This just in – White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers has resigned. After presiding over 300+ White House events and helping to make it the People’s House, Rogers will call it quits next month. It’s a few months later than what I predicted, but nonetheless it has happened. According to Politico…
White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers will leave her post next month, according to a White House source, months after she drew criticism for a major security breach at a state dinner in November.
Rogers, who plans to return to the corporate world, became one of the administration’s most high-profile staffers. A friend of both Obamas dating back to Chicago, she appeared in the pages of Vogue, on the cover of the Wall Street Journal magazine and was in the front row during last year’s New York Fashion Week.
But it was a blast of unwelcome publicity — the gate-crashers at President Barack Obama’s first state dinner — that put Rogers into the national spotlight. After Tareq and Michaele Salahi got into the dinner and shook hands with the president, all apparently without an invitation, Rogers’ handling of security for the event came under fire.
Rogers was criticized for failing to post someone from the East Wing at a security checkpoint. The White House defended her, placing full blame on the Secret Service, yet a subsequent investigation led to procedural changes.
“As we turn the corner on the first year, this is a good time for me to explore opportunities in the corporate world,” Rogers told columnist Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet, adding that it was “an honor and a privilege to serve this president and first lady, in what has certainly been a historic presidency.”
Friends said that over the last weeks, it became increasingly clear that she would leave the post, because of rising tensions in the East Wing between she and her longtime friend Valerie Jarrett a top adviser to the president. Jarrett, Rogers and Susan Sher, Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, live in the same apartment complex in Washington, yet sources told POLITICO that there was increasing friction about who was in charge in the East Wing.
Rogers’ ties to the Obamas reach back to Chicago — her ex-husband John Rogers was a major fundraiser and played basketball at Princeton with the first lady’s brother, Craig Robinson.
Before taking the White House job, Rogers was a high-powered executive and fixture on the Chicago social scene. She was the public face of the Illinois lottery; a high-level executive at People’s Energy, a natural gas company; and, later, the president of social networking at Allstate Financial. Crain’s Chicago Business named her one of the Top 25 women to watch in 2007.
“She is beloved in Chicago and we think she’s done a good job. She is terrific and I thought she brought a lot of personality and modernism and color,” said Sugar Rautbord, a Chicago friend who is friends with Jarrett and Rogers. “Everybody adores her here.” To read more click here.
Here’s a statement from the President and First Lady regarding Rogers resignation courtesy of the White House Press Office…
“We are enormously grateful to Desiree Rogers for the terrific job she’s done as the White House Social Secretary. When she took this position, we asked Desiree to help make sure that the White House truly is the People’s House, and she did that by welcoming scores of everyday Americans through its doors, from wounded warriors to local schoolchildren to NASCAR drivers. She organized hundreds of fun and creative events during her time here, and we will miss her. We thank her again for her service and wish her all the best in her future endeavors.”
I still stand by what I said earlier, Rogers was just a scapegoat in the whole White House gate crasher debacle. The security of the Leader of the Free World and his family should never be the responsibility of a party planner. MOW will continue to follow this story as it unfolds. I wonder who will be the new Social Secretary. I’m sending in my resume right now.
Posted by Aminah Hanan
