Hillary Clinton has dispatched her campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, and Solis Doyle's deputy, Mike Henry, to the state of Iowa from now until the Jan. 3 caucuses.
A Clinton aide confirmed the moves but said that they had been long-planned. Solis Doyle is one of Clinton's most loyal and trusted advisers, and her near-permanent presence in Iowa will be seen as a sign that the campaign considers the contest a must-meet-expectations state. Solis Doyle will continue to run the national campaign.
The campaign added roughly 100 employees to the Iowa roster over the past month, and Clinton herself plans to spend more than half her time in the state between now and the end.
For two months, Clinton has either led narrowly in Iowa or deadlocked with rivals John Edwards and Barack Obama.
Late this spring, in a memo that was leaked to the New York Times and the AP, Henry advocated that Clinton skip Iowa. But the campaign quickly denied that the idea was ever under consideration and recommitted itself to the state with a series of high-profile campaign events.
Henry supervises the campaign's political and field programs in the early states, working with senior advisers like Karen Hicks on targeting and voter modeling.
Earlier this fall, Clinton appointed Teresa Vilmain, a well-regarded operative with extensive Iowa experience, to lead her campaign there, replacing JoDee Winterhoff. In mid-September, Vilmain fired Clinton's caucus director, Angelique Pirozzi, reportedly over concerns that the campaign had failed to meet projected precinct captain recruitment numbers.
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No doubt that this means Hillary wants to challenge Obama there. Might this be a mistake, with HRC tasking her eye off of the big prize just to slap Barack around in IA?
http://political-buzz.com/2007/12/03/one-month-from-iowa/
Posted by matt | December 3, 2007 3:27 PM