WASHINGTON — Marty Walsh remembers what it was like when a Cabinet secretary would come to town.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really is a big deal. They give you the dates, and you just clear your schedule,\u201d said Walsh, a former mayor of Boston.<\/p>\n
He recalls 300 people packing into a room to hear Juli\u00e1n Castro, then Housing and Urban Development secretary. \u201cHe was speaking on behalf of President Obama and Vice President Biden, and people hung on every word.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now Walsh, as secretary of labor, is on the other side of the equation, crisscrossing the country on behalf of President Joe Biden\u2019s American Jobs Plan. As the massive infrastructure package goes through torturous negotiations in Congress, Walsh and a handful of other Cabinet secretaries have launched an ambitious travel schedule to promote the plan and the larger Biden agenda.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s clear the administration has decided to take their message on the road,\u201d said Ravi Perry, head of the political science department at Howard University. \u201cThe amount of trips, how much they\u2019ve traveled \u2026 there really has been a shift.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starting around the beginning of May, Biden\u2019s Cabinet members have made dozens of TV appearances and trips around the country, promoting the Biden agenda with an ambitious roadshow.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know that I can think of an equivalent to this kind of rollout,\u201d said HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, who in recent weeks has traveled to Newark, New Jersey; Kansas City, Missouri; and Tulsa, Oklahoma. \u201cWe are an extension of the administration. We are carrying the president\u2019s agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cabinet outreach campaign is particularly striking in the context of the country\u2019s gradual emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic. Although restrictions on mass gatherings are being lifted all around the country, several Cabinet secretaries noted that the national mood is not quite ready for large political rallies.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not getting the crowds, of course,\u201d said Walsh, who misses the intimacy of working lunches without social distancing restrictions. \u201cIt really restricts what you can do. You want to be around people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much of the traveling has been done by Biden\u2019s Jobs Cabinet: Walsh, Fudge, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.<\/p>\n
Buttigieg, who said he was \u201citching to get on the road since Day One,\u201d said the presence of a Cabinet secretary brings particular gravitas. More than perhaps any position in government, he said, Cabinet secretaries are a direct extension of the president and his policies.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou represent the administration and the president, writ large,\u201d said Buttigieg, who has traveled to North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. \u201cIt\u2019s a way to let people know that they\u2019re important.\u201d<\/p>\n
A former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg recalled, \u201cIt was a pretty big deal if a regional administrator for a federal agency came to town, much less a Cabinet secretary.\u201d<\/p>\n
The campaign is proceeding with active coordination from the White House. Fudge said her department plans her travel schedule, but the White House regularly makes requests for her to appear in certain places or arranges for her to team up with another secretary for a joint appearance. Biden announced the informal Jobs Cabinet grouping in April, telling reporters that the quintet would be asked \u201cto take special responsibility to explain the plan to the American public.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anita Dunn, senior adviser to Biden, said the Cabinet members had largely been confined to long-distance television interviews for the first few months of the administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all been virtual until quite recently,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Dunn described the Cabinet members as \u201caccomplished people who represent the administration and allow us to increase our reach.\u201d<\/p>\n
It also helps that several of the secretaries are former mayors, like Buttigieg and Walsh, or former governors like Granholm and Raimondo, enabling them to find easy common ground with local officials and stakeholders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a huge advantage for the administration,\u201d Dunn said.<\/p>\n
The logistics and cost of planning a secretary\u2019s visit are also far less daunting than they would be for the president or vice president. Dunn said the secretaries travel on a mixture of government planes and commercial airlines, and Cabinet secretaries have their own security details, but not Secret Service protections. As a result, the administration can get the impact of a direct presidential emissary for far less cost and hassle.<\/p>\n
In some cases the secretary\u2019s role is to rally sympathy and momentum; in others they seek to reassure nervous audiences in deeply Republican states that the Biden agenda won\u2019t leave them behind.<\/p>\n
Granholm, speaking on the phone during a visit to West Virginia, said her primary goal on that trip was to reassure citizens of the coal mining-dependent state that Biden\u2019s clean energy plans won\u2019t destroy their economy. A former governor of Michigan, Granholm compared West Virginia to her home state when the auto industry started contracting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get that fear and nervousness when a state\u2019s whole identity and economy is wrapped around a sector that\u2019s shrinking. I get when a community has been on its knees,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Her presence in West Virginia \u201cmeans that the president of the United States deeply cares,\u201d Granholm said.<\/p>\n
The approach represents a direct departure from the previous administration. Former President Donald Trump\u2019s Cabinet secretaries did their share of pre-pandemic speaking engagements, but Trump generally preferred to be his own messenger and promoter through Twitter, interviews with sympathetic media outlets and famously raucous rallies with himself as the centerpiece.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a huge shift in how Cabinet members are being used by the president,\u201d Perry said. \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing here is a much more decentralized executive branch. In some ways, it\u2019s a return to normalcy in terms of domestic diplomacy.\u201d<\/p>\n