White House Correspondent Tells Politico ‘I’d Elect Hitler’ as WHCA Prez For a Better Lunch Room

A White House correspondent told a Politico reporter that “I’d elect Hitler” as White House Correspondents Association president if it meant getting a better break room.

It’s a different kind of election season in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room as the WHCA gears up to elect officers, board members, and a new president — a strange process that is the subject of the West Wing Playbook item that includes the telling quip from an unnamed reporter.

The group best known for throwing an epic annual dinner that provides a nucleus for countless afterparties and grouchy hot-takes also handles logistical negotiations with the White House and controls the common working areas of the briefing room. They also hold elections whose, for whatever reason, don’t take effect until three years after they’re tabulated.

That means that current WHCA President Steve Portnoy was elected in 2019, when Donald Trump was still president and TikTok was mainly a thing old dudes said when they wanted you to hurry up.

Max Tani and Alex Thompson observe that these elections offer up a neat inversion of the power dynamic, where the denizens of the front row have to compete against the folks who sit in the last five rows and fume while the big outlets get all the questions — and must ask those five rows for votes:

Candidates for the board have been hitting the phones and holding in-person meetings with reporters, photographers and other journalists from outlets large and small to try and win over their votes. Multiple White House correspondents from smaller outlets said it has the feeling of a high school class president election, with candidates posting flyers around the common areas in the White House briefing room, and soliciting votes from people they’ve seen around for years, but rarely acknowledged.

“You know how when a popular girl runs for homecoming queen, she makes overtures to people she’s never spoken to before because band geeks outnumber cheerleaders and you can’t win without them?” one White House reporter asked. “Same thing.”

At the top of the ballot, CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins is running for president against USA Today’s Fran Chambers, a well-liked veteran of the back five who currently serves as WHCA Treasurer.

Collins seems aware of Chambers’s advantage, if her contribution to the article is any indication. “In a note to West Wing Playbook, KAITLAN COLLINS… said she understands concerns expressed by journalists at smaller outlets and foreign media organizations as well,” Tani and Thompson wrote.

And sharp-eyed viewers might just be able to spot the subtle VOTE KAITLAN flyers plastered all over the back of the briefing room like those Vodafone ads that surround soccer matches.

But an election for officers who won’t take power for several years, and whose main job doesn’t have much of an effect on most of the press corps — who aren’t in the press pool and don’t sit in the front rows — can be tough to get excited about. Hence, this concluding passage:

But not everyone buys it. Nor does everyone think there’s much of a point to it, noting some of the structural and even physical limitations of the White House press room.

“If they could get a lunch room that doesn’t face the bathrooms, I’d elect Hitler,” another White House correspondent joked.

For what it’s worth, the cramped break room is lousy in almost every respect — apart from the new espresso machine that Tom Hanks periodically sends — and consequently, not used much by correspondents from outlets who can afford their own booths and cubicles in the press area. It’s not likely the quote came from one of them.