Marriane Williamson Loses 2 Staffers In One Day

Two of the top officials for the presidential campaign of Democrat Marianne Williamson resigned last weekend, according to a Politico report.

Williamson, who is considered a longshot candidate to unseat President Joe Biden atop the Democratic Party, has now lost two important people to her push. 

On Monday, Williamson’s deputy campaign manager, Jason Call, told Politico that he departed her team last Friday. 

On Saturday, Williamson’s campaign manager, Peter Daou, announced on Twitter that “after much consideration,” he would be leaving her campaign after spending only about one month on the job.

A joint statement issued by Williamson’s campaign and Daou said that Daou had “urgent family obligations” that he had to tend to.

A campaign staffer for Williamson said that the decision for both of those men to depart the campaign was mutual between them and Williamson, and it happened after the campaign started to lean more into a progressive direction.

As the anonymous staffer told Politico:

“The campaign is just moving in a different direction. … [Daou] comes from a background of what you would call traditional Democratic politics, and Marianne is looking for something a bit more innovative.”

Daou gave an interview with Politico, though, that contradicted that statement. He said it was “categorically false” that Williamson’s campaign was simply becoming too progressive for his liking. However, he refused to go into any more details about his decision-making process for leaving or any other discussions that happened in the campaign.

Daou is a veteran of other presidential campaigns. In 2004, he was a communications advisor for Democratic candidate John Kerry. In 2008, he headed up the online operation for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. In 2016, he was an ardent advocate for Clinton once again.

During the 2020 presidential primary, he worked for Bernie Sanders in his bid for the Democratic nomination, though he ended up quitting the party completely later in the year, according to an announcement he made on Twitter.

Daou still decided to join Williamson’s campaign, though, saying when he did so that it provided him the “best opportunity” to fight against a political system that has become corrupt. That’s a common theme that Williamson has discussed while out campaigning.

Since stepping down from Williamson’s campaign, Daou has sent multiple tweets that have suggested he could support the presidential campaign of a third-party candidate. Despite these messages, the staffer who spoke with Politico said that Daou would continue working with the Williamson campaign on an advisory basis.

After Politico published the first version of that story, though, Daou said that he wouldn’t remain in any role – even an advisory one – with the Williamson campaign.

As for Call, he’s running for Congress in Washington as a candidate for the Green Party. On Twitter, he announced that money had been raised by the party for his filing fee just one day after he resigned from Williamson’s campaign. 

Thus far, though, he hasn’t officially declared his candidacy with the Federal Elections Commission.