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Gingrich campaign in tatters as top aides resign

Published - Jun 09 2011 04:08PM EST

By DAVID ESPO and SHANNON McCAFFREY - Associated Press


(AP Photo/Cheryl Senter, File)
FILE - In this June 8, 2011 file photo, Republican presidential hopeful, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, accompanied by his wife Callista Gingrich, speaks in Hudson, N.H. Gingrich's campaign manager and numerous other key aides have resigned together, a strong blow to his hopes for the Republican presidential nomination.

WASHINGTON — The entire top echelon of Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign resigned on Thursday, a stunning mass exodus that left his bid for the Republican nomination in tatters. But the former House speaker vowed defiantly to remain a candidate.

"I am committed to running the substantive, solutions-oriented campaign I set out to run earlier this spring," the Gingrich said in a posting to his Facebook page. "The campaign begins anew Sunday in Los Angeles."

Rick Tyler, Gingrich's spokesman, said that he, campaign manager Rob Johnson and senior strategists had all quit, along with aides in the early primary and caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Other officials said Gingrich was informed that his entire high command was quitting in a meeting at his headquarters in Washington. They cited differences over the direction of the campaign.

"We had a different vision for victory," Tyler told The Associated Press. "And since we couldn't resolve that difference, I didn't feel I could be useful in serving him."

He said Gingrich was not allowing enough time to campaign in key states.

Scott Rials, a longtime aide who joined the departure, said, "I think the world of him, but at the end of the day we just could not see a clear path to win, and there was a question of commitment."

The upheaval in the campaign was likely to lead to a shakeup in the race for the party's presidential nomination, as well, as rivals reach out for disaffected staff, and possibly for donors who have been aligned with the former Georgia congressman.

Gingrich has long been viewed, by even his closest allies, as a fountain of policy ideas but a man who is unable to avoid speaking in ways that spark unwelcome controversy.

Even before the sudden departures of his top aides, Gingrich's campaign was off to a notably rocky start. Within days of formally announcing he would run, he was assailed by conservatives for criticizing a plan to remake Medicare that Republicans pushed through the House.

He telephoned the author of the plan, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, to apologize but did not back off his objections.

Within days, he had dropped from sight, embarking on a cruise to the Greek Isles with his wife, Callista, while rivals for the Republican nomination kept up their campaign appearances.

He returned to the United States earlier in the week to confront a rebellion that had been brewing for some time among the senior echelon of his campaign.

While Gingrich told his now-departed aides he would remain in the race, he faces formidable obstacles in assembling a new team in time to compete in a campaign that's well under way. He has the allegiance of several former aides who served him when he was in Congress, but most if not all of them have moved into other fields.

Most immediately, he is scheduled to participate in a debate next Monday in New Hampshire.

Johnson and another key aide, strategist David Carney, joined Gingrich's campaign after working as senior political staff members for Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Perry ruled out running for the White House earlier in the year, but more recently has said he might reconsider. It was not known whether his former aides were interested in returning to him.

"Nothing has changed," the governor's spokesman, Mark Miner, said in an interview on Thursday. "The governor is focused on the legislative session."

Gingrich, 67, last served in public office more than a decade ago. He resigned as speaker of the House after two terms following an unexpectedly close mid-term election in 1998 in which Republicans gained far fewer seats than he had predicted.

In the years since, he has established a virtual one-man think tank, publishing books and speaking publicly.

Gingrich announced his presidential exploratory committee in May and is not required to report the results of his campaign fundraising until mid-July.

He has raised more than $52 million for American Solutions for Winning the Future, his nonprofit policy group that can legally accept unlimited donations.

But presidential campaigns are subject to much stricter rules _ a candidate can accept a maximum contribution of $2,500 per person for the primary campaign and $2,500 per person for the general election.

In addition to Tyler, Johnson and Rials, aides who quit include senior adviser Sam Dawson, South Carolina director Katon Dawson, and New Hampshire director Dave Carney. The entire full-time staff in Iowa, six aides, also quit.

One of them, political director Will Rogers, left last week out of dissatisfaction with the direction of the campaign.

He said that as of May 31, the day he announced he was quitting, the candidate had not scheduled any campaign days in the state. The Iowa caucuses traditionally begin the delegate selection process, and assembling a network of supporters is an arduous process that usually requires a candidate's frequent presence.

___

Associated Press writers Charles Babington and Philip Elliott in Washington, Tom Beaumont in Iowa, Beth Fouhy in New York and April Castro in Austin, Texas, contributed to this story.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/...sign/full/

Good.

He is best left on the sidelines.

