McCain Campaign Returns to Its Stopgap Model

PLAYERS and PLAYERS
Sunday, April 6, 2008

When Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) began running for president last year, he built a campaign staff modeled on the successful blueprint employed by President Bush in 2004: a strong and large centralized staff with a series of local and state operatives reporting up to the national advisers.

Then the bottom fell out. McCain ran out of money over the summer and experienced a staff exodus that left him with a skeleton national crew and a group of largely volunteer staff in the early-voting states. And, yet, somehow it worked.

That success has emboldened McCain's campaign to re-create its primary model for the general-election campaign, bypassing a huge national staff in favor of a series of nine regional operations led by operatives who report to campaign manager Rick Davis.

The hiring of these regional campaign managers is ongoing. But The Fix got a look at those who have agreed to serve and the regions they will oversee. Take a look:

· Jim Barnett (New Hampshire/Northeast): A former chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, Barnett was a regional political director for McCain's presidential bid before being made New Hampshire campaign manager in May 2007.

· Doug Davenport (Mid-Atlantic): Davenport launched the government affairs (read: lobbying) practice at DCI Group in 2000. Before that he was director of government relations for a lottery company.

· Buzz Jacobs (Florida): Jacobs served as South Carolina state director for McCain in the primaries and was part of a spartan group, which included longtime adviser Richard Quinn, that directed the senator to a crucial victory in the Palmetto State.

· Gentry Collins (Iowa/Midwest): Collins is the only regional campaign manager hired so far who worked against McCain in the primaries. Collins was Iowa state director for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's presidential bid and, before that post, served as political director of the Republican Governors Association during the 2006 cycle.

· John Peschong (California): Peschong, a former executive director of the California Republican Party, joined McCain's campaign in March 2007 as a senior adviser in the Golden State. He managed McCain's primary win in California on Feb. 5 and will try to do the same in November.

· Craig Goldman (Southwest): For Goldman, his hiring as a regional campaign manager is a reunion of sorts. He ran McCain's Straight Talk America political action committee during the 2006 election cycle and spent a brief time with the presidential campaign before departing in the spring of 2007.

PLAYERS

The best pollster you've never heard of is expanding his operation to the nation's capital. John Anzalone, of Anzalone Liszt Research, is opening a Washington office to be run by Marc Silverman, a senior associate in the firm. The Democratic survey research firm became among the hottest in the nation after the 2006 cycle in which it conducted polling for Reps. Heath Shuler (N.C.), Ron Klein (Fla.), Paul W. Hodes (N.H.) and Jason Altmire (Pa.) -- all of whom defeated Republican incumbents. "As our Washington-based client list has grown and we have developed a national reputation, opening a D.C. office is a natural next step for our firm," Anzalone said.

21 DAYS: After being shut out of debates for the entire presidential primary process, CBS is making a play to host a debate in North Carolina on April 27. Clinton has agreed to participate, but Obama remains uncommitted.

27 DAYS: The special general election to replace Rep. Richard H. Baker (R-La.) will be held. Democrats believe that they have a real chance of winning the Baton Rouge-area 6th district, despite its Republican leanings, now that controversial former state lawmaker Woody Jenkins has emerged as the GOP nominee.

The Fix is a stats junkie -- hello, fantasy baseball! -- so a recent memo titled "The Democratic Nomination by the Numbers" penned by Third Way's Jim Kessler immediately drew our attention.

Kessler, an admitted numbers hound who is vice president for policy at the centrist think tank, said he decided to crunch the data from the presidential primaries and caucuses to date because he is "less interested in who's up and who's down in the delegate count and more in how actual voters are responding to these two candidates."

Among the interesting nuggets unearthed by Kessler:

· Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) has a 421,000 vote lead over Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) among registered Democrats in the votes conducted so far. Obama more than makes up for that deficit with an 860,000-vote margin among independent voters and a 130,000-vote edge among Republicans who have participated in Democratic contests. Obama's overall popular vote lead stands at 791,879 votes, or 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent. (The totals omit a handful of states that don't release their caucus vote counts.)

· For a close race, the majority of the 44 nominating contests held so far have been blowouts -- in large part because of the margins racked up by Obama. Twenty-four of his 29 wins have been by 16 points or more, while four of Clinton's 15 victories have been of the blowout variety.

Five of the 44 races have been decided by four points or fewer, with Clinton winning close contests in New Hampshire, New Mexico and Texas's primary (Texas also held a caucus) and with Obama edging her in Missouri and Connecticut.

· Despite Obama's blowouts, Clinton enjoys a higher average margin of victory because of her wins in more populous states. In her 15 wins, the average margin is 118,979 votes; Obama's average margin of victory in his 29 wins in 88,845. Because of his triumphs in small states and states holding low-turnout caucuses, Obama has taken more total votes in the 15 states he has lost (7,186,239) than in the 29 states he has won (6,408,030).