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WILMINGTON, Delaware: Joe Biden’s transition team isn’t waiting for a verdict in the presidential race before getting to work.
As officials continue to count ballots in several swing states, Biden’s longtime aide Ted Kaufman is leading efforts to ensure the former vice president can begin building a government in anticipation of a victory.
Kaufman is a former Delaware senator who was appointed to fill the position that became vacant when Biden was elected vice president. He also served on Barack Obama’s transition team in 2008 and helped draft the legislation that formalizes the presidential transition process.
Biden first asked Kaufman to begin work on a transition for good measure in April, shortly after the former vice president closed the presidential nomination at the end of a once-crowded Democratic primary. Now, each day after the election that passes without a declared winner is one less day to begin formally preparing to take control of the White House.
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Transition can be a hectic process even under normal circumstances.
Meanwhile, a strange political limbo has been told. Biden’s team is moving forward but cannot address everything that needs to be accomplished; President Donald Trump continues to claim without evidence that the election is being stolen.
It’s at least reminiscent of the 2000 presidential race and that year’s post-election legal fight for the recount in Florida. After more than a month, the dispute between Republican George W Bush and Democrat Al Gore was decided by the Supreme Court, truncating the transition period to just 39 days before the inauguration in January 2001.
Clay Johnson, who led Bush’s transition team, said Biden’s advisers “can’t wait to be sure that the president-elect is really the president-elect. They have to hurry up and move on. “
Johnson said that in June 1999, about 17 months before Election Day 2000, Bush approached him to spearhead the possible transition, having seen his father go through the process 11 years earlier. Before Election Day, Bush had already decided on Andy Card to serve as chief of staff for both the transition and the White House.
Live updates: Biden on the brink of victory in the US presidential race.
Johnson thought they were early. But then came the count.
After an initial 10 days, Bush’s running mate, Dick Cheney, told Johnson to start raising money and making personnel decisions, declaring that the race “will be resolved one way or another.”
The Bush team was unable to conduct FBI background checks on potential Cabinet members and other nominees without an official winner declared. Instead, he used a former White House general counsel to the Reagan administration to conduct interviews designed to detect potential problems that might have cropped up in background checks.
“You have to assume that you are and not be presumptuous, but they better work hard like they are,” Johnson said of Biden’s team. “And they should have started doing that last Tuesday night.”
Biden’s campaign has declined to comment on the transition process. His closest advisers say the top priority will be announcing a White House chief of staff and then putting together the pieces needed to tackle the coronavirus.
A president gets 4,000 appointees and more than 1,200 of them must be confirmed by the Senate. That could be a challenge for Biden, as the Senate could continue to be controlled by Republicans.
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The transition process formally begins once the General Services Administration determines the winner based on all available data. That’s a vague enough guide that Trump can pressure the agency director to stop.
It is also unclear whether the president would meet personally with Biden. President Barack Obama met with Trump less than a week after the election, but there was no dispute that he had surpassed Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College.
Whenever the process begins, Biden will have to deal with the coronavirus, which has killed more than 230,000 Americans. Biden has vowed to use his transition period to meet with the governors of each state and ask them to impose a nationwide mask-wearing mandate. He says he plans to circumvent any resistance to secure such rules from local and county officials.
Another key decision will be how Biden decides to deploy his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris. His campaign has indicated that Biden will establish a coronavirus task force at the White House level as Trump did, but it is unclear whether he will turn to Harris to lead it. Vice President Mike Pence is leading the current panel.
While his team awaits the results of the vote count, Biden huddles at his Wilmington home with the best advisers and family. Harris has also been sticking together, occupying a Delaware hotel with her family since election night and joining Biden when he made comments in recent days.
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, a former rival from Biden’s presidential primary, said he hopes Harris will be “a real partner” of Biden and hopes to see her “handle the major issues of importance.”
