Clinton: Penn still 'in the loop'?
Posted: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 9:03 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Wow, talk about your leaks. Apparently, an employee of Burson-Marsteller allowed a reporter for the Huffington Post to listen in on a conference call led by Mark Penn, who explained his new role with Clinton and with the company. “[H]e confirmed that while his title with the campaign had changed -- and his work load would undoubtedly decrease -- he still would play a direct advisory role for Clinton. ‘I think you've heard that I made the decision to step down as chief strategist of the Clinton campaign. Penn Schoen and Berland is going to continue to poll for it and I'll continue to play a role advising Senator Clinton and former President Clinton as well as the rest of the leadership of the campaign,’ he said.”
More: "Told that junior staff members were wondering why he would risk the appearance of a conflict of interest, the Burson CEO responded by saying the meeting was merely a ‘courtesy call,’ and indicated that he had held similar meetings before. ‘It's an interesting question,’ he said. ‘As I said, it was someone I worked for -- remember, we had the contract for a year before it was even about the free trade agreement, and periodically, maybe, I would have a check-in breakfast every six months. So it did not catch - it's interesting, because somebody working on the account was well versed in politics and it just didn't occur to anybody. I would have to say that it just didn't get flagged.’”
“Hillary Clinton's political guru may have been pushed from the top spot in her campaign, but he didn't land in the grave. Despite embarrassing the White House hopeful by consulting for the Colombian government on a U.S. trade agreement she opposes, Mark Penn remains ‘very much in the loop,’ a Clinton source said,” per the New York Daily News.
The New York Times looks at how things might change under new chief pollster, Geoff Garin. “Inside the Clinton team, Mr. Penn advocated increasingly sharp attacks on Mr. Obama as Mrs. Clinton’s best option. Long before he joined the campaign, Mr. Garin argued that her route to success lay more in presenting her strengths than in assailing her opponent. ‘The sweet spot a campaign needs to hit is the intersection between what makes the candidate special and what the voters feel they need,’ he explained, praising Mrs. Clinton’s values, spunk and resilience.”
Politico reports Glover Park Group -- whose partners have a lot of ties to Clinton -- has a contract with the Colombian government to push for the passage of the trade agreement. Of course, the firm's most prominent Clinton person, Howard Wolfson, took a leave from the firm to avoid conflicts just like this one.
Roger Simon wonders whether the drama of the Clinton campaign can be used against her with voters, who might think how she runs her campaign is how she'll run her White House. "And while she says she is ready from Day One to be president, she is at something like Day 430 into being a presidential candidate and her campaign seems to be going from bad to worse to train wreck. Mark Penn, who just got booted as her chief strategist, is only the latest problem in a campaign that has been heavy on drama and light on results.”
“‘None of these folks have ever run anything, other than Hillary running a health care task force,’ David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, told me Monday. “But these campaigns are big, complicated, pressure-filled enterprises, and it is an important proving ground.” The Obama campaign is going to tell voters it is proving itself every day. It says it had a calm and deliberate strategy that it has executed well: Win Iowa (I will write more about this in my next column) and then aggregate delegates."
The New York Daily News: “Powerful union bosses, including a key backer of Hillary Rodham Clinton, urged her to sack chief strategist Mark Penn just days before she axed him, it was revealed yesterday. Clinton backer Gerald McEntee, who heads the powerful AFSCME union of government workers, says he told her that Penn needed to go. ‘I talked to her on Saturday and asked her to do something about this Mark Penn fellow,’ he said.”
How happy are some members of the press corps that Bill Clinton stumped in Puerto Rico yesterday. The Post: “By arriving in Puerto Rico before Obama, the Clinton campaign hoped to solidify an already-strong advantage here. Clinton represents more Puerto Ricans as a senator from New York than any other stateside politician, and Spanish-speaking voters in Texas and California voted overwhelmingly for her. Obama's campaign, meanwhile, has yet to recover from the indictment last month of Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vilá, his most prominent Puerto Rican supporter."
