ALBUQUERQUE — Mark Penn, the pollster who has advised Bill and Hillary Clinton since 1996, stepped down under pressure on Sunday as the chief political strategist for Mrs. Clinton’s struggling presidential campaign after his private business arrangements again clashed with her campaign positions.
Mr. Penn, who was widely disliked by Mrs. Clinton’s fiercest loyalists and had bitterly feuded with many of them, sealed his fate last week by meeting with officials from Colombia, which hired him to help secure passage of a bilateral trade treaty with the United States that Mrs. Clinton, a senator from New York, opposes.
Mr. Penn met with the Colombians in his role as chief executive of Burson-Marsteller, a global public relations firm. He has refused to sever his ties to the company, which also represented Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, and through a subsidiary represented Blackwater Worldwide, the military contractor blamed for numerous civilian deaths in Iraq.
Mr. Penn’s shift — he will continue to do some polling — is the latest upheaval in a campaign that has seen its manager replaced, faced critical money shortages and has often lagged behind Senator Barack Obama of Illinois in a cohesive message and ground strategy. The move comes at a crucial juncture, just two weeks before the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, which Mrs. Clinton needs to win to keep hope of her nomination alive.
Mr. Penn’s work on the trade treaty with Colombia threatened to undercut Mrs. Clinton’s support among the blue-collar voters who are a crucial part of her base, as well as call into question the sincerity of her populist economic message.
A statement from Maggie Williams, the campaign manager, and comments from aides suggested that Mr. Penn voluntarily stepped aside, but other knowledgeable aides said that Mrs. Clinton was furious when she learned of the Colombia talks and insisted on Mr. Penn’s demotion. Mr. Clinton concurred in that judgment, aides said.
The Clinton campaign declined to make Mr. Penn available for comment. On Friday he apologized to the campaign for taking on the Colombian contract.
What apparently happened is that Mark Penn was walking a tightrope between serving as a top Clinton strategist and as the chief executive of the lobbying firm Burson-Marsteller. Penn met with some Columbian government officials to discuss a trade agreement that the Clinton campaign opposes. Talk about a conflict of interest here! Of course, Penn claimed that he attended the meeting as the chief executive of Burson-Marsteller, but as the story became public and Penn tried to distance himself from this flak, the Columbian government fired Burson-Marsteller as a client for the trade deal. Well, as this entire political scandal has become public, it has infuriated Senator Hillary Clinton. And Mark Penn's head has been served to Senator Clinton on a silver platter.
In the short-run, this will probably be about a five-day scandal. Penn has already been removed from the Clinton campaign as the top strategist. He may do some informal advising for the campaign, but he is now gone. And while Senator Clinton may get some flack over the next couple of days, because of this latest scandal, I don't believe the Penn scandal will directly hurt Clinton. Once this scandal broke out in public, the Clinton campaign removed Mark Penn as their top strategist.
However, Penn has certainly caused some serious damage to the Clinton campaign. Here the damage isn't about Penn's meeting with Columbian government officials over a trade agreement that the Clinton campaign opposes, but rather Penn's entire strategy for running the Clinton campaign. Penn had created the strategy of using Clinton's strength and experience as the central campaign theme, allowing the Barack Obama campaign to seize the change theme and use it to take the lead in the Democratic race. And there are even more problems that Penn has caused for the Clinton campaign. According to the NY Times:
For months, many have wondered why Mrs. Clinton had protected the gruff, rumpled strategist. Many rivals within the campaign held Mr. Penn responsible for the flawed electoral strategy that is considered partly to blame for Mrs. Clinton’s difficult political position, trailing Mr. Obama by more than a hundred delegates and facing a very narrow path to winning the Democratic nomination.
Early on, Mr. Penn also resisted efforts to humanize Mrs. Clinton, insisting that her personality was not a detriment and that voters would be drawn to her experience and presumed competence. He repeatedly pointed to polling data to support his position, leading to battles with other aides who later said it was the glimpses of vulnerability and humanity seen after her loss in Iowa that enabled her to rebound.
Penn's blunders and mistakes have just about wreaked the Clinton campaign. Clinton is trailing in both the delegate count, and the fundraising, to the Obama campaign. And as the Clinton campaign has been trailing to Obama, Penn's response has been for the Clinton campaign to go negative in attacking Obama, resulting in "kitchen sink" attack ads that have backfired against the Clinton campaign. In other words, the Clinton campaign is a mess right now. And with Penn removed, the Clinton campaign will need to find a new strategist, and create a new campaign message--all while the next big Pennsylvania primary takes place within two weeks. Again in the NY Times:
[Penn's] polling firm, Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, will continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign, the statement said. Geoff Garin, who has been conducting polling for the campaign and will continue to provide data, and Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s longtime communications director, will coordinate the campaign’s strategic message from now on, the statement added.
[....]
Mr. Garin, who advised Mrs. Clinton’s winning campaign for a Senate seat in 2000 and only recently joined her presidential bid, has argued throughout the primaries that her route to victory lies less in assailing Mr. Obama than in buttressing her own image as a leader who could connect with average Americans and improve their lives.
It will be interesting to see whether Clinton can turn her campaign around this late in the Democratic primary.
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