Consulting Firms Facing Conflicts in 2008
Roll Call Staff
The hug shared by John Kerry and Bob Shrum aboard the Massachusetts Senator’s campaign bus last January was more than 30 years in the making.
The two men had spent decades preparing for such a moment; early exit polls had predicted Kerry would be the winner of the Iowa caucuses, a seeming impossibility just a few months before.
Forgotten in that outpouring of emotion was that the moment could easily have never happened. Kerry and Shrum’s relationship had been severely strained just a year earlier when the media consultant was faced with a choice between the Bay State Democrat and another client — North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (D).
Shrum agreed to work with Kerry, helped him to the nomination and then watched as he fell to defeat last November at the hands of President Bush.
With consultants now seen as an essential part of the fabric of any winning campaign, the race for top talent has become increasingly heated among the handful of politicians eyeing the White House.
For the candidate able to land the hot consultant of the cycle, a boost in credibility among the party kingmakers is almost certain to follow. Losing out on a coveted firm can take the shine off a budding candidacy, making it more difficult to recruit other top-tier staff and raise the millions needed to run a national campaign.
No fewer than five consulting firms have multiple candidates mulling over 2008 presidential runs.
Two polling companies — Public Opinion Strategies on the Republican side and Garin Hart Yang for Democrats — have five and four would-be clients, respectively, placing them at the center of the talent primary.
“No decisions have been made about how we are working with presidential candidates if they do run,” said Glen Bolger, a founder of Public Opinion Strategies. “It will be an interesting partner meeting figuring that one out.”
Anita Dunn, a Democratic media consultant with Squier Knapp Dunn, said that in many instances, consultants are rooting against their own financial interest in order to avoid conflicts.
“At this stage most firms hunker down and hope most of their clients will decide not to run,” said Dunn, who currently has only one client expected to run for president in 2008: Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh.
But in 2000, Dunn faced a consulting conflict when former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley decided to take on Vice President Al Gore in the Democratic presidential primaries.
Dunn, who had long ties to Bradley, took a leave of absence from the firm to work for her former boss. Meanwhile, Squier Knapp Dunn remained as Gore’s media consultant.
The talent primary is perhaps the most behind-the-scenes of fights in the run-up to the nomination — but also one of its most important.
“The truth of the matter is that because we don’t know the result of the horse race before it is run, we try to virtually run it in surrogate and metaphorical ways,” said Shrum, now a senior fellow at the New York University Wagner School of Public Service.
“Who has the most money? Whoever gets consultant ‘X’ has a leg up,” Shrum added. “What matters in the end is the work [the consultants] do.”
But, perception does matter, and winning a fight for a sought-after consultant or firm lends momentum to a candidacy in the inner circles of political Washington.
Even though few firms dealing with cross-pressures from the 2008 presidential contest publicly acknowledge the decision they face, several consultants have already made choices.
Mark Penn, a partner in the Democratic polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland, parted ways earlier this year with Bayh to devote full attention to New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Penn’s relationship with Bayh went back to the Indiana Senator’s first run for governor in 1988; the pollster had been affiliated with the Clinton family only since 1996 — when he helped re-elect President Bill Clinton to a second term. Penn also handled the survey research on Clinton’s 2000 Senate bid. Penn did not return calls seeking comment on his decision.
More recently, Mark McKinnon, who rose to fame by directing the advertising for the 2000 and 2004 campaigns of President Bush, acknowledged that he is in discussions with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) about serving as his media consultant in 2008.
McCain also has ties to several other Republican firms.
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