Susie Wiles cannot control everything. Take Donald Trump, her boss: his rants on the campaign trail, his unvetted social-media posts, his questionable guests at Mar-a-Lago. Some of these over the past three years, made her job harder. The Democrats, too, are beyond her reach—their decision to replace Joe Biden, around whom Ms Wiles had designed a campaign, scrambled her plans.
But Ms Wiles, a 67-year-old grandmother who has spent decades helping Republicans get elected in Florida, works hard to control what she can. She is level-headed, highly organised and a problem-solver. With her boxy blazers, mirrored shades and hair so blond it sometimes appears silver, she can seem severe—but is by all accounts warm and affable. She has developed a powerful network of politicians, policy types, lobbyists and reporters. The loyal staffers she has brought over to the Trump campaign are known as the “Florida mafia”.
Her success as de facto manager of Mr Trump’s campaign will depend on what voters do on November 5th. But the low-key Ms Wiles, who avoids photo ops and is reportedly quick to give others credit, has clearly achieved a lot. Mr Trump left the White House in 2021 as a political pariah and has now won his second term.
She has acknowledged to Politico that she sees similarities between the former president and her late father, Pat Summerall, an American football player who became a famous sports broadcaster and an alcoholic. Like Mr Trump he was a very hard man to manage. Her mother ensured that the home functioned well in spite of him, before finally convincing him to get treatment.
Ms Wiles grew up prosperous in New Jersey, playing tennis and basketball. She got her start in politics by working for Jack Kemp, a Republican congressman from New York who had been her father’s teammate. She worked for Ronald Reagan, on his presidential campaign and in the White House, and in 1985 moved to Florida with her then husband.
Ms Wiles started a political-consulting firm in Jacksonville and raised two daughters. She worked for three Republican mayors and developed a reputation as a smart, pragmatic and well-connected operative. She helped an unknown businessman named Rick Scott win the governorship (he is now in the Senate). She seems to be motivated more by the challenge of winning a campaign than by ideology. None of her previous bosses, however, has been as challenging as Mr Trump.
Florida was a swing state in 2016, considered by some a bellwether. Mr Trump cold-called her to head up his operation in Florida, where he lived part-time at Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Palm Beach. “As a card-carrying member of the (GOP) establishment, many thought my full-throated endorsement of the Trump candidacy was ill-advised—even crazy,” Ms. Wiles told the New York Times in 2016. After a polling dip, he nearly fired her that autumn (a dressing down reportedly delivered while he was eating a steak at Mar-a-Lago), but she insisted she could deliver.
