U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, has been chosen as the first national co-chairman of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, The New York Times reported Friday (May 31). The selection could improve the former vice president’s stock with black voters and members of Congress at a time when two black Democrats, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California, also are seeking the party’s nomination for president.
Richmond worked with Booker and Harris when he chaired the Congressional Black Caucus in 2017 and 2018, and Politico reported that he gave maximum monetary contributions to their campaigns. In August, he facilitated a question-and-answer session with another Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is white, at Dillard University in New Orleans.
But he also has been a vocal supporter of Biden, a white man who was a senator from Delaware before becoming Barack Obama’s vice president. Richmond was pushing Biden to run as early as 2016, the year Republican Donald Trump was elected president, and he formally endorsed Biden in April, Politico reported.
What will be his role in the Biden campaign? Richmond told The Times: “My biggest strength is offering political advice and using my political instincts to come up with strategy, and not just strategy in the African-American community. I think the real strength is in the South and other parts of the country."
