Head of 'The House'

Never mind the anti-Vietnam War protests on college campuses across the country, the dashing Rietz told them. Spend a few million dollars, and we can win the youth vote. The skeptical president and former attorney general signed off on the plan, and within weeks, the new head of Young Voters for the President had set up a storefront office at 17th and Pennsylvania, staffed with a dozen eager young activists.

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By year's end, Rietz's army of under-30 volunteers (which included a college-age Karl Rove and a cadre of women called Nixonettes) had swelled to the thousands and helped deliver Nixon the election. Rietz was named the deputy chairman at the Republican National Committee, until he became entangled in Watergate.

Interviewed by the FBI, he admitted hiring a student to infiltrate a peace group, but he denied leading a "kiddie spy corps," as news reports had alleged. He was never charged with anything, but he resigned his RNC position and went into political hibernation in California, emerging occasionally to run campaigns over the next 30 years.

"I basically put that all behind me and went out to California and went into the record business, thinking I would never be involved in politics again," Rietz said.

Eventually he returned to Washington. He rose to become a senior executive at Burson-Marsteller, one of the city's biggest public relations firms, despite retinitis pigmentosa, a disease that claims eyesight from the outside in, leaving a shrinking tunnel of vision that eventually closes.

Rietz had largely retired to his home in Virginia when Thompson offered him the chance to work his trade in a national campaign again. "What Ken has is this wealth of experience. He has seen how the game is played," said Tom Nides, a Democrat who was chief executive at Burson-Marsteller and is now a senior executive at Morgan Stanley.

But critics said the campaign's current struggles reflect the presence of too many Rietz friends from political eras long gone by. Most of the people he lured to Thompson's side either had no experience on a presidential campaign or were years out of date.

And their departures continue. Atlanta developer Tom Bell, who first met Rietz while running the campaign that ousted Sen. Al Gore Sr. (D-Tenn.) in 1970, resigned as one of Thompson's finance chiefs in late October.

But Rietz's supporters, including Lacy, say he gives relevant advice drawn on four decades of experience. "He's just extraordinarily well connected," Lacy said. "He knows most of the others who you would lump into a guru category."

Each morning and evening, Rietz's fourth wife, Ursula, reads him the e-mails he gets from campaign staffers, donors and political consultants. He dials a toll-free number every day to listen to coverage of the campaign on free audio versions of The Washington Post and the New York Times.

It is Jeri Thompson, Lacy and other friends from Tennessee who have the influence in the campaign now, according to current and former Thompson aides. Lacy helped rescue Thompson's first Senate campaign. Bob Davis, a former Senate aide, is never far from his side now. Mark Esper, his policy expert, was an adviser for former senator Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).

That leaves Rietz somewhat isolated. But his admirers say the campaign still relies on him.

"I don't think Fred Thompson could have a better person in the background than Ken," said Bell, who worked alongside Rietz in 1970 as he managed Republican Bill Brock's Senate campaign in Tennessee. "He's in the background. That's where he wants to be."

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.