WIKI-—During the 2012 Obama campaign, Anita Dunn helped Obama prepare for his debates.When Journalist Lee Fang asked Dunn if she felt it was “disingenuous” to advise Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign “while simultaneously being paid by a lot of corporations to lobby against his reforms”
Dunn said in her response, “I work with some corporations because the fact of the matter is we’re in a democracy and there’s a dialogue and people have a right to be heard. And the fact of the matter is that most of the time when I work with people, they have a story to be told and we tell it.”
Ahead of reporting in The New York Times about Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual abuse, Weinstein reached out to Dunn for public relations advice.
Dunn was hired as a senior advisor to Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign in 2019 to assist with communications strategy. She first met Biden in the 1980s during her time as the communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and they reconnected in 2008 when Biden was named as Obama’s running mate. After Biden’s disappointing fourth-place finish in the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses, Dunn was elevated to a more senior position managing overall campaign strategy, personnel, and finances.
On September 5, 2020, Dunn was announced to be a co-chair of the Biden-Harris Transition Team, which planned the presidential transition of Joe Biden.[43][44] After Biden’s victory in the general election, The Atlantic reported that Dunn was “the only person in modern presidential politics who has been in the inner circle of two winning candidates—first Barack Obama’s and now Biden’s.”[5]
On January 15, 2021, it was announced that Dunn would serve as a senior advisor to the president of the United States in the Biden administration. Dunn works alongside fellow senior advisors Mike Donilon and Cedric Richmond.
Dunn is married to Robert Bauer, former partner at Perkins Coie and former personal counsel to President Obama and the White House Counsel. The couple has two children. In 2008, Newsweek named Dunn and Bauer the new “power couple” in Washington, D.C.
-PJ