The presidential campaign of Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who once seemed poised to be his party’s nominee in 2008, acknowledged yesterday that it was in a political and financial crisis as a drop in fund-raising forced it to dismiss dozens of workers and aides and retool its strategy on where to compete.
The campaign said the decline in contributions had left it with $2 million. It said it had raised just $11.2 million over the last three months, despite Mr. McCain’s promise to do better than his anemic $13 million showing in the first three months of the year.
Mr. McCain’s advisers blamed his close association with the recently defeated immigration bill, which was strongly opposed by conservatives already skeptical of his ideological credentials. But he has also had to contend with a host of other issues, including his support of the Iraq war, opposition from evangelical voters, the prospect of former Senator Fred D. Thompson’s entry into the race, and the sense that his continuing struggles to raise money were consuming the campaign and making fund-raising even more difficult.
Mr. McCain was visiting Iraq as his aides moved to reshuffle his campaign organization a second time. They said they would focus his efforts now on three states with early contests: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
The problems fueled speculation that Mr. McCain would pull out of the race, a notion that his aides were quick to reject.
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Mr. McCain’s campaign was in flux particularly in Iowa, where half of his 16-member staff was let go yesterday, campaign officials said. His state director left, and Jon Seaton, his national field director, headed to Iowa to take over.
Department heads spent yesterday calling in lower-level staff members to inform them of their dismissals. Mr. McCain’s advisers said they were cutting back on consultants, with those in the fund-raising area losing their guaranteed monthly retainers. The moves amounted to a sharp scaling back of what had once been a gold-plated campaign.
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“The decisions we made today were not easy,” said Terry Nelson, the McCain campaign manager, who said he would no longer accept a salary.
While refusing to go into detail about the depth of the cuts or say exactly how many staff members had been fired, Mr. Nelson said “every department” had been affected. Republicans close to the campaign said that at least 50 and as many as 80 people were being let go, out of a staff of around 150 people.
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The scene yesterday at McCain headquarters in suburban Virginia was described as somber. People were called in and told they were being dismissed, effective immediately. They were given two weeks’ severance pay. A dozen senior campaign aides either agreed to work without salary or for less pay.
Senior McCain advisers say they realized over the past few months that they had to change the mindset that they were running what one called a “Bush-Cheney campaign,” with the plush offices, army of consultants and extended staff befitting a front-runner. Mr. McCain himself had raised questions about the size of the operation and also bristled at making fund-raising calls.
The McCain Straight Talk Express isn't even crashing or derailing itself here--it is practically digging its own grave here! Senator John McCain can't raise the money he needs to run his campaign, his views on the issues are completely out of the mainstream American thought--let alone the ideological conservatives and evangelicals who feel that McCain is simply whoring himself for their votes. What is even more surprising was the mindset within the McCain campaign staff, who believed they were running a "Bush-Cheney campaign" here. I suspect that the "Bush-Cheney campaign" mindset came from John McCain himself, who believed that he, himself, was the anointed successor to King George The Deciderer, and projected that image upon the campaign staff. But instead of becoming the successor to King George The Decider, McCain is showing himself to becoming the Court Jester of this GOP election primary with his stroll through a Baghdad marketplace protected by half of the U.S. Army, his "Bomb Iran" hit music video, his absence in the Senate for the past six months, his hard-lined views on supporting the Iraq war when an overwhelming majority of Americans want to get out of Iraq--you get the picture.
It is just laughable.
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