Rudy Giuliani's political team is keeping its smart heads down, giving no hints about their targeting strategy or their get-out-the-vote plans. But a look at the team itself is telling. The campaign has hired some of the most highly regarded Bush-Cheney turnout operatives. The campaign's boss, Michael DuHaime, worked with all of them in his capacity as RNC political director and Bush-Cheney '04 regional political director.
There's KC Jones, a former deputy exec. dir of the Minnesota GOP, Bill Stepien, the RNC's 72-hour director in 2005 and 2006, Kevin Shuvalov, the RNC politico who oversaw the field operation in Iowa in 2004; he was also a Bush regional political director in the 2000 cycle. Cary Evans, who oversaw the turnout operations that helped Brian Bilbray win his special election in California, Heath Thompson, who ran the South Carolina primary for Bush in '00 and was the regional political director overseeing Florida and Missouri in 2004; Lori Raad, DuHaime's deputy at the RNC, and Brent Seaborn, the Giuliani campaign's director of strategy.
Seaborn worked with Alex Gage, currently the chief strategist for Mitt Romney. Gage and Seaborn are considered to the best microtargeters in the business. Seaborn designed the 2004 turnout universe model for the Bush-Cheney campaign and was dispatched to critical 2006 races ... he was the guy who helped get independents to turn out for Linc Chafee in his primary.
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An impressive team I suppose.
But let's not forget the all-star team John McCain put together before they drove his campaign into the ground.
I have yet to see Giuliani do anything all that impressive in terms of organizing, outreach, or GOTV preparation. This may be because they are "keeping their heads down" or it could be because they aren't really doing anything at all.
Either way they're just not getting it done in the field and I doubt they can play at the level of Romney's campaign when it comes to turnout and ground operations.
Television and Direct Mail. That's how Rudy's going to do it on Feb. 5. Or maybe his wife will just call every voter at an inopportune time creating an awkward, but not as awkward as the preceding 15 minutes, scene. Phone banking, Judith Giuliani style.
Posted by willie | October 4, 2007 1:05 PM