Current Position: White House Director of Advance (since January 2009)
Credit: WashingtonPost.com
Why He Matters
As Barack Obama’s director of advance, Beliveau runs every major event that takes place outside the White House, including all of the president’s trips, both foreign and domestic.
Though that task may sounds daunting, Beliveau has experience. He served as director of advance for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, overseeing Obama’s signature grassroots events, which routinely drew thousands of supporters. He was executive director and CEO of the 2009 Presidential Inaugural Committee, presiding over an event that drew more than one million people to the National Mall and required 5,000 portable toilets.
Beliveau is not new to Democratic presidential campaigns—although he was new to winning them. He worked on both Al Gore and Sen. John F. Kerry’s (D-Mass.) presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004, respectively.
At a Glance
Current Position: White House Director of Advance (since January 2009)
Career History: Director of Advance, Obama-Biden campaign (2007 to 2008); Lobbyist, Patton Boggs (2004 to 2007); Kerry-Lieberman Presidential campaign (2004)
Birthday: N/A
Hometown: Augusta, Me.
Alma Mater: Colby College, B.A. (government), 1999; Georgetown University, J.D., 2004
Spouse: Catherine Cameron
Religion: N/A
Office: Eisenhower Executive Office Building
1650 Pennsylvania Avenue
Web site
Path to Power
A Maine native, Beliveau’s father, Severin Beliveau, is a prominent attorney who once ran unsuccessfully for governor as a Democrat.
It was during that campaign that Beliveau first showed a talent for event-planning, his mother, Cynthia Murray-Beliveau, told the Wall Street Journal. “After a spaghetti supper during his father's unsuccessful campaign for Maine's governor, the young Mr. Beliveau piped in with his own suggestions for the next day's events, including signs to draw crowds and woo people from different neighborhoods,” the Journal reported.
"My husband and I rolled our eyes," his mother said, "But Emmett's ideas were better than our own staff's plans."
Beliveau stayed in Maine to attend Colby College, graduating with a degree in government in 1999.
Campaign experience
After college, Beliveau went to work on then-Vice President Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, where he met his future wife, Catherine Cameron.
After Gore’s loss, Beliveau spent three years getting a law degree at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
But out of law school, it was straight back to the campaign trail for Beliveau, who joined up with Sen. Kerry’s (D-Mass.) presidential team.
After Kerry’s loss, Beliveau went to top Washington lobbying firm Patton Boggs, got engaged and had no plans to work on another presidential campaign. But plans changed in early 2007, when Barack Obama’s team called.
“I was wildly impressed with him and liked him a great deal and thought that he was the type of individual that could truly change the country,” Beliveau said of Obama, whom he’d met while working on another senator’s campaign in 2006.
Beliveau spent most of his engagement and early marriage in Chicago, his wife told The Washington Post.The couple’s first child, Maeve, was born November 3, 2008, the day before Obama won the presidency.
Maeve Beliveau visits the White House just before her first birthday (photo: Pete Souza / White House Offocial Photo)
The Issues
During the 2008 campaign and presidential transition, Beliveau orchestrated nearly all of Obama’s events, from the announcement speech that drew 15,000 people to Springfield, Ill., to the inauguration that drew more than a million to the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
2008 presidential nominee and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) used the grand scale of Obama’s campaign events to label the Democrat a “celebrity.” The McCain camp even used footage of the 250,000 Germans who saw Obama speak in Berlin in a campaign commercial comparing the Democrat to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. “Mr. Beliveau makes no apologies,” the Wall Street Journal reported, “saying the attendees and the candidate loved the events.”
Beliveau planned every detail of the gigantic Election Night celebration in Chicago’s Grant Park that drew an estimated 240,000 people and turned into Obama’s victory party. But on November 3, 2008, the day before the election, Beliveau’ first child was born. “We executed the backup plan and my deputy stepped in to take over coordination for election-night planning,” he told Colby Magazine.
Presiding over one of the largest inaugurations in history proved to be an exercise in compromise as Beliveau and his team had to work with the Armed Forces Inaugural Committee and the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. He told Colby Magazine the committees have distinct roles. “We’re essentially the voice of the Obamas and the Bidens in this process,” said Beliveau.
He worked with the Armed Forces Inaugural Committee to open the entire National Mall—from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial—to the public. More than a million people filled it.
“It’s a very rare combination—someone who can work with diverse people under enormous time pressure trying to put together lots of logistical details,” Colby Professor Anthony Corrado said of his former student, Beliveau.
Like his boss, Beliveau tries to keep his cool. The Wall Street Journal reported that at one event Beliveau chided a staffer who sprinted to get into his position. "Remember, no running -- that's our rule," he told the aide. "Speed walk."
Lobbying
Beliveau is one of a handful of Obama aides who took heat for their previous work as lobbyists.
Beliveau left his job lobbying for Patton Boggs to join the Obama campaign in 2007, but some of his paychecks from the two organizations may have overlapped, The Hill reported in December 2007. “Clients such as Oshkosh Truck and Pinkerton Consulting paid more than $700,000 for Emmett Beliveau and his colleagues at Patton Boggs to represent them during the first half of 2007,” The Hill found. “Beliveau received a $3,050 payment from Obama’s campaign for advance work on Feb. 21, a campaign finance report shows.”
Obama’s transition team issues strict rules about prohibitions on lobbyists with specific portfolios from entering his administration. But he has not barred them entirely.
The Network
As director of advance for the 2008 Obama campaign, Beliveau worked with Trip Planner Marvin Nicholson, who is now the president’s scheduler, and Alyssa Mastromonaco, who headed advance and scheduling during the campaign and does the same at the White House.
Beliveau is a veteran of many Democratic campaigns of the last decade. He worked on the presidential campaigns of Al Gore as well as Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).
Campaign Contributions
Beliveau donated money to Democratic candidates—mostly from his home state of Maine—throughout law school and during his work with Patton Boggs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In July 2008, he gave $250 to Hillary Rodham Clinton, listing his occupation as “Obama director of advance.” Obama’s campaign was trying to help its former rival retire her campaign debt.
His parents, Severin and Cynthia Beliveau, are major Democratic donors.
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