President Donald Trump loves to crowdsource staffing advice from outside advisers and current or former White House aides, and lately he’s been asking: “What do we think about Mick?”

“Mick” is Mick Mulvaney, the former Republican congressman from South Carolina who now oversees both Trump’s Office of Management and Budget and the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.


A favorite of Trump’s since last winter’s federal shutdown and the earlier unsuccessful effort to repeal Obamacare, Mulvaney has emerged as one of the two leading candidates to succeed John Kelly as Trump’s chief of staff, according to interviews with a dozen current and former administration officials and Republicans close to the administration.

Long rumored to be on his way out, Kelly has no clear plans to resign — but Mulvaney has been discreetly lobbying for the job, asking Republicans outside the White House to put in a good word on his behalf with the president.

In recent weeks, Trump has been asking around about both Mulvaney and Nick Ayers, Vice President Mike Pence’s current chief of staff and a longtime political operative who’s also in the running for the job, according to one person who recently spoken directly with the president.

“No one can imagine what the end of John Kelly looks like. The president does not fire people, and he is not going to suddenly change a lifetime of operating a certain way and decide to fire a four-star general,” said a former White House official. “But if the president sees plausible people next in line for the job, that does change his calculus a bit.”

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Mulvaney enjoys an easy rapport with the president. He’s known for his low-drama leadership of his two agencies, and is seen as an able defender of the administration on television, a key survival skill for any top Trump official.

During the era of former chief strategist Steve Bannon and former chief of staff Reince Priebus, Mulvaney and recently departed legislative affairs director Marc Short were sometimes called the “non-crazy caucus” inside the building, according to one Republican close to the administration.

Mulvaney’s performance during the January government shutdown earned him high marks from the president. Mulvaney and Trump also frequently golf together, said another former administration official, giving the budget head valuable face time.

Two Republicans close to the White House said that although Mulvaney’s name is under consideration, the president has not formally interviewed anyone to replace Kelly, or even settled on a single candidate as he had on Kelly before Priebus’ ouster in July 2017.

The White House press office declined to comment. Mulvaney did not respond to a request for comment.

In any new chief, Trump needs someone who has his confidence and respect, an appreciation for a well-formed decision-making process, the respect of other senior officials in the administration, and the ability to recruit smart personnel, said Joshua Bolten, a chief of staff and OMB director under President George W. Bush.

“You do not want to make yourself the executive assistant to the president,” Bolten said. “Every president, and maybe this president more than most, needs someone who is not just about catering to the president’s immediate needs. It’s about running a process around him that will serve him best.”

Mulvaney would bring to the job experience as a former politician and leader of two government agencies, while Ayers is viewed as an extremely ambitious political operative and strategist who could be an asset to the White House heading into the midterms.

A handful of close allies to the president privately have argued that Trump should be in no rush to fill Kelly’s job, if Kelly decides to leave — suggesting instead that Trump, who has largely functioned as his own top spokesman and has often said he is his own best strategist, could do without a chief of staff through the midterms.

“One reason Kelly has had the job for as long as he has is that, in reality, the president is happy with the status quo,” said an outside adviser to the White House. “Kelly has the title of chief of staff without instilling some modicum of order as a chief of staff. The president basically gets to do the job.”

Internally, Mulvaney is seen by some as a good candidate because he is a happy warrior and conservative ideologue who knows when to push the president and when to leave matters alone.

“Part of why he is a good soldier is that he still uses his House position as a benchmark, and he did not like being in the House. This is so much better than that,” said one former Trump transition official, who said Mulvaney expressed frustration in the past with the demands of constantly running for office every two years and fundraising as a congressman. “He found it a grind. I think he feels like he has a lot more influence now.”

He does have influence as the leader of two seemingly wonky agencies.

He has proposed two deeply conservative budgets and put forth a plan to reorganize the federal government, which critics worry would shrink the size of the federal workforce and drastically rearrange the oversight and delivery of programs like food stamps.

Even if none of these plans come to fruition — a “political reality of our current climate,” said one senior administration official — Mulvaney has still given the Trump administration a deeply conservative imprint on such matters and an ideology consistent with many House members.

He also nudged the president to change a decades-long practice, so that OMB and one of its internal offices now must review major regulations coming out of the IRS. And his top deputies at OMB, including Deputy Director Russ Vought and chief of staff Emma Doyle, earn high marks from people throughout the administration, and not just Trump appointees, as being smart, competent and largely able to run the agency day-to-day.

“There is this quiet aspect for him of doing the work and just doing the job and not beating his own chest,” said the former transition official.

Mulvaney also has received accolades for his slow dismantling of the former CFPB, a brainchild of Elizabeth Warren’s that was created by Democrats in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and has long been a favorite target for Republicans.

“His mission was to blow that up, which he has. He is very well-suited to the chaos,” said a close White House adviser.

Yet Mulvaney has had to abandon a few pet projects, given Trump’s disdain for them and his 2016 campaign promises. Under Trump, for instance, there will be no slashing of Medicare or Social Security — something Mulvaney advocated during his time in the House. He’s also had to go along with Trump’s wish to boost military spending, a hard thing for a deficit hawk.

Administration officials and close White House advisers say Mulvaney’s weakness as a potential chief of staff comes from his affability and his desire to be liked. Gatekeeper roles, like the White House chief of staff slot, do not always make someone popular, especially as one tries to limit access to the president, curb attendance at meetings, or keep the president on schedule.

“Mulvaney is not a big personality and is not someone everyone in the building will rally around, but I don’t see a big personality coming in either. Trump takes all of the oxygen in the room,” said a former administration official. “Everyone who has survived there has wilted into the woodwork. I don’t know if he would have the ability to stand up to White House staff and Cabinet secretaries.”

If Mulvaney ends up being offered a new job and accepts, he would join a long procession of former top officials who have used the top job at OMB as a steppingstone. President Bill Clinton elevated Leon Panetta from director of OMB to chief, and Bolten followed the same path in the Bush administration.

In the Obama era, both Jack Lew and Sylvia Mathews Burwell ran OMB before going on to bigger jobs — he as White House chief of staff and Treasury secretary, and she as the head of Health and Human Services.

“This has been the parlor game since Mick came on, because most OMB directors only stay a couple of years and then go on to bigger and better things,” said one current administration official. “He is still within the window of a normal OMB director life span, but I would not be surprised if he takes another job by the end of the year.”