(06-09-2011 04:44 PM)ctipton Wrote: [ -> ]Gingrich has long been viewed, by even his closest allies, as a fountain of policy ideas but a man who is unable to avoid speaking in ways that spark unwelcome controversy.

This is how I have always viewed him.

(06-10-2011 08:17 AM)OneUChoopsfan Wrote: [ -> ]He is best left on the sidelines.

He's anything but left

Rich Galen: Wings Come Off the Gingrich Campaign
Friday, June 10, 2011
By Rich Galen

There is a reason that just about every airliner looks like every other airliner. Some are larger, some smaller; some have two engines, some four, but they generally look alike.

There is a reason for that. There is a design solution that fits commercial airliners. They take off, they go where the pilot aims them, they land, and they can carry enough passengers to make money.

Same with political campaigns. Every cycle the candidates say, "We're going to run a different type of campaign." They all look pretty much alike because there is an engineering design solution for political campaigns.

Things change. On-line fundraising instead of using the USPS was new. So were digital avionics instead of analog instruments. But those things are updates, not fundamental changes.

The story about Newt Gingrich broke at about 3 pm Eastern yesterday. It was the kind of story that, in places where people make their living doing things like talking into a TV camera (or writing Internet-based columns) it was Stop-the-Music.

More or less every staff member of the Gingrich for President campaign in D.C., in Iowa, in New Hampshire, and in South Carolina as well as the two senior staffers at Gingrich's HQ in Georgia had packed up and moved out. Reporters typed the phrase en masse thinking it gave their pieces a continental flair.

My cell phone bill is going to be huge this month. Every reporter I have ever met wanted to know what I knew. "I know what you know. We're all reading the same stuff and we're all talking to each other."

Reporters love to say things beginning with, "I'm hearing ..." which is designed to draw you out by agreeing or disagreeing at which point the good ones will pounce and ask you how you know.

I responded with, "Well, then you already know more than I do," as this is not my first rodeo.

I didn't know what happened, but I had a pretty good idea.

From the very beginning Gingrich's campaign has been in trouble:

-- that false start in Atlanta back on March 3,
-- through the weak Twitter/Facebook/YouTube announcement in May,
-- to the appearance on Meet the Press for which Gingrich was ill-prepared and got into the public fight with Rep. Paul Ryan over Medicare,
-- then the $500,000 line of credit at Tiffany's story, and
-- ending, literally, with the luxury cruise through the Greek Isles.

On TV yesterday and last night I guessed that while Newt and his wife were in Greece, the staff was fuming over their refusal to allow the people who do campaigns for a living help get this campaign on the right path.

Somewhere in the discussion - maybe high up in the discussion - money would have been mentioned.

I have said before that the lack of chatter from the campaign about how much money Gingrich had raised was telling. If they were raising large amounts every day, the campaign would have been telling reporters about it.

Gingrich has raised enormous amounts of money over the years, but this is a different kind of fundraising. This doesn't pour in at $5,000-$10,000 per bucket (as it did when I ran GOPAC) but dribbles in at $5-$10 per drop.

To raise money from large donors requires start-up money: Halls have to be rented, stages have to be built, food has to be ordered, invitations have to be printed, addressed and mailed.

That money -- the $2,500 a pop money -- comes from the candidate getting on the phone and hitting his long-time supporters for their large checks and to beg them to opened their Rolodexes and raise money from their friends.

That is very hard to do from an ocean liner in the Aegean Sea.

Information from the former staffers started coming out by early evening. No surprises. The staff was made up of campaign professionals who wanted to run a professional campaign.

Gingrich and his wife wanted to campaign where, when, and how they wanted; a different kind of campaign.

But, they ran afoul of the rule that campaigns look like campaigns look, because there's a design solution that works.

The Gingrich campaign was like an airliner with no wings, no engines, and no landing gear. It was a different kind of airliner.

But, it couldn't get off the ground.

http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/articl...h-campaign

Opens the door even wider for Ron Paul 2012?

(06-10-2011 01:45 PM)Bearcat_Bounce Wrote: [ -> ]Opens the door even wider for Ron Paul 2012?

Neither Gingrich, or Ron Paul, ever had a snowballs chance in hell at the GOP nomination, much less ever becoming President.

(06-10-2011 02:25 PM)Kenyon#4 Wrote: [ -> ]

(06-10-2011 01:45 PM)Bearcat_Bounce Wrote: [ -> ]Opens the door even wider for Ron Paul 2012?

Neither Gingrich, or Ron Paul, ever had a snowballs chance in hell at the GOP nomination, much less ever becoming President.

He wouldn't have stood a chance for the nomination.