This piece has been described as a "remarkable autopsy."
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Monday, October 13
How Bob Graham's campaign unraveled
By Brian Crowley, Palm Beach Post Political Editor
Monday, October 13, 2003
They talked for nearly five hours, but no matter which direction they tried, without Jimmy Buffett there simply was nothing left to do but quit.
Bob Graham was not giving up easily. In the Great Falls, Va., home of his daughter, Suzanne, and her husband, Tom Gibson, Graham struggled to find a path to the White House. He had not been defeated in 38 years of politics and he was loath to admit defeat now.
So they sat upstairs -- the Gibsons, Graham, his wife, Adele, joined by two of Graham's most trusted Senate aides, chief of staff Buddy Menn and press secretary Paul Anderson and their wives. It was Saturday night, Oct. 4, and Graham's campaign was falling apart.
No matter how long they puzzled over the primary map, no matter which states they would pick or eliminate, no matter how drastically they cut the campaign staff, it simply didn't matter. Bob Graham, the most feared Democratic power in the Sunshine State, was broke.
The campaign already had fibbed to the press, saying nearly $2 million had been raised in the third quarter. But the truth would be closer to $1.5 million, a paltry sum by presidential campaign standards. Even worse, expenses were far higher than the cash on hand. Graham's campaign was busted, and fewer and fewer people were willing to write checks to a candidate they believed was imploding.
Their one hope had been a series of Jimmy Buffett concerts. The biggest was to be a mid-summer Parrot Head concert in Tallahassee where thousands would be invited and proceeds of up to $1 million would go into the campaign's coffers. But when Buffett's people found out that his fans would have to fill out campaign contribution forms, they balked. The concert was off. Instead Buffet offered to do a smaller event in November for Graham in Palm Beach.
Slowly, as Graham's triplet 8-year-old granddaughters played downstairs with the Anderson and Menn kids, the reality became obvious. Graham had no choice but to quit. Now, all that was left was to figure out how and where.
Campaign had problems from start
When Graham launched his campaign last May, he believed that his whole life had prepared him for this moment. His nearly 18 years in the Senate, his eight years as governor, his expertise on foreign policy and terrorism, his recent chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee. It just, Graham would say, felt right.
But the campaign stumbled from the start. Interviews with family, friends, Senate staff and campaign staff, some of whom spoke only on the condition they would not be named, reveal that there were frequent disagreements about strategy, style and the substance of the campaign. Some complain that his family was too involved. Others say his campaign staff was not loyal. There was squabbling among the consultants. Decisions often took too long.
In the final analysis, nearly everyone interviewed agreed the biggest flaw was that Graham's quiet, tempered campaign style simply did not work on a crowded national stage. And it was not easy to get Graham to change.
"He's a 66-year-old guy who has won five statewide races," said one of his closest confidantes. "He has done something right. Rather than build on that, there was an effort to say 'we need to remake your formula,' and he did not always want to hear that."
One of the most telling things about the Saturday night conversation in the Gibson home was that no one working on the campaign was in the room. For Graham, his White House run had been led by political strangers. He no longer had his beloved confidante and media strategist Bob Squier, who died in 2000 of colon cancer. And during the campaign, Graham kept many of his Florida regulars at arm's length out of deference to his new political team.
His campaign crew was led by Paul Johnson, a Louisiana political consultant who was a successful campaign strategist for a number of regional candidates. Johnson, who spent most of his time at home in Louisiana and not in the Miami Lakes campaign headquarters, was embarking on his first national campaign.
Johnson brought an eclectic team that included Steve Jarding and David "Mudcat" Saunders as top strategists, Karl Struble and David Eichenbaum for media strategy and a score of top talent in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Raising money was the responsibility of Miami lawyer Marvin Rosen.
"We had a group of top-notch professionals who worked very hard," said Mark Logan, who worked on the campaign and is married to Graham's daughter, Gwen. "But they did not have the relationship with Graham that might have developed had the campaign been able to start a lot sooner."
TV advertising bone of contention
Almost immediately, there was a sense that Graham was in trouble. His May campaign announcement in Miami Lakes, the community developed by his family, had failed to get Graham much favorable buzz in the national press. Donors who already had committed to other candidates were reluctant to contribute to Graham. Even some of his longtime Florida supporters were giving him considerably less than the $2,000 maximum allowed by federal law.
"We had people giving us $250 or $500, just out of loyalty to Graham, but they were unwilling to go any higher than that unless he could prove he was a serious contender," said a senior member of the campaign staff. "It was very frustrating."
In one strategy meeting, Jarding urged the campaign to begin running commercials in Iowa in June. Jarding argued that with Graham stuck at the bottom of the polls, a quick two-week television buy in Iowa would "give us the bump we needed to help us raise more money."
