Mitch Landrieu stepping down as White House infrastructure coordinator, will join campaign as co-chair
By Arlette Saenz and Samantha Waldenberg, CNN
Washington (CNN) — Mitch Landrieu is stepping down from his role as White House infrastructure coordinator, according to a statement from the White House. A campaign official told CNN that Landrieu will join the Biden campaign as co-chair.
Deputy chief of staff Natalie Quillian will lead the infrastructure team following Landrieu’s departure, a White House official said. Quillian currently oversees implementation of legislation and Biden’s agenda.
“Mitch has always known that the real measure of success is not about scoring partisan points – it’s about building bridges, and fixing the problem at hand,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “I offer my deepest gratitude to Mitch for his leadership and for his decades of service to the American people. I will miss his counsel greatly.”
CNN reported in November that Landrieu was expected to leave the administration soon.
Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans, first joined the White House as a senior adviser to Biden more than two years ago in November 2021 and was tasked with implementing the bipartisan infrastructure law.
“The physical design of a city or community and county and the better infrastructure you have, the safer a place feels,” Landrieu said in an interview in November. “The feelings in cities are always better when things are not crumbling and neighborhoods are not separated.”
For the better part of those two years, Landrieu had been criss-crossing the country finding ways to fix America’s crumbling infrastructure. By late last year, he had logged 110,000 miles and visited 128 cities, towns, counties and tribal communities during his travels.
Biden has frequently touted Landrieu’s ability to get things done. “He gets it,” the president said about Landrieu while speaking about the infrastructure law in 2022.
“He’s a former mayor who knows that the real measure of success is not, did we score some partisan points? It’s, did we fix the problem?” Biden said.
Prior to his tenure as mayor of New Orleans from 2010 to 2018, Landrieu also served as lieutenant governor of Louisiana and as a member of the state’s House of Representatives.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
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