GOING TOO FAR
In the past week both Florida Sen. Mel Martinez
and Gov. Charlie Crist wavered on their promised
endorsements for Sen. John McCain, before finally
having their fill of the heavy-handed arm-twisting of the Mitt
Romney campaign.
“It finally got to the point for both of them that they just got
fed up with the constant harassment,” says a source close to both
men who has worked for them as a political consultant. “They
weren’t going to endorse Romney and under the right circumstances,
one or both of them might have chosen to sit the primary out, but
the Romney people just made it intolerable.”
In the middle of last week, it appeared that both Martinez and
Crist would sit out what has become the battleground state for the
Republican nomination for President.
It is believed that the Romney campaign has been able to use its
candidate’s unfettered wealth to run a successful absentee ballot
program, something the other campaigns have not been able to do as
well. Those absentee ballots may swing Romney to victory, and
keeping Martinez and Crist on the sidelines was part of the
strategy for victory.
Another subtext: the diminishment of Rudy Giuliani in a
state that he had pegged as his pivot for Super Tuesday. He didn’t
have a shot at either endorsement, and his campaign has long been
warring with the Crist crowd, in part because after Giuliani worked
hard for Crist’s election as governor, he was repaid by having a
Crist staffer leak to the McCain camp an important Giuliani
fundraising PowerPoint presentation early last year.
The Romney camp appears to have picked up much of the
ideologically conservative support from the Thompson team,
including the bulk of his “Lawyers for Thompson” operation. But it
doesn’t appear that any members of Thompson’s longstanding inner
circle who started the “Draft Thompson” movement about a year ago
will sign on with another campaign.
HOWARD’S ENDS
Former Sen. Fred Thompson has made it clear that
he will not endorse another candidate in the near future, if at
all. Last week, staffers for Sen. Tom Coburn were
on Capitol Hill encouraging others to sign on with Coburn’s
candidate, John McCain, saying that Thompson was
endorsing the candidate. Coburn, who months ago had made a promise
to Thompson to endorse him but never did so, hasn’t spoken to
Thompson in months.
One source of the Thompson endorsement rumors is believed to be
former Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker, who has been
fielding phone calls about Thompson from other campaigns and media
outlets, and has done nothing to tamp down the rumors. “He’s
enjoying what he knows will be short-lived relevancy,” says a
member of Baker’s law firm in Tennessee. Baker, who was an honorary
national chair of the Thompson campaign, officially endorsed McCain
on Saturday.
Thompson is expected to speak publicly about his future plans at
a later date, and rumors had him and his wife, Jeri, down in
Nashville looking at houses over the weekend.
YES, VIRGINIA
Look for former Virginia Gov. George Allen to
begin putting in place the light infrastructure for a possible run
for governor again. Allen, who traveled with Sen. Fred
Thompson in South Carolina, is believed to have some
volunteer staffing commitments in place to at least begin the
process of setting up a statewide organization for the 2009
gubernatorial elections.
