TRIPPI FIRED
News that former Vermont Gov. Howie Dean was
pushing aside longtime political adviser Joe
Trippi for Al Gore’s former Senate chief
of staff and consigliere Roy Neel began leaking
late Wednesday afternoon, after a number of congressman had heard
the news from Dean himself on a conference call.
In a hastily called meeting at Dean campaign headquarters,
Trippi told tearful staff members that he was out, despite his
boss’s insisting that Trippi was staying on.
Trippi was credited with molding Dean into the national
candidate he had become until the Dean team failed to stem the
negative press that inundated Iowa and led to their candidate’s
downfall in the polls. Dean’s decision may be the death knell of
his campaign. Trippi was viewed by many of Dean’s Internet and
volunteer supporters as the visionary leader of the Dean
phenomenon.
Dean apparently had made the decision on Neel, a longtime Gore
adviser, in the hours after his Iowa meltdown. In Dean’s
conversations with Gore over the weekend before the New Hampshire
primary, the former vice president suggested Neel as the man to get
the campaign’s organization back on track.
Instead of immediately heading down to South Carolina or to
Missouri from News Hampshire, Dean gathered his braintrust in
Burlington Wednesday for a strategy session. Early in the day,
according to sources, he told Trippi that Neel was coming on board
as chief executive officer of the campaign. He asked Trippi to stay
on. Trippi declined.
“It wasn’t said explicitly, but there is a sense here that Neel
could do for our guy what [former Gore adviser] Bob
Shrum did for John Kerry,” says a Dean
adviser. “It may be too late, though. This thing has the feel of a
slowly leaking lifeboat.”
On the Wednesday afternoon conference call, Dean told his
congressional supporters that he intended to fight for his
political life in every state holding a primary or caucus on
February 3. This appeared to counter the strategy that Trippi had
been discussing with reporters in New Hampshire on Tuesday night.
There, the campaign manager was insisting that Dean, in need of
wins, would focus on states that were battleground and winnable
states. States discussed as viable for Dean included New Mexico,
which uses a caucus format, and Arizona on February 3, Michigan and
Washington on February 7 and Wisconsin on February 17 as viable for
Dean. Now that strategy would appear to be dead.
Neel had been serving as an adviser to Dean after the Vermonter
received the endorsement of Neel’s old boss Gore. Prior to
yesterday’s announcement, there was little to indicate that Neel
was seeking any larger role in the campaign.
LABOR UNEASE
It should be noted as well that Roy Neel was also
suggested to Howard Dean by leaders of the AFSCME
and SEIU unions, who were demanding winning results from Dean …
or else. While no one in the Dean camp called the conversations
ultimatums, sources inside the Dean campaign said that both AFSCME
president Gerald McEntee and SEIU president
Andrew Stern made it clear to Dean senior advisers
that the candidate must win in next week’s races or face the
prospect that both unions will publicly announce that they are
reconsidering their endorsements and support.
“It’s embarrassing for Dean, but it’s not embarrassing if we
jump horses midstream,” says an AFSCME lobbyist in Washington. “You
think [John] Kerry is going to
turn us down? We went first with the man who best suited our
interests. If we change, we say we’re now supporting the man who
has shown he can address our top priority, and that is the end of
the Bush administration.”
AFL-CIO president John Sweeney has said little
about where his union — of which AFSCME and the SEIU are a part —
stands on an overall endorsement. Many of the AFL-CIO’s
manufacturing unions had endorsed Rep. Dick
Gephardt, and many of those unions began looking to Sen.
John Edwards in the aftermath of his strong
showing in Iowa.
“Despite the wrangling, organized labor is going to end up
backing the winner. It has to,” says a DNC fundraiser. “If Kerry is
the frontrunner, you’re going to see labor jump on his bandwagon
fast, because without a strong, labor-backed Democratic candidate,
the party doesn’t have a strong candidate. The candidates
understand that, the unions understand that, and the party
understands that.”
KERRY’S CAROLINA COUP
The endorsement from South Carolina Rep. Jim
Clyburn would appear to seal the deal for Sen.
John Kerry in next week’s primary there. Clyburn
is expected of mobilize the African-American vote for Kerry in the
Palmetto State, putting him over the top and allowing him to edge
out homegrown Sen. John Edwards. Kerry camp
insiders believe a win in South Carolina and in Missouri next week
will all but end the campaign for the Democratic nomination.
“It’s about big-footing the competition, and a win down south
and a big delegate haul in Missouri does that,” says a Kerry
insider in Washington. “We’re looking at a big, national
campaign-style media buy in Missouri for the next week. We’re
looking at hitting all the right notes. If we do over the next ten
days what we did in Iowa and New Hampshire, Dean and Edwards are
toast February 4, the 8th by the latest, and are begging for a role
in our presidential campaign.”
A Kerry win in South Carolina, Missouri and, say, New Mexico —
where he is being endorsed by former Clinton cabinet member
Henry Cisneros, who will campaign with Kerry over
the next couple of days — appears to cut off one more state that
the Dean campaign had been banking on. Three weeks ago, Dean was
leading in polls in New Mexico. The latest shows him running
fourth, behind Kerry, Edwards and Wesley
Clark.