But Struble and Eichenbaum disagreed. They argued that once a campaign goes on the air, it should stay on the air, and Graham did not have the cash for that. The argument would continue for the rest of the campaign.
Time was short. Graham's late start, caused by January heart surgery and the invasion of Iraq, left him months behind the other candidates who had made numerous trips to the early primary and caucus states. Even more important, his rivals had spent months convincing top contributors to join their campaigns.
"Graham would go somewhere and make a good first impression, but the other candidates would be making their fourth and fifth trips to the same people," Logan said. "The compression of time was very, very difficult."
From his rocky announcement speech to often anemic appearances on the campaign trail, Graham was simply not generating any excitement or cash. For the second quarter, Graham's staff said the campaign raised $2 million. That too was a fib. It was closer to $1.8 million and they were burning through the money quickly.
"The campaign just got to the point where every decision was a life or death decision," Logan said.
Ill-fated NASCAR truck sponsorship
Jarding and his sidekick Saunders, who prefers to be called "Mudcat," are fathers of the NASCAR Democratic philosophy. In short, it is a belief that rural voters, who at one time voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, can be brought back to the party if they are shown respect for their needs and culture.
With more than 70 million NASCAR fans, Jarding and Mudcat thought it would help Graham if he sponsored a NASCAR truck in the Craftsman Series. Graham gamely went along, but he never really bought it.
The decision, a costly one of more than $200,000, was hotly debated. Some staff thought it was a waste of money, especially since Graham had so little. Others fumed that Mudcat had signed the contract for the #50 truck sponsorship without the campaign's approval.
"Mudcat only signed for two races initially," Jarding said. "If the campaign had not wanted to continue, they could have ended it. Nobody was pulling anything on anyone. It was an idea worth trying."
Mudcat seemed to be vindicated when driver Jon Wood won the first race that the red, white and blue Graham truck entered. But the truck quickly faded after that race, and the Harvard-educated Graham did not even bother to attend the truck's race in New Hampshire.
"It was an experiment, and in the end you had to know whether it was really generating any support for Bob," Logan said. "There was a concern that there were significant expenditures with little return."
Jarding says the campaign ended too soon to really know if appealing to NASCAR fans would have made a difference. "I still believe in it," he said. "And I think you'll see one of the other candidates take some kind of approach that appeals to the same voter base."
What Graham wanted to do was the same gimmick that elected him governor: workdays.
"There were those who just thought it was too hokey and not presidential enough," said a Floridian close to Graham. "He had trouble convincing his hired consultants that this was an idea that had worked for him in the past and could work for him now."
His staff balked at scheduling workdays. And Graham would get into a slow burn before demanding them. "People who know him best would have recognized just how determined he was," said the Floridian. "But the people he had around him just did not understand how strongly he feels about the workdays."
Many on team felt left in the dark
Not enough time, not enough money, not enough gimmicks, not enough style. Then, Graham's top staff, Johnson, Jarding and Saunders, said they had had enough. They said they would leave the campaign by Sept. 30. Some of Graham's closest advisers were not unhappy.
"I don't think they ever meshed well with Bob," said one adviser. "I think they worked very hard for him, and they are very talented, but it just wasn't coming together."
So as they gathered at the Gibson home, no one from the campaign was there. In fact, those who remained loyal to Graham, but were not part of his private inner circle, were left in the dark.
"No one told me what was going on," said Mo Elleithee, Graham's campaign press secretary. "I did not know he was going on Larry King to quit the race until just before he went on the air."
At 9:52 p.m. on Oct. 6, Graham went on CNN where his old friend King, who for years did a radio talk show in Miami, would let Graham announce that he was quitting. King then tossed him a couple of softball questions about world affairs to eat up the rest of the hour. Four minutes later, Graham's campaign was over.
He left some hurt feelings. There is bitterness among some of those who worked so hard for his presidential campaign only to be left in the dark before he ended it. Those closest to Graham said he was sick of the leaks coming out of his campaign. He also is angry at the Florida press, which he felt was all too ready to point out the flaws in his candidacy. Going on Larry King was partly a snub of them.
As his campaign faded, Graham also talked to his family about the best strategies for being picked as a running mate. They also wonder if he might be able to get a Cabinet post, perhaps head of Homeland Security, in a Democratic administration. And he must ponder whether he wants to run for a fourth term in the Senate. He spent the weekend in Boston visiting his daughter, Sissy, and to contemplate his future.
This is one of the most difficult periods of his life. He really wanted to be president. And he has never had to deal with defeat.
"I can't think of any bigger decision he has had to make on a personal level," Logan said. "This has been really tough."
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