President-elect Donald Trump’s first appointment experienced Florida political operative Susie Wiles as his chief of staff.
BACKGROUND: The daughter of NFL player and sportscaster Pat Summerall, Wiles worked in the Washington office of New York Rep. Jack Kemp out of college before joining the Reagan administration has a scheduler. When she returned to Florida, she ran the gubernatorial campaigns of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis. Wiles was also a partner at Ballard Partners with Dan McFaul, former chief of staff for three Panhandle congressmen, Joe Scarborough, Jeff Miller and Matt Gaetz.
McFaul discussed Wiles on “Real News with Rick Outzen” this morning. He talked about how he first heard of her.
“Susie is just a fantastic human being. Lemme say, first of all, I first learned and got to know of Susie in 2010 when she was running Rick Scott’s race. He was running a primary against Bill McCollum, who was a very popular longtime congressman from Orlando and, at the time, the Attorney General for Florida. He was widely expected just to coast into a primary victory.
And a good friend of mine in Washington, Jennifer Cox, who’s a very talented press secretary, one of the best of the business, told me, ‘Hey, I’m Dan. I’m going to Florida. I’m going to go work for Rick Scott.’ I’m like, ‘Why are you doing that, Jen? You got a great job up here. What are you thinking?’ And she replied, ‘Well, Susie Wiles is running the race, and I really want to work for Susie.’ And I have found that theme repeated over and over again, folks that have worked with and for Susie are they take a bullet for her. They really love her. She’s a great person to work for, a great leader, and really a sharp and intelligent individual.”
OPEN SENATE SEAT
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio will be appointed Secretary of State. I asked Dan who he thinks Gov. DeSantis will appoint to fill the seat.
“I hear actually Moody’s name (Attorney General Ashley Moody) a whole lot. Certainly someone who’s very loyal to Governor DeSantis, his chief of staff, James (Uthmeier), I hear his name mentioned out there. I am betting that it’s not going to be a House member. The Republicans are going to end up with a razor-thin majority in the House. And I’m betting that they don’t want to take a Republican sitting House member out of commission. So I’m thinking it’s going to be somebody in the state government, and again, the name I hear a lot is Ashley Moody’s name.”
