Republican Newt Gingrich just announced his “campaign begins anew Sunday in Los Angeles,” amid the mass exodus of 11 campaign aides, including his campaign manager and senior staff, and major questions from political insiders of how he will make it to the Iowa straw poll eight weeks from now. Reports list the reason Newt Gingrich’s top aides resigned en masse as Gingrich’s ocean cruise and his lack of desire to run an on-the-ground campaign. Reportedly, Gingrich, running his first nationwide campaign, wants to rely on the Internet to get his message out, and his campaign staff wanted a combination of grassroots, and traditional efforts, combined with Internet applications.
“I am committed to running the substantive, solutions-oriented campaign I set out to run earlier this spring,” Gingrich said in a statement. “The campaign begins anew Sunday in Los Angeles.”
Reporters, such as The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, have classified Gingrich’s effort as “the worst presidential campaign launch in American history.” Sargent adds,
“It seems pretty clear that Newt believed that he could run for President on the force of his ideas alone — amplified and disseminated through new technology. After all, not long ago, Newt stated this explicitly:
“It’s going to take a while for the news media to realize that you’re covering something that happens once or twice in a century, a genuine grass-roots campaign of very big ideas,†said Gingrich. “I expect it to take a while for it to sink in.â€
“Gingrich, it seems safe to assume, probably came to feel the same way about his aides. They were insisting that he’d be unable mount a credible candidacy without doing all the grunt work of organizing, tending to the grassroots, sucking up to donors and local potentates, etc. etc.”
NPR’s Frank James lists these 11 aides as being among those in a coordinated mass resignation:
Campaign manager Rob Johnson
Campaign Spokesman Rick Tyler (longtime spokesman)
David Carney, New Hampshire based consultant
Sam Dawson, strategist
Katon Dawson, South Carolina consultant (former state party chair)
Craig Schonfeld, an Iowa consultant
Katie Koberg, deputy campaign director
Page Thorson, coalitions director
Daniel Weiser, Ryan Keller and Joe Heuertz (field staff)
James adds that “Gingrich’s campaign has been snake-bitten since the start. If any presidential campaign in the modern era has had a worse beginning, it’s hard to think of it.”