Election Night HQ

According to The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, in “A Second McCain Aide Resigns”:

Doug Davenport, the only one with close ties to campaign manager Rick Davis, resigned on May 11, due to revelations that he had lobbied on behalf of Myanmar’s repressive and odious regime.  Davenport had been one of the ten regional campaign managers, whose territory included the Chesapeake/Potomac area (Maryland, Virginia, DC).

Ambinder’s full post:

Doug Davenport, the regional campaign manager for the mid-Atlantic states, founded the DCI Group’s lobbying practice and oversaw the contract with Myanmar in 2002.

“Doug has tendered his resignation and we have accepted it,” Jill Hazelbaker, McCain’s communications director, wrote in a e-mail.

He joins former DCI Group CEO Doug Goodyear, who resigned yesterday from the post of convention CEO after Newsweek reported that DCI was paid more than $300,000 to represent Myanmar’s ruling junta.

Goodyear and Davenport were recruited by McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, who has been accused by some current and former McCain advisers of take insufficient care of McCain’s reformer brand by appointing lobbyists to key positions. Ironically, as Newsweek reported, Goodyear was asked to become convention CEO after Davis’s lobbying firm partner, Paul Manafort, was nixed because of his own close ties to foreign governments and controversial companies.

Davenport did not respond to an e-mail seeking his comment last night.

On April 15, when Ambinder analyzed the McCain campaign structure, he noted the following:

Davis did not pack this elite roundtable only with his allies. Only one regional campaign manager can reliably be considered a longtime Davis ally — Doug Davenport, the RCM for the mid-Atlantic region.

Davenport’s departure creates a vacancy among the ten RCMs.  With the nomination of Senator Obama all but assured, historically Republican - but trending Democratic - Virginia will be a genuine swing state for the first time in decades.  No Democratic presidential candidate has carried it since 1964, but Obama is polling well there and has enormous strength in the DC suburbs in the northern part of the Commonwealth.  So keeping Virginia in the Republican column will undoubtedly be the central goal for Davenport’s successor as RCM for the mid-Atlantic/Chesapeake states.

Thoughts are welcome.

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The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder is always closely attuned to the inner workings of campaigns.  On Saturday, April 19, he added the final piece to the puzzle: namely, the last of the ten regional managers for Senator McCain’s campaign.  Here’s his post, titled “Another Giuliani Vet Is Tapped For McCain Service”:

The final McCain-VEEP ‘08 regional campaign manager is in place: Jennifer Hallowell has been tapped to head the campaign’s operations in Michigan and Wisconsin, two Republicans said last night. Hallowell worked with McCain strategist Mike DuHaime on Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign and served as the executive director of the Indiana Republican Party before that.

Eventually, we will have a post detailing all ten of the regional managers.

Thoughts are welcome.

You can contact Election Night HQ at publisher@electionnighthq.com. 

Please sign the Guestbook on the right-side column. 

In addition, if you are from overseas, we particularly welcome your interest in the U.S. election process.   Please send us an e-mail, if you have any questions about Senator McCain in particular and the U.S. election process in general, and about how you found the site.

The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder always seems to have a new angle on the inner workings of campaigns.  And even on a day that was dominated by the fallout from the abrupt recession of pollster/strategist Mark Penn’s role in the campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ambinder has some analysis of Senator McCain’s fundraising.  Here’s the post, titled “McCain Raises $15M In March”:

07 Apr 2008 02:22 pm

Sen. John McCain’s fundraising is picking up, relatively speaking.

In March, officials said he raised about $15M, his best month since early 2007 and well above his $2M-per-month pace in late 2007. The final number is still being tallied.

$11m came from a spurt in the campaign’s high-dollar fundraising. $4m was raised through direct mail and Internet efforts.

A campaign spokesperson did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

The campaign is on track to meet its internal budget goal of about $57M through the start of the Republican convention and an additional $20M for a legal compliance fund.

McCain’s fundraising team has also been tasked with raising about $100m into the Republican National Committee’s Victory Fund, which will be spent in the fall. The campaign itself has stopped raising money for the general election and intends to accept the $85m from the federal government.

The campaign expects a fundraising boost in may from the efforts of ex-MA Gov. Mitt Romney, who has pledged to raise at least $15m for McCain by encouraging his donors to contribute.

Tomorrow night, the campaign expects to raise more than $400,000 from a high-dollar fundraiser at the Willard Hotel in downtown DC.

Obviously, McCain’s fundraising is lagging far behind those of the Democratic campaigns, especially Senator Barack Obama’s. The remarkable small-donor base that is fueling Obama’s machine, is going to be very difficult for the McCain campaign to overcome.

However, I think that Ambinder’s point is well taken, which is that by McCain standards (or even by pre-2008 cycle standards), $15 million was a great month.

Some of you may remember that back in the crowded-field days of the first quarter of 2007, McCain was heavily criticized for raising “only” $13 million in a quarter - an average of “only” $4.33 million per month. It’s hard to believe how much changes in a year in politics.   Take a look at the New York Times article, from nearly a year ago, April 19, 2007, on McCain’s fundraising:

The lead quote, which was absolutely true at the time:

A report of $13.1 million in campaign receipts in the first quarter of the election cycle is the stuff dreams are made of for most of the 2008 presidential contenders.

