Campaign manager Bill Lacy sent this memo out to staffers.
"Our new Communications Director Todd Harris is building an experienced and aggressive team of campaign professionals to help lead our press operation," Lacy wrote. He added, "This constitutes a substantial shift, not in our candidate's message, but in the way we support it and enhance it. Due to this shift, Jim Mills has informed me that he is leaving the campaign due to strategic differences. I respect Jim's decision and encourage all of you to join me in wishing him the best of luck."
Mills had only been on the campaign staff for a few weeks.
Fox News reports that two more staffers are quitting
And some of those who have left the campaign are saying that the missteps and turn-arounds are indicative of Thompson's inattentiveness and deep-seated disinterest or lack of motivation for the campaign.
There are more major resignations of founding Fred heads looming over the way the "new media strategy" was supplanted by a "corporate" and "predictable" approach. They also are protesting the way so many people have been treated by the candidate and spouse.
The word is that Thompson is a lazy campaigner. Which makes one wonder why he decided to run for President in the firest place.
The National Review quotes a source inside the campaign.
Another Fredhead said of the one who ripped Fred to Fox, “He has his reasons for doing it… They treated [Jim Mills] exceedingly badly.”
One of the shames of this shocking personnel move by Team Thompson is that we won't get to see what Mills, a legendary producer and off-camera reporter on Capitol Hill, could do on the other side of the microphone. One Thompsonite described him as "the anti-Kevin Madden (Romney's spokesman)... Everybody has these slick spokesmen, and we were going to have the guy who was extremely well connected and trusted by his former colleagues."
Thompson went to the trouble to personally recruit Mills. He then fires him. This makes no sense. When even Fox News and the National Review are saying his campaign is screwed up that is a sure sign of trouble.
Word has it that his wife is pushing him to do it, that she micromanages the campaign, has hiring and firing power, and has basically alienated everyone.
ReplyDeleteOr was that Guiliani's gal?