Charlie Gruschow called Tuesday, eager to clarify the terms of
his departure from the staff of Herman Cain’s Republican
presidential campaign in Iowa. “I have tremendous respect for
Herman Cain,” said Gruschow, founder of the Des Moines Tea Party
and one of the earliest backers of the Atlanta businessman’s effort
in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. Gruschow re-affirmed his
support for Cain’s candidacy but resigned his staff position
because, as he says he told the campaign’s chief of staff Mark
Block in a meeting last week, “my heart’s not in this anymore.”
By “this,” Gruschow meant the day-to-day business of
campaign operations, which have been hampered in Iowa by conflicts
involving some former Cain staffers. While the staff departures
(Gruschow’s was the fifth resignation in the past week) generated
some headlines depicting the campaign as “unraveling,” the
situation for Cain isn’t remotely comparable to the sudden
implosion of Newt Gingrich’s campaign last month, when virtually
the entire Gingrich staff
resigned en masse. Cain’s spokeswoman Ellen Carmichael
called the personnel changes “growing pains” in a campaign that
went from its official launch May 21 to a second-quarter
fundraising total of
nearly $2.5 million (and third place in the
Des Moines Register poll) in less than two
months. The candidate himself described the staff departures as
“not a major hiccup” to the campaign.
“Turnover is a natural thing in any organization you’re
trying to put together,” Cain told a
Des Moines TV station during a weekend visit to Iowa. Tuesday
the campaign announced a new state director, Larry Tuel, and three
other new Iowa staffers, as well as plans to open its first Iowa
headquarters office next week in the Des Moines suburb of
Urbandale.
Tensions and turmoil in campaign staff are hardly rarities
in the world of politics. Gruschow didn’t want to point fingers —
he speaks well of his erstwhile colleagues — but other Iowa
Republicans did not hesitate to assign blame and name names. The
resignations of Cain’s former top two Iowa staffers, Tina Goff and
Kevin Hall, were “the best thing that could happen” to Cain, said
one Iowa GOP activist, who said the pair were “hated” by many of
the campaign’s grassroots supporters. Other Iowa sources complained
of Goff’s temperament, and suggested that she and the campaign’s
former regional director, Jim Zeiler, who also resigned last week,
had sought to undermine Gruschow’s status within the Iowa
organization. The perceived mistreatment of Gruschow caused
“devastating” negative word-of-mouth about the Cain campaign among
volunteers loyal to the Tea Party leader. Yet Gruschow himself
remains enthusiastic about Cain’s presidential prospects, warmly
recalling how he helped bring the retired Godfather’s Pizza CEO to
speak at last year’s Fourth of July Tea Party rally in Des
Moines.
Perceptions of trouble in the Cain campaign were
aggravated by negative coverage of the past week’s resignations,
including a
Sunday story in Politico which contained a sentence
about “swirling rumors between Cain’s staff and volunteers in
the Hawkeye State accusing each other of affairs, homosexuality and
professional misconduct.” Cain’s staff was incensed about
Politico’s reporting, which cited no substantiation for
the “swirling rumors.” As far as the accusation of “homosexuality,”
that was perhaps a reference to the easily discovered fact that
Scott Toomey, who served as executive director of Cain’s
exploratory committee but is no longer on the campaign staff, was
once
treasurer of a gay-rights group in Wisconsin.
Some suspect the rumor-mongering was the work of
Republican rivals attempting to weaken Cain’s support among Iowa’s
influential Christian conservative movement. Opposition researchers
and supporters of other GOP campaigns have been busy disseminating
whatever negative information can be dug up about Cain, whose lack
of previous experience in public office make him a tabula
rasa in terms of a legislative record. Libertarian supporters
of Texas Rep. Ron Paul especially like to paint Cain’s former
membership on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of
Kansas City in a sinister light, while Cain’s support for the 2008
TARP bank bailout is also a frequent target of critics. Such
attacks mounted sharply after Cain’s strong performance in the May
5 South
Carolina debate boosted his profile in the GOP
field.
However, while hostile attacks did little to damage Cain’s
surging popularity, many of his Iowa supporters were discouraged by
what several Republicans in the state describe as “missed
opportunities” resulting from ineffective staff work.
Steve Deace, a
conservative activist and former Des Moines talk-radio host, said
he doesn’t think Cain can rebuild his Iowa operation, and explained
why. “You’re talking about a finite number of people,” Deace says
of experienced Republican campaign operatives in Iowa. In 2008, “we
had a record turnout [for the GOP caucuses] and 120,000 people
voted. There’s just not enough activists to have version 3.0 of
your campaign — especially with [Texas Gov.] Rick Perry’s people
calling now, and [former Alaska Gov.] Sarah Palin’s people have
quietly put together a grassroots team.”
The entry of Perry into the 2012 race is considered a
near-certainty by many Republican
campaign-watchers, and while those same observers think a Palin
candidacy less likely, Deace said he had been told by Palin’s top
Iowa organizer that it’s “100 percent” certain she’ll be getting
in, too. Either one of these big-name late entries would have a
huge impact in Iowa; if both jumped in, it would cause a
cataclysmic upheaval in the GOP presidential landscape.
Such possibilities highlight the fact that it is still
rather early in the election cycle. The Iowa caucuses are seven
months away — Feb. 6, 2012 — and seven months ago, few of the
campaign-watchers expected that early July would find Herman Cain
having raised more money than Newt Gingrich or out-polling former
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty in Iowa. What Cain has accomplished so
far would have seemed too miraculous to predict seven months ago.
Those who see the Cain campaign’s recent troubles as a harbinger of
doom might pause to remember that five years ago, when he was
diagnosed with cancer, the odds of his surviving were arguably
worse than the odds now of his becoming president.
Today, Cain is flying to Las Vegas, where he will speak
this weekend at the Conservative
Leadership Conference — Nevada is an early primary state next
year — and the trip will also afford an opportunity for his staff
to gather and plan the road ahead, his spokeswoman said. After
that, Cain returns to Iowa to open his new Hawkeye State
headquarters, and open another chapter in his against-the-odds
campaign.
