President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris announced their opening committee and launched a website in the initial stages of another opening ceremony.
The Biden campaign announced on November 30th that Tony Allen, former Biden speechwriter and president of Delaware State University, would serve as chief executive officer of the opening committee. Maju Varghese, a Biden campaign advisor, will serve as managing director.
Yvanna Cancela, Nevada State Senator, and Erin Wilson, Biden Campaign Associate, will serve as assistant directors. Biden’s transition team has also launched an inauguration website, BidenInaugural.org, and a new Twitter handle.
Next year’s initiation will be unlike anything seen before. Typically, the demand for the event would bring thousands to the DC area. However, amid the coronavirus pandemic that Biden is taking seriously, many can expect smaller crowds, social distancing, and face masks everywhere.
Biden’s new chief of staff, Ron Klain, went a step further, saying the ceremony “will not be the same,” adding that it will be similar to the Democratic National Convention, which was a virtual event.
“We held a very effective and, I believe, Democratic Congress this year in August that was safe for the people to attend and pursue in a way that communicates with the American people,” Klain told Politico. “I think we’ll have a mix of these techniques, a mix of scaled-down versions of the existing traditions.”
A still unknown factor is whether the outgoing President Donald Trump will attend the event. Traditionally, the outgoing president attends the inauguration of the new president, for example when Barack and Michelle Obama attended Trump’s inauguration.
Trump hasn’t even acknowledged that Biden won the election, however, and according to the Daily Beast, he’s considering holding an event on the same day to announce his campaign for 2024.
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