VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass.: Even on a summer family vacation, President Barack Obama is followed by an entourage whose behind-the-scenes movements are juggled by a woman who was born into politics and has been with him since his Chicago days.
Ashley Tate-Gilmore heads the White House Travel Office, a five-person operation that handles precise logistics behind every presidential trip. The details usually go unnoticed by the public, unless something goes horribly wrong.
Tate-Gilmore not only acts as a high-stakes travel agent for White House press and staff, but a mini-ambassador who is often the first to arrive at presidential destinations.
She’s used to being underestimated, a 29-year-old woman who is quick to laugh and signs off every email with a smiley face. She said it was clear from her first meeting with foreign officials when she took over the job three years ago that they weren’t expecting to take directions from a woman who looks so young.
“People are like, `Who are we meeting with?’ I was like, `Me.’ And mouths dropped,” she said in an interview.
But anyone who thinks Tate-Gilmore is just a sweet young thing is in for a surprise. She was raised in the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago politics – her mother got pregnant while working on Harold Washington’s campaign to become the city’s first black mayor and raised her daughter as a single parent on the city’s South Side with help from her own mother.
By Washington’s re-election campaign, little Ashley was coming along to help. “At 4 years old, Ashley was stuffing envelopes,” said her mother, Desiree Tate.
Tate-Gilmore lives out of a bag, and her job requires that she be highly organized and think on her feet as she juggles planning for multiple White House trips. The eight-day vacation to Martha’s Vineyard required her to help set up a White House operation on the island at peak season, when accommodations are hard to find. She helped reserve rooms for media, staff, Secret Service and others supporting the presidential operation in so many places across the island that she’s lost count – booking rental homes and even a trailer for staff to work out of when there were no more hotel rooms to be had.
Meanwhile, from the island she’s dealing with visa applications for Obama’s visit to Russia next month and setting up Obama’s bus tour to New York and Pennsylvania. And she is planning to travel overseas next week to make arrangements for a future presidential trip.
Tate-Gilmore has learned to be no-nonsense in her dealings with local officials, hotels and venues Obama will visit. In preparation for his trip to Africa earlier this year, members of the White House advance party suffered bug bites staying in the press hotel. Tate-Gilmore demanded the hotel hire an exterminator – and take along a photographer who could email her pictures back in Washington to prove all the rooms had been fumigated. -AP
