Chris Cillizza from the Washington Post reports that Senator John McCain has added former Bush-Cheney and current Governor Schwarzenegger political strategist Steve Schmidt to his senior staff of advisers for his 2008 presidential run.
The hiring of Schmidt by McCain leaves Matthew Dowd, Ken Mehlman, and Karl Rove?as the?remaining top level Bush-Cheney operatives who have not signed on with a 2008 Republican presidential campaign. Mehlman has said publicly that he will not work on a campaign during the 2008 GOP presidential primary and Rove told an audience last week that he will retire as a campaign strategist after his stint in the President George W. Bush White House ends.
As a reminder, this is what the senior staff lineup looks like for Senator McCain in 2008:
Chief Strategist – John Weaver
Chief Executive Officer – Rick Davis
Campaign Manager – Terry Nelson
Campaign Counselor – Mark Salter
Senior Political Adviser – Steve Schmidt
Political Director – Michael Dennehy
Communications Director – Brian Jones
Primary Pollster – Lance Tarrance, Jr.
Senior Adviser and Pollster – Bill McInturff
Chief Media Strategist – Mark McKinnon
Policy Adviser – Senator Phil Gramm
General Counsel – Trevor Potter
Finance Director – Carla Eudy
The senior McCain?staff?comprise a deep and experienced team of presidential campaign operatives second to none on the Republican side for 2008. At this juncture, Governor Romney undoubtedly has the second best senior campaign staff among 2008 GOP presidential hopefuls. But McCain has set the bar very high in terms of senior organizational staff clout for the Republican primary in 2008.
December 21st, 2006 at 12:27 am
I’m liking the Phil Gramm role.
December 21st, 2006 at 1:12 am
I’m not making any judgements here, just asking a question of the more knowledgeable contributers. . .Is it a problem that the entire campaign staff, save for the finance director, is made up of males (most if not all being white males? Is this just a core staff, with a more diverse group being added later on, or is this the entire campaign team? For that matter, does anyone even care what the ethnic/racial/gender makeup of the team is? Say what you want about Bush, his team did well adding women and minorities to the party, but I don’t know how much of that was a result of a diverse campaign team. McCain has an impressive group here, but I can’t believe there was just one qualified woman and possibly no qualified non-white people out there he could have secured. Just a thought.
December 21st, 2006 at 2:11 am
Keep in mind that this is an informal list, Jake. McCain also has Nicolle Wallace (former WH Communications Director) and, I believe, Ron Christie on as informal advisers. Melissa Shuffield is also McCain’s Senate spokeswoman.
December 21st, 2006 at 8:12 am
Truth be told, most of these top politicos with the exception of Mary Matalin and Donna Braizille are guys. Rudy has Sunny Mindel who has been his spokesperson for years but most of his poeple are guys too. Another thing you won’t find on the list is anyone who is not White.
December 21st, 2006 at 11:40 am
What does that have to do with anything?
December 21st, 2006 at 12:12 pm
It’s not inherently a bad thing on the surface, Ted, to be all white or mostly male, but I think it’s important to have a diverse campaign team just to get a broad view of opinions. I’m a white guy from Pennsylvania. I can sympathise with women and African Americans till Howard Dean occupies the Oval Office but I’ll never know exactly what it’s like to be either female or African American, and I will never fully understand and appreciate the needs and opinions of a female or minority Republican without ever talking to one. We all may have the same basic core beliefs but a white Republican and a black Republican and a female Republican have very different life experiences which brought them to the GOP in the first place. I’m not saying a candidate needs to have a specific number of minorities or women to meet some made up diversity quota. However, a candidate should WANT to have a diverse team simply in order to get the best advice and to educate themselves on what different political/cultural/racial groups expect of him and the party. A candidate who wants to run a successful campaign seeks top economists, statesmen, and political experts for advice and support in order to “smarten up” on issues he may not excel at himself. The same should apply to cultural and racial issues. That’s what I meant by asking if it’s a problem that McCain’s team seems all white and mostly male. A bunch of white guys sitting around the Straight Talk bus have no clue what it’s like to live as a woman or a black guy in the US today, no matter how much political experience he will ever have. I would think a candidate would want to have as broad an array of opinions and expertise on his team so he can appeal to as broad an audience as possible. Maybe I’m wrong – I never ran a campaign – but it just seems logical to me.
December 21st, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Jake,
McCain just hired Jill Hazelbaker as his New Hampshire Communications Director. She was previously the Communications Director for Tom Kean Jr., until his loss last month.
December 21st, 2006 at 1:42 pm
I think this matters in two ways. A campaign can get too insular and you miss things because of group think. An ad that is a tad offensive to women won’t get caught. A line in a speech to a Hispanic group sounds patronizing. If you don’t have a range of people the chance for errors goes up. Also, with chances of a minority at the top or bottom of the Dem ticket the GOP is going to have to counter the “white boy” observation. It helps if you have a very diverse staff.