How two long-term Biden aides led efforts to court Republicans ahead of the Senate infrastructure deal

By Phil Mattingly, CNN

In touting the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill hours after it passed the Senate with 19 Republican votes on Tuesday, President Joe Biden took a moment to needle his critics.

“From the time I announced my candidacy, bringing the country together and doing things in a bipartisan way was characterized as a relic of an earlier age,” Biden told reporters gathered in the East Room. “As you may well remember, I never believed that. I still don’t.”

The Senate vote was a crucial but by no means final step in the bill reaching Biden’s desk. A complicated legislative high-wire act awaits in the House, where the measure’s fate is tied to the passage of the $3.5 trillion second piece of Biden’s agenda. But the remarks, while interspersed with a few “I told you so asides,” also hinted at what he and his team of advisers already see as a critical, if quiet, element of their bipartisan win.

“This is a moment that lives beyond the headlines, beyond partisan sound bites, beyond the culture of instant outrage, disinformation and conflict as entertainment,” Biden said at one point. “This is about us doing the real hard work of governing.”

For months, near daily headlines tracked the winding progress of the infrastructure talks between the White House and ten Senate Republicans and Democrats. But what garnered less attention was the subtle, behind the scenes work of a team of White House staffers to lay the foundation for those talks.

While the most intensive efforts were deployed to ensure Democrats stayed unified — and behind — Biden’s agenda, significant time went into courting Republicans.

Led by a pair of long-time Biden aides, the White House legislative affairs office also spent months reaching out to Republican lawmakers, not with specific asks or requests, but in an effort to find out what they needed — and what made them tick.

Equal parts relationship management, legislative horse-trading and subtle lawmaker care-and-feeding, the effort used to be commonplace in Washington.

But after years of partisan gridlock, small gestures like regular phone calls and invites to the White House struck many on Capitol Hill as novel.

Interviews with more than two dozen administration officials, lawmakers and congressional aides, many of whom requested anonymity to discuss matters that hadn’t been described publicly, reveal a White House attuned to the particular needs of a handful of moderate Republicans and a steady, if unspectacular focus on winning their trust over a period of months.

In the weeks before Biden took office, he made clear to his senior advisors that his legislative affairs team, the tip of the spear for his agenda on Capitol Hill, would be a full-service operation, officials said.

“He just set a high bar, a strong direction and expectation that we would be very responsive and alert to what’s going on up there,” said Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the President and one of Biden’s closest advisors.

While Democrats were the focal point of Biden’s sweeping agenda push, Richetti says the President also made clear he wanted his team to “try and nurture and encourage bipartisan activity.”

That extended beyond simple niceties. There was a deliberate push to identify bills important to individual lawmakers — and see what could be done to get them to Biden’s desk.

In his first six months, Biden signed 26 bipartisan bills into law. Few rose to the level of national news, but each served as a priority for at least one Republican co-sponsor, if not more.

On some proposals brought their way, the White House simply disagreed on policy grounds. But Biden made clear to his team the effort was to be a key piece of their overall approach.

Biden tapped Louisa Terrell, a Delaware native and former deputy chief of staff to then-Senator Biden, to run the operation. Ricchetti, with extensive Capitol Hill relationships himself, would also play a central role.

The two aides, in the words of one official, “have an innate sense of what [Biden] wants and expects” based on their experience with him. It’s a critical component, given how Terrell described the team’s philosophy.

“Our approach was really rooted in the President himself,” Terrell told CNN.

“I’m pretty sure his head would explode”

As Terrell and Ricchetti spoke by phone with CNN in their first joint interview late last week, they both had an eye on the Senate floor, where the infrastructure effort was on its way toward the finish line.

Yet their focus was less on the dynamics of the deal where they served as Biden’s lead negotiators, and more on the path that led them there.

Biden’s general direction for the team wasn’t revelatory. The partisan divide is still very real and on many of Biden’s biggest — and potentially most transformative — priorities, Republican opposition is strong and unified.

But in practice, several lawmakers said the outreach carried an attention to detail had been lacking for years. President Barack Obama’s point people were well-regarded — Terrell herself served on the team in his first term — but Obama himself had limited interest in a personal touch that many lawmakers craved.

The last four years under Trump were defined less by proactive outreach and more by 280-character attacks. Democrats were almost entirely in the dark. And Republicans privately bemoaned their inability to get calls returned from key White House officials.

Biden, on the other hand, spent 36 years in the Senate, where his career was defined by an unabashed personal approach. Attention to little details, like a small but important matter back home or ensuring an invitation to a White House event, went a long way with lawmakers. And Biden, of course, has his own deep congressional relationships, a fact he doesn’t hesitate to point out during briefings from his team, officials say.

It’s not uncommon, mid-discussion with senior aides, for Biden to reach for the phone and ask to be connected to a lawmaker on the topic of that moment, even if it ends up taking the briefing — or the day in general — off schedule.

That creates a balancing act for Biden’s team. No president has time to be read into every little thing happening on Capitol Hill. Biden, however, is both genuinely interested and doesn’t want to be surprised, officials say.

And if he ever hears from a lawmaker that his team hadn’t been responsive to something, “I’m pretty sure his head would explode,” one official said describing Biden’s expectations.

Uphill from the start

In the weeks leading up to Biden’s inauguration, Terrell and Ricchetti focused on outreach, contacting each congressional office and building out a team. The first hires were two senior congressional aides, Reema Dodin and Shuwanza Goff, to serve as Terrell’s lead Senate and House liaisons, respectively.

At a time of cabinet secretary and senior staff intrigue, it wasn’t the kind of announcement that generated public attention. But it sent a message.

Dodin had been the deputy chief of staff and floor director for Sen. Richard Durbin, the chamber’s second-ranked Democrat. Goff was the floor director for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Their reputations in the insular world of Capitol Hill preceded them — on both sides of the aisle.

