Head of 'The House'

The first campaign manager Rietz had recruited left the job in July after clashing with Thompson's wife. He was followed quickly by the campaign's research director and his deputy. Two aides, including one of President Bush's nephews, quit.

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The campaign's communications director -- who publicly declared the staffing mess much ado about nothing -- was soon out herself, and a week later the press secretary was gone, along with two top press aides. A longtime Thompson friend who had been there from the beginning left without fanfare. So did the man tasked with outreach to the religious community.

"You had a lot of bright, well-meaning people. But there was kind of a disconnect between ideas and operationalizing ideas," said Bill Lacy, the man Thompson brought in to clean up the staffing mess. "There's a major step from saying 'This is an idea' to actually making it reality."

Rietz, who is nearly blind from a degenerative eye disease, has no official title and is not getting paid by the campaign. But aides say his close relationship to Thompson still gives him unique access to the candidate. Thompson, his wife and their young children celebrated the senator's 65th birthday at Rietz's Delaplane, Va., estate over the summer, borrowing a neighbor's pony to give rides to 3-year-old Hayden.

Lacy calls Rietz the "godfather" of the campaign. But what began as a lean, bold, insurgent-style political effort -- conceived by Rietz and the handful of people in what the campaign calls "The House" -- has morphed into a traditional, big-budget campaign that has so far failed to live up to the hype Rietz helped create last spring.

"There was an irrational exuberance for Internet campaigning," one former staffer said. "When this exaggerated faith in the Net collided with reality, the impact was pretty severe. Once the real campaign began, an organization that placed no premium on having a real campaign was ill prepared to deal with it."

Disagreements From the Start

By the end of May, the campaign had opened a large office about a mile from The House. Big and beige, reminding some of an insurance agency, it had a fancy corner office with "FT" on the door and an equally nice office for his wife, with a sign that read "JKT."

But even as a campaign structure was taking shape, Thompson's small cadre of advisers was locked in endless debate about how and when to announce the senator's intentions. What began as an effective "will he or won't he?" tease stretched out for months.

When the campaign raised the idea of an announcement in Thompson's hometown of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., the candidate balked. Later, aides booked the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, the former home of the Grand Ole Opry, as the venue for a big-budget announcement in early September. "I thought we had that sucker planned at least twice," said one former staffer.

The plan -- backed by Rietz -- was later ditched in favor of making announcements in September on the Internet and "The Tonight Show."

"In the early stage, I was an advocate of doing it in Nashville. In the later stages, I was an advocate for doing it the way we did it," Rietz said. "We talked about the announcement for 30, 40 days. . . . I think in the end we did it exactly the right way."

The team that Rietz built started falling apart by the end of June, as the Thompson brain trust continued to haggle.