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Top ranks of Biden’s reelection campaign begin to take shape
The upper ranks of President Biden’s anticipated reelection campaign are beginning to take shape, with another Democratic operative responsible for a key party victory last year poised to serve in a top role.
Quentin Fulks, who served as campaign manager for Sen. Raphael Warnock’s closely-watched and historically expensive victory last year in Georgia, is set to serve as deputy campaign manager for Mr. Biden’s re-election bid, four people familiar with the plans tell CBS News.
Now Fulks will help lead a re-election campaign poised to raise hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in order to keep the White House in Democratic hands. News of Fulks’s hiring was first reported by Bloomberg News.
Fulks is a native of rural Ellaville, Georgia, who also worked on the 2018 campaign of Illinois Gov. J.D. Pritzker. In an interview with The Associated Press last month, he recalled how Warnock’s campaign not only focused on building support in and around Atlanta, but also in smaller rural communities like Ellaville, where former president Donald Trump and Republicans historically easily win elections.
“In a tough environment, we chose to communicate with those voters,” Fulks told The AP. “And it set us apart, quite frankly, from the Democratic slate and even from President Biden.”
CBS News first reported that Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a senior White House official and former aide to then-Sen. Kamala Harris’s 2020 presidential bid, is set to serve as Mr. Biden’s campaign manager. She was the top choice of the president, first lady and his senior-most advisers after an extensive interview process that involved several candidates across the party, according to two people familiar with the planning.
The Biden campaign is also in the process of hiring other party operatives for senior roles, but people familiar with the talks say building the staff is expected to take some time over the next few weeks and throughout the summer. The senior staff of the campaign is eventually set to reflect a mix of geographic, gender and ethnic diversity, but also an array of experiences from recent campaigns, according to people tracking the process.
Sam Cornale, executive director of the Democratic National Committee, and Roger Lau, deputy executive director of the DNC and a former senior adviser to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, are in talks to possibly join the campaign, according to two people familiar with the conversations. Emma Brown, who ran Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly’s successful campaign last year, is also expected to take a senior job, according to one person familiar with the machinations.
Cornale and Lau are well-liked by the president’s top White House aides, who are expected to play outsized strategic roles in the forthcoming campaign. Fulks and Brown reflect recent Democratic Party successes in two swing states the president wants to win again to ensure Electoral College victories.
Drawing from the DNC’s top leadership ranks is not surprising given that the national party apparatus is poised to help bankroll and mobilize the reelection efforts. The national party is set to endorse the president’s reelection and is not planning on hosting any presidential debates, even as the president is set to face nominal primary opposition from activists Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Nancy Cordes and Nikole Killion contributed to this report.
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Charges against Georgia high school shooter’s dad echo precedent set in historic Crumbley case
(CBS DETROIT) – The father of the 14-year-old accused of killing two students and two teachers at a Georgia high school was charged in connection with the shooting. His charges follow in the wake of the convictions of two Michigan parents after a school shooting carried out by their child.
Colin Gray, 54, has been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, in the shooting that happened at Apalachee High School Wednesday morning. The 14-year-old suspect was charged with four counts of felony murder.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said the charges come from Colin Gray “knowingly allowing his son to possess a weapon.” The father was in court Friday morning, where a judge told him he could face up to 180 years in prison if convicted on all counts.
The father of the shooting suspect being charged comes after the historic case of James and Jennifer Crumbley, who were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter, becoming the first parents in the U.S. to be convicted in a mass school shooting carried out by their child.
James and Jennifer Crumbley were held responsible for their roles in the Oxford High School shooting that killed four students — Justin Shilling, Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre and Hana St. Juliana — and injured seven other people on Nov. 30, 2021.
During their trials, the prosecution argued that the Crumbley parents ignored their son’s mental health needs and purchased the gun that he used in the shooting.
Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald, the prosecutor in the Crumbley case who set the precedent for prosecuting parents in mass school shootings, reacted to the news that the Georgia suspect’s father was charged in an interview with CNN Thursday.
“My reaction is rage because you know it the prosecution of the Crumbleys was never, ever meant to be a floodgate of charges against parents, because it was such an egregious set of facts,” said McDonald. “I share the emotions of the entire country that, even after that well-publicized case, we’re still here.”
Former federal prosecutor and defense attorney Rick Convertino, appearing on CBS News Detroit to discuss the shooting at Apalachee before it was revealed that the shooter’s father had been charged, noted the differences between the gun laws in Georgia and Michigan and claimed “gun culture” is different in Georgia than it is in Michigan. Georgia passed a law in 2022 that allowed residents to carry without a permit, which means adults do not need to have a permit to buy or carry buy rifles, shotguns or handguns.
One of the most significant differences, according to Convertino, is with the gun storage laws. “In Georgia, there’s no specific child-preventive act that requires the guns to be secured and safe from unrestricted children to have access to it,” said Convertino.
There is also no gun lock law in Georgia or any “red flag” laws that allow for the removal of guns from someone who is determined to be a risk for harming themselves or other people. Georgia’s laws are among the least strict in the nation, according to a CBS News analysis.
“We’ve seen this 14-year-old shooter had made threats a year before. The father apparently said to the police that he bought the AR-style weapon for a Christmas present for his minor child,” Kris Brown, president of gun control advocacy organization Brady, told CBS News’ Natalie Brand, drawing a parallel to the Crumbley case.
Brown said Colin Gray’s arrest and the convictions of James and Jennifer Crumbley send a message.
“If you have a firearm in the home, you better safely store that firearm, or you will have a risk if something happens of being criminally charged,” she said.
Michigan’s new gun safety laws went into effect in February, a little over two years after the Oxford High School shooting.
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