MEETINGS WITH MITT
Back in the 2008 primary season, Mitt Romney’s
staff ran a tight and close-knit shop, and when meeting with
prospective donors felt confident enough in their campaign to lay
it on the line bluntly. “I remember being at a meeting of [Gov.
Jeb] Bush alumni here in D.C.,”
says a former Bush staffer, “and the Romney people who organized
the meeting telling us something along the line, ‘You need to make
your decision soon; either you join us or you’re out of luck. I
left there joking about finding a horse head in my bed if I didn’t
sign up right away.”
So perhaps Romney and his fundraising team didn’t intend
to make a recent donor recruitment luncheon feel like an organized
crime meeting, but the all-expenses-paid lunch they hosted at
Carmine’s Italian eatery in downtown Washington had that feel,
according to several attendees. The lunch, attended by about 25 men
and women who were active fundraisers for candidates in 2008 and
2010, was one of several Romney and his team are holding around the
country to recruit new people to Romney’s money team.
Aides to Romney cautioned attendees that their candidate
had not made up his mind about running 2012. “We thought given the
layout and the kinds of people who were there that that was
intended as a joke,” says one attendee.
The luncheon featured a detailed PowerPoint presentation
that laid out a case that Romney has been raising more money and
supporting more Republican candidates than others in the
prospective 2012 field. He explicitly targeted Newt
Gingrich, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty,
and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, but had nice
things to say about Sen. John Thune, whom Romney
insiders say the former Massachusetts governor regards as not a
serious threat to win a GOP presidential nomination that Romney
believes is rightfully his given his failed run in 2008.
“It was an impressive road show,” says another attendee.
“He had answers for everything, and clearly is going to run on the
economy and his finance background. He even had a better answer for
why Romneycare isn’t like Obamacare. He’s clearly running, so why
they make it seem like he isn’t makes the whole exercise a bit of a
farce.”
It’s a good thing Romney finally has an answer for the
Romneycare/Obamacare comparisons, which are valid. Both plans share
similar policy approaches, and both have led to rising healthcare
costs for businesses and individuals and reduced services. Romney
has taken a pummeling for more than year because so many Democrats
claimed that his approach to mandatory healthcare insurance in
Massachusetts was the model for Obamacare.
NPR PROGRESSIVELY MEAN AND
HIP
According to a source inside
National Public Radio’s Washington office, NPR senior executives
and outside consultants believed that while the blowback from
firing long-time employee Juan Williams might
prove a distraction during the loosely affiliated network’s fall
fundraising, it might actually help with NPR’s funding drive, which
was taking place nationwide when Williams was fired.
“You actually had people in the office saying that they
were talking to friends and our radio consultants who were saying
the firing might be a good thing for us, because the Republicans
and what they called the ‘tea baggers’ would get so ugly and
aggressive by calling for public radio to be defunded that our
traditional progressive base would come to our aid,” says the NPR
source.
The decision to can Williams comes about six weeks after
Public Radio executives gathered in Fort Worth, Texas, at the
annual “Public Media Marketing and Development Conference,” where
executives once again heard from their consultants that NPR and its
programming were not attracting the younger audiences they need to
sustain the network.
“That whole swath of young Obama voters who were willing
to donate money to his cause? Public radio isn’t attracting them,”
says one consultant. “They want to be engaged, they want news and
features that appeal to them. Public Radio — at least nationally
out of Washington and Los Angeles and New York — isn’t giving it
to them. They want progressive and politically engaging programming
or music programming that appeals.”
Other consultants have pushed for more programming to
appeal to what is now considered the more traditional NPR listener:
“The folks who listen for classical music or the arts tend to skew
older,” says the consultant. “Frankly, if we could have two
stations in one city, I’d recommend that one target younger
listeners and the other one target older ones.” To “youth up” NPR,
the network has spent the past several years attempting to hire
senior executives with backgrounds in what it would consider
“mainstream media,” including the hiring of former CNN and
Discovery executive Vivian Schiller as its
President and CEO and Deborah A. Cowan as its new
chief financial officer. Cowan was formerly a senior vice president
at “urban radio” network, Radio One. She also serves on the board
of the National Education Association Foundation.
BALL GIRLS
Nancy Pelosi and
Barbara Boxer have never been known as a San
Francisco Giants fans, but that may be changing now that the Giants
are in the World Series and both women are desperate to be
associated with a winner. Both women’s campaigns have reached out
to the Giants seeking opportunities to be at the first two Series
games, which are Wednesday and Thursday in San
Francisco.
“The Speaker was a huge booster of the Giants all year
long, and she has long supported the team,” said a Pelosi staffer
in San Francisco. Perhaps in private.
Pelosi over the years has managed to do very little either
in support of or opposition to the Bay Area teams, though she was
known to attend a 49er game or two during the championship years
when owner Eddie DeBartolo would host extravagant parties before
and during the games.
