Who Is Susie Wiles, Trump’s Pick For Chief Of Staff?

Following his landslide election victory, President-elect Donald Trump tapped his campaign co-chair, Susie Wiles, to serve as White House Chief of Staff.

Trump announced on Thursday that Wiles would transition from leading his campaign to helping him lead the country as she is set to become the first female White House Chief of Staff in history. The president-elect described Wiles as “tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected.”

Wiles is a relatively unknown figure in mainstream America, but she has been instrumental in two Trump victories and was also behind Rick Scott’s and Ron DeSantis’ gubernatorial election victories in Florida.

The 67-year-old is the daughter of former NFL player and longtime broadcaster Pat Summerall. She got her start in politics in 1979, working as an assistant for New York Republican Congressman Jack Kemp, who was also a former NFL player. From there, Wiles went on to work for Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign as a scheduler and served in the Reagan administration. After a few years in the Reagan White House, Wiles started her political consulting career in northeast Florida, where she is from, CNN reported.

Wiles married Lanny Wiles, a Florida Republican political operative, in 1985, with whom she shares two children. They divorced in 2017. Throughout the 1990s, Susie Wiles served as the chief of staff for Jacksonville Mayor John Delaney and then advised Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton from 2004 to 2009.

In 2010, after Rick Scott launched a late bid for Florida governor, Wiles was asked to help.

“We told her, ‘Hey, we got a guy nobody knows, we’re behind by 50 points, come join us,’” said Curt Anderson, a top strategist with Scott’s campaign, according to CNN. “She was able to immediately come in and bring a level of organization that kept people on task.”

Scott won the 201o gubernatorial election by just over one percentage point and served two terms as governor before becoming a U.S. senator.

In 2011, Wiles was hired as the presidential campaign manager for Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, whose 2012 bid was short-lived. She later helped with Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign in Florida. Romney lost the state by less than a point to then-President Barack Obama.

Wiles wasn’t done after the two failed campaigns, however. She was again called on in the 2016 cycle when Trump became the Republican nominee. Wiles was tapped in September of 2016 to run Trump’s campaign operation in Florida, a state he flipped on his way to an upset victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

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Wiles went on to help Trump-endorsed candidate for governor of Florida, DeSantis, narrowly defeat Democrat Andrew Gillum in 2018. During the 2020 campaign, however, Wiles and DeSantis reportedly had a falling out, and the Trump campaign cut ties with her at DeSantis’ urging. While Trump still won Florida by a convincing margin in 2020, he dropped multiple swing states before losing the election to President Joe Biden.

Wiles was brought back to help Trump in the 2024 race. She was named the CEO of Trump’s Save America PAC in 2021 and became the co-chair of Trump’s election campaign. She was described by The Hill as “the most powerful Republican you don’t know,” and The New York Times reported that she was “perhaps the most significant voice inside Mr. Trump’s third presidential campaign.”

Trump wasted no time after his 2024 victory to name Wiles as his chief of staff.

“Susie will continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again,” Trump said. “It is a well-deserved honor to have Susie as the first-ever female Chief of Staff in United States history. I have no doubt that she will make our country proud.”