Clinton Overhauls, but Doesn't Exit, in Iowa

With seven months until the Iowa caucuses, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is shaking up her Iowa campaign, announcing new leadership at her caucus headquarters.

Taking over as the campaign's Iowa director is Teresa Vilmain, 48, a veteran organizer and Iowa native who got her start managing caucus campaigns with Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis in 1987-1988 and was advising former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack before he ended his presidential bid in February. Vilsack endorsed Clinton, and Vilmain, who lives in Wisconsin, for weeks has been informally advising her Iowa campaign.

Vilmain replaces JoDee Winterhof, 41, an Iowa native who has served as chief of staff to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and worked on Al Gore's 2000 caucus campaign. She will stay on the Iowa team as a "senior strategist" and chief surrogate for Clinton around the state.

The move comes two weeks after the leak of a memo from Clinton's national headquarters raising the possibility of skipping Iowa, where polls show her trailing former senator John Edwards of North Carolina. Clinton's campaign has since maintained that it is definitely competing in the state, pointing to her frequent visits there in recent weeks.

Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee said the shake-up should be viewed as an expansion of the campaign's team in Des Moines and its emphasis on Iowa.

"We know we've got a lot of work to do, and this is a recognition that with more smart people we'll be able to accomplish more," he said. "We know other people have a bigger head start and we have a lot of ground to make up."

-- Alec MacGillis

Obama Cites 'Quiet Riots'

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said in a speech yesterday that "quiet riots that take place every day" in impoverished communities around the country create conditions that lead to violence such as the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

"Most of the ministers here know that those riots didn't erupt overnight; there had been a 'quiet riot' building up in Los Angeles and across this country for years," Obama told a conference of ministers at Hampton University in Virginia. "If you had gone to any street corner in Chicago or Baton Rouge or Hampton -- you would have found the same young men and women without hope, without miracles, and without a sense of destiny other than life on the edge."