VP Kamala Harris to get savvy communications director for the presidential campaign

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Brian Fallon, a former top aide to Hillary Clinton who recently stepped down as head of the group Demand Justice, will join the Biden campaign as Vice President Harris’s communications director, according to two people familiar with the move.

Fallon, who is known for a hard-hitting, nimble communications style, joins a growing team of aides focused on supporting the vice president’s political activity, with top Biden campaign aides planning an expansive role for her over the next year.

The campaign confirmed Fallon’s hire on Tuesday.

“Brian brings a wealth of expertise and knowledge on the issues that matter most to the American people,” Sheila Nix, Harris’s campaign chief of staff, said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to have him join the team, and know he will be a huge asset to reelecting President Biden and Vice President Harris.”

Fallon declined to comment. He is expected to start working on the campaign next month.

Fallon spent the last several years running Demand Justice, a liberal advocacy group that urged Democrats to prioritize the elevation of left-leaning judges to the courts. The group has led calls to expand the Supreme Court – an idea President Biden has repeatedly rejected – and has often been critical of the Biden White House for not moving aggressively enough to remake the federal judiciary.

“We always think that the White House could be doing more,” Fallon told Politico in August. “The president has a very old school institutionalist-minded approach to the Supreme Court, where he doesn’t want to actively be seen as reducing public confidence, even if the court deserves it.”

The White House argues that Biden has moved forcefully to place qualified judges on the federal courts, undoing much of the influence of former president Donald Trump and greatly increasing the courts’ diversity.

Fallon flagged his past criticisms of the Biden administration as part of his hiring process and pledged to be fully supportive of the White House’s policies in his new role, according to the people briefed on his hiring who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

Before Demand Justice, Fallon served as the national press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and worked as an aide to Attorney General Eric Holder and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), now the Senate majority leader.

Harris has taken on an increasingly forceful role ahead of the 2024 election, traveling the country to attack Republicans on a range of policies from education standards in Florida to reproductive rights in Iowa. Harris is expected to expand that role next year as a top surrogate for Biden, going after Republicans in ways that he may shy away from.

Republicans, meanwhile, have started to ramp up their own attacks on Harris, with some suggesting that Biden, 81, would be unlikely to complete a second term should he be reelected.

“A vote for President Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris,” former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who is running for the Republican nomination, said on Fox News this summer.

In addition to Nix, Sergio Gonzales, who worked as a senior policy adviser to Harris when she was in the Senate, works as a senior adviser for the vice president on the reelection campaign and is based in Wilmington, Del., the campaign’s headquarters.