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Dean campaign gets shakeup after nhampshire Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/01/29/dean_campaign_gets_a_shake_up/http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/01/29/dean_campaign_gets_a_shake_up/
Dean campaign gets a shake-up
By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff, 1/29/2004
BURLINGTON, Vt. -- After back-to-back losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, Howard Dean overhauled his faltering campaign operation yesterday, hiring a new chief executive and asking his staff to defer their salaries for two weeks to preserve cash.
Joe Trippi, the hip, Internet savvy campaign manager credited with vaulting Dean into the national spotlight and to the head of the pack of fund-raising, quit shortly after Dean told him he was hiring Roy Neel, a longtime aide to Al Gore. Neel also served as deputy chief of staff to President Clinton.
"Roy brings enormous experience in management and national politics and is a valuable resource," Dean told reporters last night in a conference call. "I think you're going to see a leaner, meaner organization."
Neel planned to move to Burlington immediately.
The shakeup was part of a strategic shift for a candidate who had hoped to secure the Democratic presidential nomination with a pair of wins in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. Now Dean is girding for a long battle for the nomination and preparing to cast himself as the only viable alternative to Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, who won both Iowa and New Hampshire.
Other changes included a broadening of Dean's advertising operation to include specialists from Hollywood and New York.
The shift came as Dean's congressional supporters told him in a conference call yesterday afternoon that drastic changes were needed in his campaign, which blew double-digit leads in the first presidential voting states and found itself on the defensive heading into what campaign chairman Steve Grossman termed yesterday "the decisive two weeks of this campaign."
Seven states, most of them in the South and Southwest, vote Tuesday. Five other states vote on or before Feb. 10.
"We, the Dean campaign, have to put a `W' up on the board," Grossman said in a telephone interview. "There's no question that we need to show a breakthrough, somewhere soon, in a way that can show to the pundits and pollsters that this guy has the staying power to win."
Dean will visit all seven states holding primaries and caucuses next Tuesday, but he will aim for wins in New Mexico, which votes Feb. 3, and Washington state and Michigan, both of which vote Feb. 7. While other candidates and the media are focusing on South Carolina as an important voting state next week, it has only 45 delegates at stake -- and, as in all states, they will be awarded in proportion to the results. By contrast, Michigan, which votes four days later, has 128 delegates, making any effort there potentially more rewarding than in South Carolina.
In making his case to voters, Dean will return to his expertise as a doctor and chief executive, stressing his ability to create near-universal health care in Vermont during the 11 years he served as its governor. Grossman contrasted that record with Kerry's, whose 19-year tenure in Congress, he said, has spanned 13 attempts to provide similar health care reforms nationwide. "As it goes down potentially to two people, and we need to have the staying power to make it a two-person race . . . that clear line of demarcation, that line in the sand, needs to be drawn," Grossman said.
While the campaign insisted fund-raising remains strong -- Dean has raised more than $1.8 million since his Iowa scream speech -- the chairman conceded his candidate must start winning to retain his political viability. Salary deferral gives the campaign the ability to maximize its spending in ways that more directly affect voters over the next two weeks.
Kerry fired his campaign manager in November amid complaints from his supporters that the senator's campaign had lost momentum and was foundering in the middle of the nine-member pack. Kerry had two months to restructure his organization before the first contest in Iowa, Jan. 19. Dean's late decision does not afford him that luxury.
All of Dean's rivals barreled out of New Hampshire to fan across the upcoming primary and caucus states yesterday, but Dean spent the day at home in Burlington. He devoted 3 1/2 hours to satellite TV appearances on news shows in 13 states. He also watched his son's high school hockey game last night, a weekly event Dean has made a priority despite his campaign.
Dean told Trippi during a morning meeting that he was planning to bring in Neel to run the campaign, according to a top adviser privy to the exchange. Dean asked Trippi to continue providing strategic advice in the role of senior adviser, but Trippi decided to quit. "He believes there can be only one person in charge," said the top adviser.
Neel previously worked as chief executive of the US Telecom Association in Washington and is an adjunct professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. He had been working as an adviser to the Dean campaign since January.
Other campaign aides said the change was evidence of the increasingly influential role being played in the campaign by Gore, the former vice president who endorsed Dean in December. Gore himself plans to campaign with Dean in South Carolina before Tuesday's vote. Dean last night said Gore did not suggest the change.
A tearful Trippi announced his resignation to the staff during the afternoon. "I'm out of the campaign, but I'm not out of the fight," he said, according to one person who listened to the announcement.
Trippi gained near cult status among Dean's legion of grass-roots supporters.
A former aerospace engineer, he is credited with the campaign's revolutionary use of the Internet for fund-raising, a medium that helped Dean raise a record $40 million last year.
At the same time, Dean's weblog filled yesterday with criticism from supporters who questioned the quality of the campaign's television ads, which were produced by Trippi and his partners in a political consulting firm, Steve McMahon and Mark Squier.
"Please hire a pro ad agency and use those millions we've given you to buy EFFECTIVE ads," wrote Bradford in Jacksonville, Fla. "The ones in Iowa and New Hampshire were wretched."
McMahon and Squier will continue to make ads for the campaign, but as part of a broader team, said one top adviser.
On the staff front, Grossman and Bob Rogan, Dean's former gubernatorial chief of staff, are also expected to play a larger role in daily operations. "I'm going to do whatever Howard Dean asks me to do," Grossman said.
"If he asks me to do more, I will do it. I did not come all this way . . . not to be there over the decisive two weeks of this campaign. This is the time when people are looking at us and asking if we have the intestinal fortitude to continue on."
Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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