Joining up with Trump’s third campaign in its nascent days, Wiles is one of the few top officials to survive an entire Trump campaign.
With her selection as President-elect Donald Trump‘s incoming White House chief of staff, veteran Florida political strategist Susie Wiles moves from a largely behind-the-scenes role of campaign co-chair to the high-profile position of the president’s closest adviser and counsel.
She’s been in political circles for years. But who is Wiles, the operative set to be the first woman to step into the powerful role of White House chief of staff?She has decades of experience, most of it in Florida
The daughter of NFL player and sportscaster Pat Summerall, Wiles worked in the Washington office of New York Rep. Jack Kemp in the 1970s. Following that were stints on Ronald Reagan’s campaign and in his White House as a scheduler.
Wiles then headed to Florida, where she advised two Jacksonville mayors and worked for Rep. Tillie Fowler. After that came statewide campaigns in rough and tumble Florida politics, with Wiles being credited with helping businessman Rick Scott win the governor’s office.
After briefly managing Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s 2012 presidential campaign, she ran Trump’s 2016 effort in Florida, when his win in the state helped him clinch the White House.She has a history with Ron DeSantis
Two years later, Wiles helped get Ron DeSantis elected as Florida’s governor. But the two would develop a rift that eventually led to DeSantis to urge Trump’s 2020 campaign to cuts its ties with the strategist, when she was again running the then-president’s state campaign.
Wiles ultimately went on to lead Trump’s primary campaign against DeSantis and trounced the Florida governor. Trump campaign aides and their outside allies gleefully taunted DeSantis throughout the race — mocking his laugh, the way he ate and accusing him of wearing lifts in his boots — as well as using insider knowledge that many suspected had come from Wiles and others on Trump’s campaign staff who had also worked for DeSantis and had had bad experiences.
