HANGING OFFENSIVE
The announcement earlier this week that former Clinton and Gore
spokesman Chris Lehane has stepped down from his
strategic communications role with John Kerry’s
presidential campaign reveals everything that is wrong with the
Massachusetts senator’s campaign operation. At the same time that
Kerry was pointing to a press release that stated that Lehane was
stepping down for personal reasons Lehane himself and even some of
his enemies in the campaign were telling reporters that Lehane had
been pushed by those who opposed his campaign philosophy over the
summer.
Lehane was one of the few Kerry advisers counseling an
aggressive “attack Howie Dean” game plan that he
argued would tamp down the growing support that Kerry people were
seeing for Dean in New Hampshire, Iowa, California and New York.
Even though Lehane was working without a contract and some say
without being paid a full salary, the former Clinton hack had been
putting in long hours trying to bail out Kerry’s sinking ship.
Lehane’s exit may be the first in what some Kerry insiders
believe will be several high profile departures from the campaign.
Last week rumors were swirling that key senior adviser and
speechwriter and former Gore political hack Bob
Shrum had lost the confidence of Kerry and would be
leaving. Shrum too had been advocating a more aggressive campaign
against Dean.
“This whole thing is getting out of hand,” said a Kerry campaign
insider. “We’re losing good people. Those that are staying are
losing confidence in Kerry, and everyone seems to be looking around
wondering when all the wheels are going to come off.”
Kerry remains strong on fundraising, but two weeks after his
second announcement that he was running for president his campaign
has failed to show any momentum. Given that the entrance of retired
Gen. Wesley Clark will most likely take the
spotlight for at least several news cycles, Kerry may find himself
heading into October as a former frontrunner who is now a
second-tier candidate.
What everybody who is talking seems to agree on is that while
John Kerry may be the guy driving the car, it’s wife Terry
Kerry who’s manning the lugwrench and unscrewing the
tires.
IN THEIR DREAMS
Senate Republicans are expressing concern about recent decisions
taken by some of their colleagues for the 2004 election cycle. With
Sen. Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois already out the
door and difficult elections for incumbents expected in Alaska and
Pennsylvania, and weak candidate pools to challenge Democrats in
Florida, Arkansas, and California, GOP senators are putting
pressure on Sen. George Allen to ramp up his
recruitment program in a last-ditch drive to try to build a series
of campaigns that could get the GOP close to 57 or 58 seats.
Allen, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee,
has failed to recruit strong candidates in states where other
Republicans believed the party had a shot at beating incumbents. An
exception may be North Carolina, where Republican Rep.
Richard Burr appears to have a better than average
shot at picking up departing Sen. John Edwards’
seat. Elsewhere, though, Allen has no one strong to face Arkansas’
Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Florida Sen. Bob
Graham (who has yet to announce whether he will seek
another Senate term while he pursues the Democratic presidential
nomination).
Yet another state where Republicans were thought to have strong
pickup possibilities is Georgia, where Democrat Zell
Miller has announced his retirement. “For Miller’s seat we
have to view it as nothing but a hold,” says a Senate Republican
leadership staffer. “Miller votes for us so many times that he
might as well be part of the caucus. If we lose that seat it’s like
we’ve lost doubly so.”
Allen has been putting the hard sell on restaurateur
Herman Cain, an African American, to challenge for
that seat. And several state party officials have thrown their hat
in the ring.
While it doesn’t appear that Republicans will lose their slim
Senate majority, it also doesn’t appear that they will pick up the
five or six seats that they were hoping to earlier this year.
