Posted on 10/25/2007 9:07:19 PM PDT by Calpernia
Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign continues to have more departures than a Greyhound bus terminal.
Thompson personally hired Jim Mills, a highly respected Fox News producer, as his press spokesman. Two weeks later, after Thompson hired William Lacy as his campaign manager, Thompson fired Mills.
Mills gave up a hefty paycheck at Fox to join the Thompson campaign. He told friends he considered Thompson essential to the future of America. His firing outraged colleagues at Fox. Because Mills joined a campaign, his chances of being re-hired are diminished. He is still looking for a job.
J. T. Mastranadi, Thompson’s director of research, quit in horror after Thompson’s wife Jeri began taking attendance at campaign headquarters in McLean, Va., one late Friday afternoon. Jeri Thompson actually called staffers at home to ask where they were and why they should be paid.
“The younger ones thought they were going to lose their jobs,” a former staffer said. “The more established ones were offended and asked themselves, why do I need this? One asked if Jeri would be calling him at 1 a.m. to check up on him when he was doing campaign work.”
Despite that incident, Jeri, formerly with the Republican National Committee and Senate Republican Conference, is highly respected in Republican political circles.
“Message-wise, Jeri is great,” said a former staffer. “She understands him and how he is best presented. She is a very bright and a good political thinker.”
However, this week, Nelson Warfield, Thompson’s media consultant, left in disgust as well, Top advisor Mark Corallo quit previously.
Warfield was offended by Mills’ firing, Jeri Thompson’s meddling, and Thompson’s “lazy” approach to campaigning, according to one former staffer. Corallo left out of loyalty to Mills and dismay over what he considered Thompson’s mismanagement of the campaign.
Asked for comment, Thompson advisor Mary Matalin called a story about the departures “a very old item” that “very much mischaracterizes the campaign effort.”
She said Lacy was hired “to pull together a first class professional operation commensurate with the task at hand, namely, getting the best conservative elected, which is the only way to unite the party, which is the only path to beating the liberals next fall.”
Matalin said Lacy “has in fact accomplished his mandate above and beyond what anyone thought possible after the other money throwing campaigns vacuumed through the political community.” Lacy “is doing far more with are fewer and less paid staff who are all there because they believe in Fred,” Matalin said.
Many staffers who have quit or were fired felt Thompson misled them about the energy he would put into the campaign. While Thompson shows up at fund raisers, he leaves quickly and doesn’t spend much time making calls to raise money.
“That’s just distasteful to him, or else he’s busy doing other things,” a former staffer said.
Early on, Thompson told campaign aides he was not going to be frenetic. As they understood it, that meant he would not pop in and out of states. Instead, he would spend three or four days in a state like Iowa, for example.
“We thought he would be going from town to town, spending two hours at a time and talking to people,” a former staffer said. “Instead, he gets out of a bus and wears a baseball hat. The reporters laugh about it,” he said.
Often, Thompson attends a few events a week.
“Instead of an all-out campaign, it seemed he thought of campaigning as a break from the rest of his life, which entailed hanging out at home with his wife,” a former staffer said. Meanwhile, he noted, campaign aides are expected to work around-the-clock.
If Hillary Clinton is the candidate and Thompson is matched against her, the former staffer predicted a Republican disaster.
“Hillary is tireless,” he said. “She doesn’t take anything for granted. Nor do the rest of the candidates on the Republican side.”
Don’t get me wrong-I don’t hate Fred-he’s just not Hunter.
Hubby is another story. According to him, Fred is Elmer’s #1 and Ron Paul is Elmer’s #2.
Don’t even get either one of us started on Hillary.
I want to hear the man speak, with passion, enthusiasm, excitement. You can get all of that you want from Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Maxine Waters, and Nancy Pelosi -- and that's all you'll get.
Try LISTENING to some of those two second sound bites and you might find that he can say more in two seconds that the Dimmo candidates can say in a two hour debate.
Quality is worth more than quantity every time.
I’ll take 100 Hunter (unpaid) volunteers over 1,000 paid FRedhead staffers any day. If you really have to “check up” on your PAID staff, that alone says alot about the motivation of the campaign.
I call it getting rid of the dead weight and useless workers there for just a pay check.
Ditto!
I think so.
Especially in the wife department.
Jeri is disciplined, not fat (despite her recent pregnancy), organized, focused, an effective and savvy communicator, and gracious and lovely to boot.
So they h8 her for everything Fred values in her.
Jealousy is very, very ugly.
“Is that proper protocol? Call it whatever you like, but it’s fact.”
I wasn’t calling it anything. I was asking.
re; 3 168
And I answered . You got a problem with that?
Sounds to me like the whining of pampered, old-school politicos that probably between them all never worked on a winning campaign.
The first snipe came from a Freddie.
If you can’t take it, do’t dish it out.
I have no peoblems with Fred, he ain’t going anywheres
LOL! Thanks for the laughs.
So, you’re still not out raising funds for your candidate because you’d prefer to sit and post cute little pictures??
Go Thompson Go!
My name wasn’t on the attendance sheet :)
That's the risk he took. He's a big boy. Was this piece written by a fellow FoxNews employee? Very immature.
I am not an official Thompson supporter, but I must say the names mentioned in this piece are minor ones. Not exactly the best and brightest jumping ship.
This thread isn't about Hunter, it's about Thompson.
I am not familiar with any of the names outside of the Thompsons.
“I have visions of her going through the campaign office with a clipboard checking off the attendance for the day :)”
Sounds good to me. And if someone on the payroll isn’t on the job, that would be a good thing to know. They should be replaced with someone who will do what they are hired to do. :)
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