The Joe Biden campaign is parting ways with two key players from its Iowa team following the former vice president’s embarrassing fourth-place finish in the state’s caucuses.
Jake Braun, Biden’s Iowa state director, confirmed to the Washington Post Wednesday that he would no longer be working for the campaign in a full-time capacity, citing “family and professional reasons.”
Instead, he will return to the campaign as a consultant, a campaign spokesperson told the paper.
Both he and the campaign denied that his departure was related to Biden’s disappointing performance in the critical caucuses.
“I want to do everything in my power to defeat Donald Trump, and so I was willing to take this time away from my family. There was no way with my family situation I could bounce around the Super Tuesday states,” Braun told the newspaper.
Braun served as national deputy field director for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and was hired in May by Biden’s team.
Biden’s Iowa field director, Adrienne Bogen, will also depart the campaign, according to Politico.
Bogen appeared to confirm the news in a tweet Wednesday morning in which she expressed gratitude for the colleagues she had the chance to work with.
Unlike Bogen’s colleagues, she was not asked to head up other early states or to join the campaign’s Super Tuesday operations.
Bogen, who is getting married in April and then heading out on her honeymoon, wanted more time off from the campaign than it was prepared to offer her, Politico reported regarding the circumstances of her departure.
The site also reports, however, that friends of Bogen claim she is being scapegoated “by a floundering campaign, adding that she had complained about its dysfunction, which she blamed on higher-ups.”
Pete Kavanaugh, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, came to Bogen’s defense in a tweet Wednesday night amid reports that she was being scapegoated for the candidate’s disappointing showing in the first-in-the-nation caucus.
“@adriennebogen has done incredible & tireless work on behalf of the VP and I am proud to be on a team with her. She’s as smart, tough, and committed as they come. For someone to be smeared for commiting time to family is as sad as it is pathetic,” he wrote.
The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment by The Post on the two departures, though Biden campaign manager Greg Schultz decried media coverage of the situation in a Thursday morning tweet.
“Some really bad/inaccurate reporting going on about campaign staff. @adriennebogen is a great member of #TeamJoe. Thank you Adrienne! Do much better media at not reporting lies in a rush to print something,” the campaign manager said.