Buffalo Grove native heads to White House to join Biden communications team
A year ago when no one worried about face masks and Joe Biden was fighting for his political life in Democratic primaries, his Deputy National Press Secretary Matt Hill worked the phones and coordinated strategy from a bustling Philadelphia campaign office.
“I don't need much sleep,” Hill said on Jan. 28, 2020.
Although the front-runner, Biden faced challenges from his opponents and tough questions about his record. But “nothing is more motivating than to show up knowing you're working for a leader who is as respected and accomplished as Joe Biden,” Hill said.
On Wednesday, the Buffalo Grove native, 26, watched as Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. He joins the president's staff as senior associate communications director.
“It feels good,” said Hill from his new digs in Washington, D.C., on Sunday. “It feels like a huge honor,” but also “feels like an enormous responsibility to get to work as soon as possible to deliver economic relief to the American people (and) to get as many (COVID-19) vaccine shots in the arms of people as quickly and effectively as possible.”
Hill met Biden on campus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he served on student government in 2014 and 2015.
His advocacy to prevent sexual assaults on campus got the attention of the then-vice president. An administration official called and coyly asked, “'Can someone from the White House come to campus?'” Hill recalled.
That someone turned out to be Biden. Hill organized an event in spring 2015 and Biden's “impassioned speech” grabbed his attention and loyalty. “He's had a special impact on my life from that time on,” said Hill, who with college friends gave Biden a campus tour in the vice president's limousine.
“The first moment you meet Joe Biden you feel like you've known him forever,” he said.
Hill interned for Biden in 2016, then held communications jobs in the private sector and at Georgetown University.
He joined Biden's primary campaign in mid-2019 and described a typical day as: “I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is start reading the news, see what's happened on the morning shows, the cable shows, and the political newsletters.” Then there are policy papers to draft, media calls to handle, breaking news to monitor and react to.
The early primaries delivered challenges as Biden lost in Iowa and New Hampshire. But Hill said the worst moment of the campaign was learning in late 2019 that close friend T.J. Ducklo, Biden's press secretary, has Stage 4 lung cancer.
After weeks of talking about delivering affordable health care to Americans, it was “one of those epiphanies ... that what we're fighting for on the campaign is not just a talking point or an idea but it has an impact on people's lives,” Hill said.
Biden and his wife, Jill, made a surprise visit to the Philadelphia office Jan. 1, 2020.
“The hope and confidence and warmth they portrayed in the office radiated out and inspired us to work harder and win and ... here we are,” Hill said.
His D.C. apartment is still short some furniture but it feels good to be close to the action. After the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in March, Hill returned home to Buffalo Grove, converting his old bedroom to a campaign office.
Watching the virtual Democratic National Convention from the suburbs instead of the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee was bittersweet, Hill said, but he felt Biden's speech was transcendent.
“Joe Biden's superpower is empathy,” Hill said. “He understands what it is like to be a hardworking American. He understands what it is like to lose someone you love, particularly in a year like this where we've lost over 400,000 lives,” due to COVID-19.
He credited his civics teacher Andrew Conneen who runs a Political Action Club for students at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire for awakening his interest in government.
“Matt is still today who he was then, earnest, witty, humble and a super-sharp Midwestern kid,” Conneen said.
The class and the club encourage civics students to think about reforms and changes in law, Conneen explained.
“Matt's example is how those advocacy ideas you start thinking of as students can carry on beyond the classroom,” he said.