The Biden-Harris campaign is denying any involvement with the exclusion of battleground Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) from a coordinated campaign effort in Michigan after she called on President Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.
Scholten, a first-term House Democrat who flipped a Republican stronghold in 2022, was reportedly cut off from a coordinated effort between the Biden campaign and the Michigan Democratic Party to elect candidates up and down the ballot, according to Politico. However, after reportedly facing questions from the outlet, Biden campaign spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg said she would be welcome to participate.
“Rep. Scholten is welcome at the coordinated campaign and we look forward to campaigning with her this fall,” Ehrenberg said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
A Biden campaign official denied that the decision to leave Scholten off of the campaign efforts came from the president’s team.
“This did not come from Wilmington,” the official told the Washington Examiner.
The “coordinated campaign” focuses on local get-out-the-vote efforts for all candidates on the ticket. For Michigan, a battleground state that will likely decide if Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, or former President Donald Trump wins in November, these campaign efforts can be crucial for down-ballot incumbents.
The initial decision to remove Scholten from the coordinated effort could have meant that Democratic organizers campaigning in her district would have promoted Biden and the party’s Senate nominee’s accomplishments, but not Scholten’s.
Sources close to the conversations told Politico that the decision came from the state party soon after Scholten called for Biden to step aside. She is one of 20 congressional Democrats so far to do so in the wake of the president’s poor debate performance.
People familiar with the discussions said the House Democrat infuriated state leaders for speaking out against the president on the same day he was visiting Michigan and for not informing them of her plans. Sources also told Politico that Scholten had been uninvited to meetings discussing the campaign efforts because she no longer was backing the Biden ticket.
Scholten is one of 19 House Democrats who have asked Biden to pass the torch to a new nominee. The president is facing growing waves of anxiety over his ability to defeat Trump later this year, particularly among his strongest allies in Democratic leadership.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a prominent Democrat who was an impeachment manager against Trump and is running for the seat previously held by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, called on Biden to step aside as the nominee on Wednesday.
Biden has repeatedly stated he is running for reelection and will not step down, while eyes are on congressional Democrats to see if they will join their colleagues in calling for him to withdraw or “suck it up,” according to Democratic strategist Brad Bannon, the president of the political polling and consulting firm Bannon Communications Research.
He told the Washington Examiner that “every day that we cross off the calendar strengthens Biden’s support with Democrats” and that his nomination is inevitable at this point unless he makes a different decision within the coming days.
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“If in a week that President Biden is still intent on running, it will be, you know, it will be incumbent on the dissenting Democrats to get behind Joe Biden and support the Democratic nominee,” Bannon said. “But I think that this thing has to be resolved, one way or the other in the next week.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to Scholten and the Michigan Democratic Party for comment.