More staff shakeups, and this time it’s a big name:
Another top aide resigned from Republican Fred Thompson’s campaign as the former Tennessee senator made his bid for the White House official.
The latest staff member to depart is Mark Corallo, a senior strategist and spokesman who was one of the first people to join Thompson’s campaign. Corallo resigned yesterday, hours before Thompson formally declared his candidacy in a video posted on his Web site just after midnight, a campaign official said.
Trying to explain what this means for Team Thompson is NRO’s Campaign Spot:
Mark Corallo [was] formerly Fred Thompson’s chief spokesman and his right-hand man when it was just a bunch of folks around a kitchen table… As for Mark Corallo, he’s not Thompson’s Karl Rove; I don’t know if anyone plays that role on Team Fred. Maybe the better comparison is Karen Hughes or Joe Allbaugh, somebody who has been with Thompson from the very beginning. As somebody put it in the Corner yesterday, when you could fit the entire Thompson operation in a phone booth, Corallo was there. His departure is… surprising, as surprising as Karen Hughes heading for the door on the day Bush announced. While every campaign goes through some bumps in the road, growing pains, and personnel changes, these most recent ones seem very, very unusual.
Bloomberg reports:
“There appears to be something dysfunctional inside the Thompson campaign,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “He has been hemorrhaging staff pretty consistently without any explanation.”
Thompson has to show that he is capable of running a large operation, Republican pollster Whit Ayres said. Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani proved he has those skills when he was the mayor of New York, as did former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Ayres said.
Staff shakeups are “more telling for him than for other candidates” because Giuliani and Romney “have significant experience and superb records as chief executives,” said Ayres, who isn’t affiliated with any of the campaigns. “Senator Thompson’s executive ability will be evaluated by how he structures his organization and runs his campaign.”
Thompson’s campaign responds:
“We aren’t forming a cabinet,” he said in an interview last week. “We are forming a presidential campaign, and that takes some time and you make adjustments along the way.”
September 7th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
“We aren’t forming a cabinet,†he said in an interview last week. “We are forming a presidential campaign, and that takes some time and you make adjustments along the way.â€
So do cabinets. I hope they are not informing us that Campaigns are harder to organize than cabinets! Unfortunately for Thompson, this is something that I do not like about him. He appears to be steering a campaign ship with his skippers jumping overboard. So far Thompson doesn’t appear to be able to unify his group that assumabely have simular goals. That is a warning signal for me. I need convincing, can you tell?
September 7th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
I’ve been waiting for the last two and a half days for you to pick up on this. It’s been out there since Wednesday.
September 7th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
I’ve been waiting for the last two and a half days for you to pick up on this. It’s been out there since Wednesday.
How does your waiting have anything to do with what is written here? It’s about Fred? not you Tommy.
September 7th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Tommy, I was waiting that day and a half (Wednesday to Thursday, Thursday to now) for you to post it since it was about Thompson and you could spin it for your guy. When it went unreported, I just threw together media quotes about it, even from Thompson himself, so it would be a balanced piece.
September 7th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
As long as Jeri stays on (and I have no doubt that she will) Senator Thompson will be just fine. He is coming off a pitch-perfect web anouncement and stellar appearances on Leno and in Iowa. He can just sit back and ride his “virtual front-porch” strategy straight to the nomination – all he needs is a microphone and a web cam to get out his message.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Why is it that with all these resignations that no one is willing to tell the public what the problem is? It seems to be a big secret that nobody wants to tell.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
I’ll tell the secret in one word: Jeri
I wouldnt want her bossing me around either.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Sure as clockwork, all the Rombots are coming out bashing Fred. It will be so sweet to watch his downfall.
September 7th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Corallo used to work for Carl Rove. Thompson is replacing Bush people with Dole people. If he doesn’t get a big announcement bump expect another crisis. The departures have to do with the announcement strategy.
September 7th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Since I’m just a peon around here, I don’t know what the protocol is about posting stories, but it seems that there has been a significant amount of cross-posting (supporters of one candidate tagging stories, particularly negative ones, for another candidate). While I wouldn’t advocate censorship, by any means, it seems to me that the story flaggers here ought to be a bit more circumspect about the negative stories. Leave the negativity to the replies. There’s plenty there.
September 7th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Cracks me up that anyone would want Dole people running their campaign since Dole got smoked by Clinton in 1996 and until Thompson had the worst run campaign that I can remember.
Anyone spinning for Fred needs to get a new line of work because it is not working.