Clark to Launch Media Blitz in New Hampshire
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Ads Aim to Show He Can Take on Dean
By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 16, 2003; Page A01
LITTLE ROCK -- After weeks of internal chaos, personnel battles and an uneven performance by the candidate himself, Wesley K. Clark's presidential campaign will attempt to regain momentum this week with a massive media buy in New Hampshire and by highlighting its ability to raise money at the rate of about $800,000 a week.
While acknowledging that they failed to capitalize on the expectations for Clark when he entered the race for the Democratic nomination in September, campaign officials cite the retired general's fundraising success as evidence that he is attracting significant support eight weeks before he faces voters for the first time. They expect the campaign to raise at least $12 million this quarter, in all likelihood more than any other candidate except Howard Dean.
"We weren't just off to a slow start, we stumbled on our knees as we were getting into the race," said Richard Sklar, a senior campaign official. "We had to do in seven weeks what some people did in a year or 18 months. . . . Now we're running with the pack as we go down the final stretch."
Clark has been no small part of the problem, political strategists say. Although he has been in the public arena as an Army officer for 34 years, and as a commentator on CNN, his campaign aides said he was not quite prepared for an environment where his every utterance was scrutinized and challenged. Clark has struggled to be heard over his rivals during debates and was unable to explain how he would have voted on the congressional resolution on Iraq, hurting himself badly with the antiwar Democrats he needs to pry away from Dean. While he is engaged and charming one on one with voters, he comes across stiff during policy speeches and with the media.
The Clark campaign's goal in the next few weeks is to demonstrate that it has both the resources to take on the former Vermont governor and a candidate whose military résumé makes him far more electable. "Our strategy is that Wesley Clark is the candidate to beat George Bush, and we have to make that clear to people," said Lara Bergthold, the political director.
"The Democratic Party is going to have to take a hard look at itself in the mirror and decide whether it can gamble on Dean when the stakes are so high," said Matt Bennett, Clark's director of communications.
Still, within the campaign there is a sense that time is running out. Said another campaign aide, who asked not to be named: "Do we have a lot of time to make it right? No. We have a couple of weeks to turn around the perception that the campaign lost its focus."
Clark will spend a substantial portion of his resources on paid advertising, launching on Tuesday an ambitious two-month , $1.1 million media buy in New Hampshire that highlights his combat heroism and NATO leadership and keeps him on television through the Jan. 27 primary, with few down days. The ads will be launched with a $220,000 first-week blitz of 60-second spots. Campaign officials hope that the spots will help define Clark for the large percentage of undecided voters in the state who know little about him.
Soon after, the campaign plans major television buys in South Carolina and Arizona, states where Clark is popular. The later buys are part of an aggressive strategy that anticipates Clark doing well in New Hampshire, and breaking out of the nine-person pack in the Feb. 3 primaries, creating a two-man race with Dean. This strategy also contemplates that Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) will not be able to turn around his troubled campaign.
While conceding that Clark may be on paper the best suited to take on Bush, Democrats remain skeptical about his ability to make his case. At times, Clark does not seem to have a feel for how his statements will play politically. Just last week, Clark said he would support a constitutional amendment outlawing flag-burning -- after spending weeks accusing the Bush administration of not tolerating dissent.
In recent weeks, the campaign has begun presenting Clark in intimate town hall settings, where they hope these "Conversations with Clark" will allow the candidate to engage with the audience more casually. "He's learning on the job," Sklar said.
Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000, said the "magic" about Clark seems to be gone. "When he announced, my computer was overwhelmed with e-mails from people trying to sign on, and that's trickled down to just a few," she said. "The challenge for the campaign is to figure out how to get that moment back."
Stephen Hess, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said, "He had a tremendous opportunity when he announced, and he didn't take advantage of it.
"After talking about running for months, everyone expected him to be ready to go, and he wasn't. He kept slipping on banana peels. There is still room for him. People haven't focused -- but the window of opportunity is closing fast."
In the initial excitement over Clark's candidacy, some of the party's most experienced operatives, many of them veterans of the Clinton and Gore campaigns, offered their services. But those who showed up in Little Rock the day before Clark announced were shocked to find Clark had not a thing in place -- no money, no offices, no phones, no position papers and no staff. Donnie Fowler, a veteran of four presidential campaigns, became the campaign manager by default because he happened to be there as an adviser.
No one knew what to do with the politically inexperienced but Internet-savvy leaders of the "Draft Clark" movement, who brought with them 50,000 potential online supporters. There were no clear lines of authority and multiple power centers. Aides were fighting to get on the small campaign plane and travel with Clark, but no one was sure who was in charge of the manifest.
Fowler quit when told he would not be running the campaign. And resentment festered with the apparent power of advisers such as Ron Klain and Mark Fabiani, veterans of the Gore campaign, who did not move to Little Rock. Media representatives were frustrated because there seemed to be no one and everyone speaking for the campaign.
Today, campaign officials insist there are clear lines of authority, department heads who know their jobs and an effective structure in place. But the mishaps continue -- Clark had to back out of a New Hampshire debate next month, for example, because the campaign scheduled a fundraiser in New York the same day.
Sklar, a longtime Democratic activist, helped set up the organizational structure in Little Rock, but his gruff demeanor alienated some. He said he plans to return home to California after Thanksgiving but will still be an adviser to the campaign. Eli Segal, a Boston businessman and Clinton veteran, is now running the day-to-day campaign. Klain and Fabiani are in key advisory roles but are not involved in the daily operations.
In the past month, the press office has been restructured, with Bennett and Jamal Simmons -- the traveling press secretary -- emerging as the two main spokesmen for the campaign. Kym Spell, the former national press secretary, is returning to New York where she will be a consultant to the campaign for the entertainment industry. Chris Lehane, who worked for Gore and briefly for Kerry, has become a media strategist in Little Rock.
There is also an intense push to ramp up Clark's 125,000-strong Internet constituency, with about a dozen staffers developing ways to direct volunteers nationally, generate crowds at events and raise money online. The campaign recently hired Jon Rubin, an expert in direct response fundraising, as a consultant. Finance chairman Diana Rogalle said the campaign is now raising about 40 percent of its money through Internet communication.
But some disgruntled "Draft Clark" activists believe considerable momentum was lost in those first critical weeks, especially inasmuch as Clark's candidacy was really born on the Internet. Between October and November, for example, Clark's monthly meetings set up by a free Web site called Meetup.com -- which have been a key asset of the Dean campaign -- dropped from 343 to 205 nationwide, a sign the campaign was not helping to organize the gatherings. Dean's meetings, meanwhile, reached 818 last month.
Campaign aides maintain, however, that organizational issues are largely behind them, enabling them to concentrate on defining Clark to the voting public. "We're moving to the stage of discovering the reality of the person, and our research shows his leadership experience is quite appealing," said Clark pollster Geoffrey Garin.
"There have been awkward moments but nothing disqualifying," Garin said last week. "The voters are willing to give him a chance to get firmly planted."
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