Yet for Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who reported that total, the fundraising figures for the first three months were widely reported as a setback. Even McCain pronounced himself disappointed with his early fundraising results.

Thoughts are welcome.

You can contact Election Night HQ at publisher@electionnighthq.com. 

Please sign the Guestbook on the right-side column. 

In addition, if you are from overseas, we particularly welcome your interest in the U.S. election process.   Please send us an e-mail, if you have any questions about Senator McCain in particular and the U.S. election process in general, and about how you found the site.

Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic has one of the finest political blogs around, especially on the inner workings of campaigns.  On Tuesday, March 11, he described the innovative, regionalized structure that Senator McCain and campaign manager Rick Davis have outlined for the general election battle.  Here’s the post, titled “McCain Plans Decentralized Campaign”:

Sen. John McCain’s election planners are preparing to unveil a radically decentralized campaign structure over the next few months.

Instead of funneling authority through a few central figures at campaign headquarters in Arlington, VA, plans call for it to be dispersed to up to ten “regional campaign managers” –spread at satellite campaign offices throughout the country, according to two Republicans briefed on the plans.

“We don’t discuss campaign structure or strategy,” said Jill Hazelbaker, McCain’s communications director.

The 10 different campaign offices will run, in essence, 10 different campaigns, region-specific and constituent-specific, tailorable to fit around McCain’s unique coalition.

The campaign’s staff – less than 100 in total – gathered in Arlington this weekend and was briefed on the plan.

Campaign chief Rick Davis invited staff members to submit resumes and passed around an organization chart. There is no political director – normally, the senior staff member directly in charge of designing and implementing the campaign’s field program, according to someone who has seen the chart.

When he was the campaign’s CEO during McCain 1.0 – when John Weaver was chief strategist and Terry Nelson was manager, Davis signed leases for campaign offices in New York and Los Angeles, anticipating that early budget projections would allow for a version of a regional campaign.

The regional managers would have the authority to hire and fire, to adapt field programs to fit the needs of the states in their region. Unlike regional political directors, they would be part of the senior staff table at the campaign’s Arlington headquarters. Message and media, for the most part, would still be run through Arlington.

Since he wrapped up the nomination in mid-February, McCain’s campaign has received thousands of resumes from job-seeking Republicans. But campaign has kept a lid on the hiring process and has resisted calls from Republicans that they begin to hire more quickly. Quietly, Republican state parties have begun to hire aides to staff their general election “Victory committees” – more of than not, they have pedigrees from the Mitt Romney operation.

Eventually, the regional campaign managers will oversee campaign-chosen state directors and the Republican National Committee’s regional political directors, slowing assuming the more traditional structure associated with general election campaigns.

You can contact Election Night HQ at publisher@electionnighthq.com. 

Please sign the Guestbook on the right-side column. 

In addition, if you are from overseas, we particularly welcome your interest in the U.S. election process.   Please send us an e-mail, if you have any questions about Senator McCain in particular and the U.S. election process in general, and about how you found the site.

Among our friends at Race42008.com, LJ has always been the most stalwart supporter of Senator McCain’s candidacy.  Yesterday, LJ put up a great post about the informal barbecue McCain hosted for his press corps in Arizona… Take a look at ”Grillin’ McCain“… 

While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are battling it out in Texas and Ohio, the de facto Republican nominee decided to take the weekend off the campaign trail to spend with a selected group of supporters (Pawlenty, Huntsman, Lieberman, Martinez, Graham, Gramm, Lott, etc. [Crist had to cancel at the last minute, apparently]) , aides, and reporters. It sounds like a really fun time. McCain’s ribs sound absolutely amazing too. It’s too bad that video or pictures were the only thing banned from the event, I would’ve like to see McCain “sporting jeans and a sleeveless denim jacket over a sweatshirt with a silkscreened family picture.” I just can’t picture that for the life of me.

So far, 7 of the reporters have stories up about today’s festivities, read them all:

• Politico’s Jonathan Martin: “Grillmaster McCain plays host in Sedona“
• Washington Post’s Michael Schear: “For McCain, a Different Kind of Grilling” (Writing for the Post’s Trail blog)
• Washington Post’s [always amusing]  Libby Copeland: “At McCain’s Ariz. Retreat, Ribs With a Side of Chi?” (Writing on the front page of the Post’s Style section)
• Baltimore Sun’s Jill Zuckman: “John McCain, grill master supreme“
• Wall Street Journal’s Laura Meckler: “Back in Arizona, McCain Tends the Grill“
• CBS News’s Dante Higgins: “McCain Shows Off His BBQ Skills“
• Boston Globe’s Sasha Issenberg: “Chicken hawk: McCain meets grill“

by LJ @ 12:34 am. Filed under 2008 Misc., John McCain, Media Coverage

You can contact Election Night HQ at publisher@electionnighthq.com. 

Please sign the Guestbook on the right-side column. 

In addition, if you are from overseas, we particularly welcome your interest in the U.S. election process.   Please send us an e-mail, if you have any questions about Senator McCain in particular and the U.S. election process in general, and about how you found the site.