McCain Orders Shake-Up of His Campaign
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: July 3, 2008
WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign has gone through its second shake-up in a year as Mr. McCain, responding to Republican concerns that his candidacy was faltering, put Steve Schmidt in charge of day-to-day operations and abandoned an effort to have the campaign run by 11 regional managers, the senator’s aides said Wednesday.
Mr. McCain’s advisers said that Mr. Davis would continue to hold the position of campaign manager, but that Mr. Schmidt had taken over every major operation where Mr. McCain has shown signs of struggling: communications, scheduling and basic political strategy.
The shift was approved by Mr. McCain after several aides, including Mr. Schmidt, warned him about 10 days ago that he was in danger of losing the presidential election unless he revamped his campaign operation, according to two officials close to the campaign.
Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Davis declined requests for comment.
Mr. McCain’s campaign played down the significance of this latest change in the campaign operation.
“Voters don’t care about the organizational chart of our campaign,” said Jill Hazelbaker, the campaign spokeswoman. “What they want to hear from John McCain is how he plans to bring about economic prosperity and secure the peace for future generations. Today’s move is simply an expression of our understanding of the need to scale up for a general election campaign against Barack Obama.”
In the first public reflection of Mr. Schmidt’s new role, the campaign is planning what will amount to a relaunch of Mr. McCain’s candidacy after July 4, with the senator touring the country to promote a jobs program and visiting battleground states like Colorado, Wisconsin and Michigan to illustrate the economic problems he will be talking about.
By contrast, in moves that drew widespread derision by Republicans and delighted Democrats, Mr. McCain recently delivered a speech on energy policy before an audience of oil executives in Houston and came out in favor of offshore drilling in a speech in Santa Barbara, Calif. In both cases, Mr. McCain’s aides said, he ended up delivering those speeches in those locations because he was there fund-raising.
As part of the shake-up, the McCain campaign is abandoning from what had been a big innovation by Mr. Davis, in which the campaign would largely be directed by 11 regional campaign managers who have been given power over everything from where Mr. McCain would go to what advertisements he would run. Mr. Schmidt has told associates that he feared that system was unworkable and would lead to gridlock in the campaign; instead, he is likely to install a political director in Mr. McCain’s campaign headquarters.
Mr. Schmidt’s elevation is the latest sign of increasing influence of veterans of Mr. Rove’s campaign efforts in the McCain operation. Nicolle Wallace, who was communications director for Mr. Bush in the 2004 campaign and in his White House, has joined the campaign as a senior adviser, and will travel with Mr. McCain every other week. Greg Jenkins, another veteran of Mr. Rove’s operation, has joined the McCain communications operation.
Mr. Jenkins is a former Fox News producer and a director of Mr. Bush’s presidential advance team that set up political events.
Many Republicans, including some of Mr. McCain’s own aides, were greatly concerned about a speech that Mr. McCain gave the night that Senator Barack Obama claimed the Democratic presidential nomination. During that speech, Mr. McCain stood in front of a green background facing a low-energy crowd of supporters, providing a startling contrast with Mr. Obama’s supporters.
Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain’s senior advisers and an ally of Mr. Davis, described the change in the campaign operation as a retooling in advance of the general election. He said Mr. Schmidt would be the chief operating officer of the campaign, serving under Mr. Davis, in charge mostly of helping Mr. McCain settle on a message and get it out with speeches, advertisements, and surrogate events.
“He is going to be the chief choreographer,” Mr. Black said of Mr. Schmidt.
Still, other Republicans said that Mr. Schmidt was, for all intents and purposes, now in charge of the campaign and that Mr. Davis would work on more longer-term projects. They said they had been trying to make this change quietly to avoid another round of news reports about a campaign in chaos.
The shift comes after what even Mr. McCain’s aides acknowledged has been a squandered period of campaigning since he became the presumptive Republican nominee in February, a time when Mr. Obama was engaged in a tough struggle with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination. On Wednesday, Mr. McCain visited Colombia, his second overseas trip in a month, and one that he took despite the urging of Republicans who said he needed to convey to voters his concerns about domestic problems and the economy.
“Somebody asked, ‘what’s the strategy behind this?’ ” Mr. Black said of the foreign travel. “It’s simple. McCain says he wants to go to these places, and we say of course.”
But, Mr. Black added, the trip to Colombia should help to underline what the McCain campaign wanted to make “one of the big contrasts in this race: Obama wants to become the first protectionist president in our history since Herbert Hoover.” |
