that’s bullshit,” a friend, a Democrat who is not aligned with another party but did not want to discuss her separation from the campaign without her knowledge, said.
Another friend said that Bogen —who is getting married April 4 in St. Petersburg to the Florida state director of Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign — wanted more time off for her wedding and honeymoon than the campaign could afford.
Bogen did not reply to requests for comment.
Source: https://www.politico.com/