“You’re always looking for signs with a new administration — what do they prioritize? How are they going to operate?” said one long-time Republican chief of staff. “This signaled they actually wanted people on the ground who knew their sh*t.”

Almost from the start, Terrell’s team faced an uphill battle in their pitch to Republicans. The administration’s first major legislative pursuit was a $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill that would eventually pass with zero Republican votes. The bill’s quick enactment, in the middle of dueling public health and economic crises, was a cornerstone legislative achievement for Biden and his team.

But the process — and outcome — infuriated several key Republican senators.

It was up to Terrell and her team to mend fences. Rather than re-litigate the relief law or battle on the major agenda items to come, they quickly focused on a handful of specific state and regional issues that mattered to key Republican senators.

As the larger partisan battles continued through the spring and early summer, over Covid and vaccines and the border, the legislative team focused on keeping the temperature down, a stark contrast to the uber combative nature of the Trump White House.

“There really is a way in which we have put our head down, not gotten distracted by the noise and just keep driving,” Terrell said. “We are running a marathon and relationships are long.”

Biden and bill signings

In the weeks after the Covid relief bill passed, Biden signed a handful of bipartisan bills, many of which were designed at least in part to re-establish trust with Republicans. Among them was a bill to provide a temporary fix to an arcane 135-year-old law that would allow cruise ships to reach Alaska, a critical priority for Alaska’s Republican congressional delegation which they had been doggedly pursuing.

The three Republicans — Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, along with Rep. Don Young — were invited to the White House for a private signing event. Biden’s team ensured there was ample time built in for the President to speak at length with the three after.

Biden listened as the group laid out key economic priorities and concerns for their state, according to officials familiar with the private conversation. He noted there could be opportunity for future bipartisan agreement on a bill sponsored by Sullivan to address care for veterans exposed to burn pits.

Murkowski would become a key player in the infrastructure talks. She and Sullivan both voted for the final bill.

A month later, the same process played out with members of Iowa’s congressional delegation after the passage of a rural veterans mental health bill. As Biden met privately with the group of Republicans and Democrats, he called the mother of Brandon Ketchum, an Iowa National Guardsman who died by suicide in 2016 and the bill’s namesake.

From private bill signings and Oval Office meetings to East Room events, the team sought out opportunities to get lawmakers to the White House — and face time with the president. In Biden, Terrell and Ricchetti have something their recent predecessors lacked: a president who reveres the institution of Congress instead of loathing it, and relishes talking shop with lawmakers.

“It makes a huge difference,” Terrell said of the concerted effort to get Biden one-on-one with members of both parties.

The final push

By June, Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure push was bogging down. The gulf between the White House and Republicans remained wide and Biden decided to shut down one line of talks entirely. Some Congressional Democrats were calling on him to ditch the bipartisan effort altogether.

But Biden made clear to his top advisers, repeatedly, that he wanted the deal, officials said.

The full scale of Biden’s operation, months into their work, had by now gelled into clear, if occasionally unorthodox roles, with some crucial help from a few senior advisers and Cabinet secretaries.

White House chief of staff Ron Klain became the primary point of contact for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi — with Schumer known to call Klain multiple times a day, just about every day, in the midst of key legislative moments, according to multiple officials.

While Senate Republicans still viewed him skeptically, the vestige of an Oval Office meeting during the consideration of the Covid relief bill, Klain oversaw the full scope of the White House approach, from messaging and politics to the work of the legislative team.

Ricchetti, while close with many Democrats, had become Biden’s point person with several key GOP senators. Through the ups and downs of the bipartisan talks, one thing became clear, senators told CNN: Ricchetti spoke for Biden.

It was Ricchetti and Sen. Rob Portman, both Ohio natives, who sequestered themselves behind closed doors for hours to hammer through the final, thorniest issues, of what became the bipartisan deal.

One GOP senator, who spoke on the condition of background to candidly discuss internal dynamics, told CNN that Ricchetti would always pick up the phone, even when he knew the senator on the other end was frustrated and calling to vent.

“He’s tried to be an honest broker, he’s result oriented and highly accessible. There’s a lot to be said for that,” the senator said.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo became a critical conduit to Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican central to any bipartisan deal, who had publicly chastised Biden’s senior staff during the Covid relief effort.

Former Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond, who Biden plucked from the House to run his Office of Public Engagement kept close touch with former House colleagues. Anita Dunn, Biden’s senior advisor, similarly knew and worked with dozens of members in past jobs both inside and outside of government. And Brian Deese, the National Economic Council director, would find himself on Capitol Hill as much as anyone to guide the policy process, joining Ricchetti and Terrell as the lead negotiators with the bipartisan group.

“Honestly, in the early days it seemed very possible it could turn into a cluster,” one House Democrat told CNN with a laugh. “Yet somehow they’ve all kind of slotted into specific roles and I can’t say I’ve ever had a tough time getting a call back.”

Terrell is described as a choreographer of sorts. She deals directly with lawmakers and, if necessary, connects them to the policy experts inside the administration to address questions or concerns. She ensures Biden’s senior staff is aware of lingering or emerging issues, while also laying out who to call and when.

“She is the one who keeps the train on the tracks,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican, said of Terrell. Capito would know. She was the lead negotiator in the first infrastructure talks with the White House. They fell apart in early June, with Biden pulling the plug in a short call with Capito.

But Biden made clear to his senior team he wanted Capito kept in the loop, regardless of whether she would end up supporting any final deal.

Terrell and her team made sure that was the case. On Monday, with the final deal clinched and including key elements from Capito’s own efforts, Biden called the senator directly to thank her for her work.

The next day, Capito voted for the final bill.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Lauren Fox contributed to this report.