Announcement from Executive Editor Dafna Linzer and Managing Editor, Politics and Washington, Mike Zapler:

All —For some editors, the great joy is in conceiving and shaping a story, others revel in the mentorship that comes with leading a team. Sam Stein excels at both but his true gift is seeing the full picture and the potential in every narrative and in each writer. He is a POLITICO at heart, a news junkie, an ideas machine, a deeply thoughtful and passionate journalist and observer of Washington and the world.

Moreover, Sam is a natural leader who helped rebuild our talented White House team, helped launch a hugely successful product in West Wing Playbook, oversees our coverage of the 45th and 46^th presidents and still finds time to write beautiful profiles of transformational Washington figures. He did all this in fewer than 24 months at POLITICO.

His next 24 months, and ours, are about to become even busier.

Effective immediately, Sam becomes Deputy Managing Editor for Politics, leading our 2024 election strategy across the newsroom. In this new role, Sam will be responsible for coordinating election coverage across every team involved in the all-consuming undertaking of covering a presidential race.

Elections and the exercise of democratic ideals are an obsession for our publication, and a pinnacle moment to demonstrate that no one can cover races as robustly and authoritatively as we can.

Sam will be our team captain in this effort, working hand-in-hand with national politics editor Scott Bland and his counterpart - all of whom will continue to report to Mike - on daily campaign coverage to create a holistic and cohesive plan that harnesses the best of POLITICO.

From the White House, Sam will continue to lead coverage of the reelect and Eun will oversee our daily White House report once the campaign gets underway.

This move into the heart of our election coverage is a logical progression for Sam. He came to us after three years as politics editor of The Daily Beast, where he ran campaign coverage while helping to manage its Washington newsroom. He previously was an editor and reporter for the Huffington Post and has been a longtime contributor at MSNBC.

Please join us in congratulating Sam on his new role.

Dafna
Mike