At 67, Susan Summerall Wiles has spent more than four decades weaving in the shadows the thread from which some of the Republican Party’s greatest recent successes are made, but her profile as an anonymous strategist changes radically after Donald Trump appointed her chief of staff on Thursday.
Susie Wiles, as she is more commonly known, thus becomes the first female chief of staff in the White House – one of the most important positions in the US Administration – and represents the first official appointment after the victory of the tycoon in the US presidential election.
Present in few institutional photos, with only several tens of thousands of followers in networks until today, soft-spoken and self-defined as “moderate”, Wiles has led campaigns for presidents, mayors, governors and congressmen with many more triumphs than defeats.
Much of Trump’s success in the 2016 presidential election and again this year, as well as the fortunes of other politicians, such as Rick Scott or Ron DeSantis at the time, are a product of his ability to navigate among lobbyists, lawyers or journalists.
“Susie is tough, smart, innovative and is universally admired and respected,” Trump said today in a statement about his campaign manager, who has spent much of her career in Florida.
The now 47th US president thus drew chest of the management of a political consultant who, according to political analysts agree, has managed to keep Trump’s image afloat even after his 2020 defeat, the assault on Capitol Hill in 2021 and his various judicial setbacks.
Daughter of a famous soccer player
Raised in a household with three brothers and her as the only daughter, she witnessed her mother, Katharine Jacobs, struggle with her father, popular soccer player Pat Sumerall, to overcome his alcoholism problems.
However, this New York Giants player, who managed to get a doctor to cure his clubfoot and make a career as a kicker, failed to kick his addictions and his family ties crumbled as he led a parallel life with a mistress for 17 years.
By the time Susie Wiles was 38, her parents divorced and Summerall was gradually linked to the world of entertainment until she established herself as one of the most prominent voices in U.S. sports broadcasting thanks to her mellifluous tone that accompanied everything from golf tournaments to the U.S. Open tennis tournament.
“My children grew up without me, I failed them as a father,” Summerall asserted in his memoirs, years before he passed away in 2013.
But that absence and lack of paternal reference far from sinking Wiles reinforced his charisma and ability to deal with problems: “Like all children, we are a product in some way of how we were raised, sometimes good and sometimes bad,” he acknowledged in an interview with the POLITICO media this year.
Florida political veteran
Wiles was raised and educated in New Jersey. At the age of 22 she was hired as an assistant to Jack Kemp, her father’s former Giants teammate and Republican congressman from New York, and a year later, in 1980, she joined Ronald Reagan’s staff for his presidential campaign.
Since the 1990s, her political career has passed through Florida, where she moved to serve as district director for Congresswoman Tillie Fowler, after having married Lanny Wiles, Reagan’s right-hand man, with whom she had two daughters and ended up divorcing in 2017.
She also served as director of communications and intergovernmental affairs for former Jacksonville mayors John Delaney and John Peyton in a long career in the state of Florida where, among other accomplishments, she also managed to lift Ron DeSantis to win the 2018 gubernatorial election.
Her predecessor, Rick Scott, who as of 2019 serves as a senator, based – like Trump – part of his political success on Susie Wiles’ advice. So much so that when asked why he didn’t meet with state press editorial boards during his gubernatorial campaign, he replied, “I’ll have to ask Susie.”