The power couple that has all but run the Democratic Party since Bill Clinton won the 1992 California primary is finally ceding power - or in any case, being elbowed out of the way.
Hint: Click in map to explore connectionsStory continues below interactive map 
(requires Java)
The end of the Clinton era was already evident Saturday when the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, packed with longtime Clinton stalwarts like Harold Ickes, David Fowler and Elaine Kamarck, resisted the entreaties of the Clinton camp to count the entire Michigan and Florida delegations.
And it has been foreshadowed for months by defections to Obama from the old guard, among them New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Joe Andrew.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, of course, may incarnate into any number of third acts after running a creditable campaign - from vice presidential candidate, to Senate stateswoman, to Democratic candidate for New York governor, to 2012 presidential aspirant.
But the tight grip on the party by longtime Clinton aides, many of whom have had their fingers on the levers of power for 15 years, is likely to be a thing of the past.
“There is going to be a new set of people running the show,” Simon Rosenberg, executive director of the New Democratic Network, a political action organization not affiliated with any candidates told the New York Times. “The Clintons and their allies have been running the show for 16 years. You’re going to see a new generation of political leaders coming to the fore. It’s going to create an upheaval.”
No single group is replacing the old order. Instead, multiple power centers, including the massive grass-roots structure, built up by Move On.org, Obama’s political network based in Chicago and various institutional power centers, are taking its place.
Gary Hart, a former Colorado senator who ran for president in 1984 and is supporting Mr. Obama, predicted that if Barack Obama is elected, “At least half the Obama administration . . . will be people in the White House for the first time: cabinet members and senior appointees.”
Among the old guard Clinton loyalists on their way out, at least for now, are Terry McAuliffe, chairman of Clinton’s campaign and a man with a Midas touch who financed both Clintons’ political ambitions, even raising money for Bill Clinton’s legal defense fund during the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky scandals, and, later, helping to bankroll his presidential library in Arkansas.
McAuliffe chaired the Democratic National Committee from 2001 to 2005, creating something called Demzilla, a massive computer voter database that has brought the DNC closer to information parity with the Republicans.
(It is an interesting historic footnote that as head of the DNC, McAuliffe adamantly refused to allow Michigan to move up the date of its presidential primary, threatening to deny seating to the entire delegation, he wrote in his memoir, “What a Party!” )
Look for McAuliffe to morph into a new identity. A successful entrepreneur, he has successfully started more than two dozen companies in banking, insurance, real estate and marketing.
Harold Ickes called “the ultimate Democratic fixer” by the New York Times, also voted as a member of the Rules and Bylaws Committee last year to sanction Florida and Michigan if they held their primaries early. Ickes, who has spent months attempting to lasso superdelegates for Hillary Clinton, chaired Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential run and was a deputy chief of staff to him.
Following the 2004 elections, he was a contender against Howard Dean for the chairmanship of the DNC. Since 2005, Ickes is also the president of a data collection and voter file organization called “Catalist,” which has sold its files to both the Obama and Clinton campaigns for their get-out-the-vote efforts and promises to be a longtime political asset and revenue-generator.
Another longtime adviser is Ann Lewis, so loyal that she was still huddled today with Clinton supporters in Bozeman and Billings, Mont. Lewis, the sister of Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, has done virtually every major behind-the-scenes job in the Democratic party, from political director of the Democratic National Committee to communications director in Bill Clinton’s second administration to senior adviser for Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign to national chairwoman of the DNC’s Women’s Vote Center.
She was the chief of staff for then-congresswoman, now-senator, Barbara Mikulski in the 1980s, and her friends include such feminist heavy hitters as Ellie Smeal, founder of the Feminist Majority, and Ellen Malcolm, president and founder of Emily’s List.
There’s also media adviser Mandy Grunwald, who previously worked on Bill Clinton’s campaigns, as well as Hillary Clinton’s longtime friend Maggie Williams, who was her chief of staff when she was First Lady, and took over the role of campaign manager after the resignation of Patti Solis Doyle in February.
Howard Wolfson is not just the public voice of the Clinton campaign, but one of her closest advisers. A former spokesman for Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, Wolfson is a partner at the Glover Park Group, a media and political consulting group that has represented clients like Randi Weingarten, the head of the powerful New York City Teachers Union, to David A. Patterson, now New York’s governor.
Among the founders of Glover Park is Joe Lockhart, a former press secretary to President Bill Clinton. Wolfson is married to Terri McCullough, the chief of staff to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
And finally there’s Mark Penn, pollster to the campaign despite a string of embarrassing revelations that led to his ouster this spring as top strategist. Penn, the CEO of public relations firm, Burston-Marsteller, and president of the polling firm Penn, Schoen and Gerland Associates, stepped down from the top job after it came out that he was working with the government of Columbia to get a free-trade agreement with the U.S. that Clinton had opposed. The government of Columbia subsequently fired Burston-Marsteller.
Penn also served as President Bill Clinton’s pollster and political adviser for the 1996 re-election campaign and throughout the second term of the administration. He was initially on Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, but was fired early on.
Expect to hear at least one member of the inner circle going to work for Barack Obama.
Politico recently reported that former campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, a Chicago native whose brother is a Chicago alderman, was talking to Obama strategist David Axelrod about joining the Illinois senator’s general-election campaign.
Wolfson is also close to Axelrod, though he has so far quashed speculation that he might go to work for Obama. Wolfson has also denied reports that he has been shopping around a book proposal, after MSNBC host Keith Olbermann cited “an unimpeachable source” that he was looking for a ‘big money book deal.”
Several such deals are likely to be disclosed shortly. After all, there’s a lot of blame to be apportioned.
Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
0 Comments
There are no comments yet, be the first by filling in the form below.
Leave a Comment