A group of business leaders is calling for President Biden to resign and make way for a replacement at the top of the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket.
The Leadership Now Project, a coalition of 400 politically active current and retired executives who mostly, but not entirely, lean left, issued a statement Wednesday calling on Biden to “pass the torch of this year’s presidential nomination to the next generation of highly capable Democrats.”
The statement was unsigned, but Daniella Ballou-Aares, the group’s founder and executive director, said it was supported by the overwhelming majority of Leadership Now Project members.
Members include Jeni Britton Bauer, founder of Jeni’s Famous Ice Cream; Thomas W. Florsheim Jr., chief executive of shoemaker Weyco Group; Eddie Fishman, managing director of investment firm DE Shaw & Company; John Pepper, former chief executive of Procter & Gamble; and Paul Tagliabue, former commissioner of the National Football League.
The statement comes as major Democratic donors are increasingly concluding that the party would have a better chance of holding the White House with a different nominee, after Mr. Biden’s poor performance in last week’s presidential debate with Donald J. Trump. But most donors and major financial groups on the left have refrained from making that public for fear of generating a backlash.
In its statement, the Leadership Now Project called the prospect of a second Trump term “an existential threat to American democracy” and said that in the debate Mr Biden “failed to present an effective case against Trump, and we now fear the risk of a devastating loss in November”.
The statement added that “we have heard from many who share our deep concerns about the current course but are afraid to speak out” and concluded by imploring others “to join us in making this urgent appeal.”
In an interview, Ms. Ballou-Aares, a business executive who was a senior adviser at the State Department during the Obama administration, said she had been disturbed by the messaging from the White House and other Biden supporters in recent days.
“This sense that this is a decision by a small family group is not good for democracy,” she said, calling it “really inconsistent with where people were after watching the debate.”
His group, which consists of nonprofit arms and a political action committee, has supported candidates from both parties and recently hosted at its annual meeting former Representative Adam Kinzinger, an anti-Trump Republican, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat who has been mentioned as a possible replacement for Mr. Biden.
