Former Obama Staff Complain Of Cold Inaugural Shoulder

WASHINGTON — In a sour footnote to President Barack Obama’s sweeping electoral victory last November, many of his campaign staffers have been shut out of the inaugural festivities, more than a dozen of them complained to BuzzFeed Monday.

“We worked our butts off, and I’m going to watch it on TV instead of being there,” said one former staffer. “It’s a huge bummer.”

Former staffers — who spoke to BuzzFeed on the condition of anonymity to preserve their relationships, and possible jobs, in Obama’s second term — say they have grown frustrated by what they see as inadequate communication from the Presidential Inaugural Committee, the group responsible for the inaugural balls, and in particular by its restrictions on access to the official events.

“I didn’t hear anything from PIC until a little more than a week ago,” said another staffer. “They knew this was happening. Instead of giving us details [of what we could attend] on November 7th, we found out so late that it would cost me $2,000 to go to Washington for a weekend as opposed to $1,000 or less if I booked two months ago.”

More than 35,000 attendees are expected at Obama’s consolidated formal Inaugural Ball Monday night, which replaces nearly a dozen separate balls. Many staffers complain that after the hard work of getting Obama re-elected they still couldn’t snag tickets to the event — only a small number were made available to staffers. PIC outsourced the ticketing to Ticketmaster, whose system bungled the public distribution earlier this month.

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