Head of 'The House'

On the Friday evening before July 4, Jeri Thompson walked into the new campaign office to find the place almost deserted. She erupted, according to several staffers who witnessed it, directing most of her anger at Collamore and instructing him to start calling people back into the office.

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The moment culminated weeks of clashes between the ex-senator's wife and Collamore, according to current and former staffers.

The pair argued about Thompson's schedule as they traveled together in an SUV on the way to events. They quarreled over staffing decisions, the wording of e-mails, the location of offices, the look of the Web site and the timing of the campaign's rollout.

Collamore and others got frequent e-mails from Jeri Thompson's BlackBerry on every aspect of the campaign: "Are we all set with contract for hats?" one read. Another asked: "Are we sending these great clips out? What kind of distribution lists? Donors?"

On July 24, five minutes after word leaked out to CNN, Collamore sent an e-mail calling his staff to a meeting, where he announced his resignation. As Rietz had requested, a statement issued to the news media that night indicated that Collamore would stay on as a "senior adviser," but in reality, he was gone.

The next morning, research director J.T. Mastranadi left a one-page resignation letter on his chair. But despite wondering why he wasn't on the day's 7:30 a.m. conference call, no one noticed the letter for hours, according to two sources. A day later, Sam LeBlond, a nephew of President Bush's, quit the campaign, along with Tom Frechette, a former aide to the president's father, George H.W. Bush. Both had been loyal to Collamore.

That night, Jeri Thompson arrived at headquarters with pizzas for the remaining staff members.

There had been "no mass exodus" of staffers, the campaign's newly hired communications director, Linda Rozett, insisted publicly at the time, adding that "there were plenty of people here to eat up the pizza before I got any."

Within weeks, she was gone, too.

Lacy took over the campaign and replaced Rozett, a former executive at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who had been recruited heavily by Rietz, with veteran press aide Todd Harris. Jim Mills, a former Fox News producer who started as the campaign's spokesman on Aug. 20, was out by Sept. 5. Burson Snyder and Robert Traynham, two veteran press aides from Capitol Hill, left in frustration, as did Corallo.

"I'm surprised at the seeming chaos in the campaign," said one longtime friend of Rietz's who has watched Thompson's slow rollout with interest from afar. "That's not something that he would normally be part of."

A Political Life Resumed

In 1972, Rietz, then a 30-year-old political operative, flew down to Key Biscayne to meet with President Richard M. Nixon and John Mitchell, the director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, armed with an audacious proposal.