Newt on a Run: Gingrich Campaign on a
Roll After Bumpy Start
10/21/2011
After stumbling out of the gate in his
run for the GOP presidential nomination,
former Speaker of the House Newt
Gingrich's campaign coffers are rising in
direct proportion to his poll numbers.
“The campaign is becoming really fun,”
said Gingrich, who announced his candidacy
for the White House on May 11, only to
have a half-dozen key and senior campaign
staffers resign within six weeks.
Not content with the publicity from their
walkout, former staffers hurt their former
boss with gossip about his spending, and
the role of his wife in the campaign.
The former speaker hurt himself with an
awkwardly public misunderstanding with
Rep. Paul Ryan (R.-Minn.), the chairman of
the House Budget Committee. Gingrich
started it when he criticized Ryan’s
tactical decision to propose reforms to
Medicare. The ensuing back-and-forth
became a distraction and sapped the
campaign’s energy.
Now, Gingrich said, the atmosphere is
positive and the campaign has traction.
“I can't make it through the airport
without a dozen people pledging their
support and clicking a quick photo,” he
said.
The former speaker said he is connecting
with voters because the American people
need a leader to take the country in a new
direction.
“The country is in a lot of trouble. I am
going to keep doing what I am doing.
Talking about big solutions and how we can
beat Obama next fall,” he said.
In his political column for financial news
site Street.com,
Joe Deaux wrote that Gingrich’s debate
performances have been key to his
campaign’s new life.
“Gingrich proved again that he understands
the legislative process more fully than
any of the other candidates, and he used
his weighty House experience to rise above
petty eruptions that characterized the
event,” Deaux wrote in his article titled,
“Newt Gingrich Upgraded to Buy From Hold.”
Erick Erickson, the leader of the RedState.com
blog, said Gingrich was the winner of the
Oct. 17 GOP Debate in Las Vegas.
“He gave the most solid answers throughout
the night with only one stumble—when he
admitted his prior support for an
individual mandate,” he said.
Erickson, who hosts a weeknight talk show
on Atlanta’s
WSB-Radio, said he is not convinced
Gingrich had turned the corner, but he is
doing much better.
“I think it is too soon to tell, he said.
"He is going up in the polling to be
sure.”
“To find a path to victory, he is going to
have to exploit Herman Cain's fumbles and
translate debate gains into fund-raising,”
Erickson said.
R.C. Hammond, the campaign’s press
secretary, said when he looks at every
indicator, it is clear to him that
Gingrich will have the momentum through
the fall to be the alternative to the
front-runner.
Fund-raising has been strong enough to
support an expansion of the playing field,
he said. “The campaign has raised more
money since the Western Republican debate
than it did the entire month of July.”
“Over $175,000 since Tuesday, average
contribution of $84, with three out of
four donations from new donors. The
campaign is currently on pace to raise
more in October than it did over the
entire FEC [Federal Election Commission]
third quarter,” Hammond said.
“The average contribution during the FEC
third quarter was $76—and 50% of
contributions in the third quarter came
from new donors,” he said.
The increased cash flow to the campaign is
making it possible for Gingrich to expand
the states in play, and hire new key
staff, Hammond said.
The strategy is to concentrate on the
first three states, New Hampshire, South
Carolina and Iowa, and then have people
and structure in place to leverage success
into more success, he said.
“In New Hampshire, the campaign has hired
Andrew Hemingway as its first paid
staffer, to work with volunteer Team 10
Leader Michelle McManus, a 912 project
organizer from Bow, N.H.,” he said.
“Hemingway was
the most immediate chairman of the NH
Liberty Caucus, which helped elect 100 new
conservative legislators to the New
Hampshire State House,” Hammond said.
“In South Carolina, the campaign has
deployed its National Coalitions Director
Adam Waldeck to organize the state,” he
said.
“Adam is working with volunteer Allen
Olson," he said, "who was the founder and
most recent chairman of the Columbia Tea
Party.”
“The campaign will soon announce its Iowa
team and open a Des Moines office,” he
said.
Hammond said he is seeing the resurgence
in the size and enthusiasm of the crowds.
“Newt has spoken to overflow crowds at
town halls in Phoenix on Wednesday and in
Dallas today. He will campaign in Iowa
over the weekend and on Monday, and New
Hampshire the middle of next week, then to
South Carolina on the 28th,” he said.
Hammond said people outside the campaign
did not understand what happened inside
the campaign during its rocky first six
weeks.
“When the staffers quit there was a panic
for maybe 10 minutes,” he said. “Then,
Newt talked to us and we were fine.”
The former speaker told the remaining
staff that it would take the whole summer
to work through the tough launch, but if
they stuck to his plan they would be ready
in the fall to challenge the
front-runners.
The press secretary, who has been with the
campaign from the start, said Gingrich was
liberated after the staffers quit. “It
was like he no longer had to argue with
his own staff about what he wanted to do
with his campaign.”
