07.07.08 -- 6:05 AM
CNN's Political Ticker is reporting that McCain has tapped Rudy Giuliani's former campaign manager Mike DuHaime to serve as his new political director ...
In one of his first moves to centralize control of McCain's political
organization, Steve Schmidt has tapped Rudy Giuliani's former campaign manager,
Mike DuHaime, to be McCain's new political director, a top campaign adviser
tells CNN.
Until last week, McCain had no political director at headquarters –
highly unusual for a general election campaign. Mccain's campaign instead
relied on 11 regional campaign managers — a structure many Republicans in and
outside of the McCain campaign, including Schmidt, considered unworkable.
After formally taking control of the political operation last week,
Schmidt decided to put a political director in place to oversee the state and
regional operations.
Duhaime went to work as an adviser to McCain at headquarters not long
after Giuliani dropped his primary bid.
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By Wes Prescott
07.03.08 -- 7:02 AM
Per CNN, Jeb Bush to meet McCain in Mexico ...
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of President Bush, is meeting up with John McCain Thursday in Mexico City to visit the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, his campaign has announced.
Bush, who was governor from 1999-2007, endorsed McCain's White House bid earlier this year after it was clear the Arizona senator would win the party's nomination. Bush did not endorse a candidate during the primary campaign.
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By Wes Prescott
06.24.08 -- 6:13 AM
Per CNN Hillary Clinton is asking supporters to throw her a financial lifeline ...
Her presidential bid may have ended two weeks ago, but Hillary Clinton is still on the hunt for campaign cash.
The New York Democrat is well over $20 million in debt, nearly half of which Clinton loaned herself personally earlier in the year when her campaign was virtually broke and faced life-or-death primary contests.
When it comes to recovering her personal loan, it's a race against the clock.
Under campaign finance laws spearhead by current presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, Clinton must pay herself back before the party's convention in late August, or else she is only allowed to receive $250,000.
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By Wes Prescott
06.22.08 -- 7:45 AM
Politico's Ben Adler asks if the GOP presidential presumptive nominee John McCain will get the votes of Ron Paul's supporters. Will he? With Paul favoring Obama's foreign policy views and suspecting that McCain will lock the US in a 100-year war in the Middle East, it doesn't seem very likely...
With iconoclast Ron Paul having ended his quixotic bid for the Republican presidential nomination — his platform had called for, among other things, ending the Iraq War, repealing the PATRIOT Act, returning to the gold standard and eliminating taxes on tips — his many dedicated supporters are up for grabs.
Even excluding his support in caucus states, Paul received a few more than a million votes in the Republican primary, finished second in five states including Pennsylvania and Oregon and continued to draw votes well after he’d effectively withdrawn from the race. His campaign also tapped into the potent new vein of online fundraising, punctuated by the so-called “money bomb” day when his supporters, unaided by his campaign, managed to pump $5 million into his coffers in 24 hours.
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By Wes Prescott
06.18.08 -- 6:14 AM
Is John McCain playing with fire with his support for off-shore drilling? Politico's Charles Mahtesian and David think so ....
By calling for an end to the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, John McCain is placing a risky bet. He is wagering that skyrocketing gas prices have finally reached a tipping point, a threshold moment that has led voters to rethink their strong and long-held opinions against coastal oil exploration.
The stakes couldn’t be higher: If he is wrong, McCain will have seriously damaged his chances in two key states with thousands of miles of coastline — California and Florida — and where opposition to offshore oil drilling has been unwavering. And he will have undermined some of his closest political allies in those states and others, including potential fall battlegrounds such as Virginia and North Carolina.
“Before $4.25-per-gallon gas, this would have been like pulling a pin on a grenade and rolling it into the state,” said David Johnson, the former executive director of the Florida Republican Party. “It would have been a fool’s errand to recommend it. It was never, ever a thing that a smart politician would have done in Florida.”
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By West Prescott
06.16.08 -- 6:15 AM
Where's the Obama bounce , asks Politico.com's Mike Allen. Good question.
“Voters are closely divided between Barack Obama and John McCain in Gallup Poll Daily tracking conducted June 12-14, with 44 percent of national registered voters favoring Obama for president and 42 percent backing McCain. Obama had led by as many as seven percentage points in the first few days following Hillary Clinton's departure from the race. … [A] relatively high percentage of voters – 15 percent -- [is] not favoring either major-party candidate. This includes 7 percent of voters who say they are undecided and 8 percent who say they will not vote for either candidate … As a result, the percentages of Americans now supporting Obama and McCain are near the lowest seen for either candidate since Gallup Poll Daily tracking on the Obama-McCain matchup started in early March.”
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By Wes Preston
06.13.08 -- 6:34 AM
According to USA Today's Fredreka Schouten Clinton's financial backers seem to be rallying around Obama ...
Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis is one of Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton's most ardent supporters and raised more than $1 million for her campaign.
But on Tuesday, the Sacramento developer took a step she never imagined: She donated $4,600 to Barack Obama. "As hard as it is to let go of the dream, I believe that we need to beat John McCain," Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis said.
It's one sign of the growing cooperation between Clinton and Obama fundraisers now that Obama has clinched the Democratic Party nomination and is forging ahead with the general-election battle against Republican presumptive nominee John McCain.
Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe met Thursday in New York with some of Clinton's biggest fundraisers, including her national finance co-chairman Hassan Nemazee. Today, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a vocal Clinton backer who once questioned whether Obama could win his state in the fall, plans to appear at a fundraiser with the Illinois senator.
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By Zim Sidney
