Presidential campaign shake-ups: Not uncommon, rarely a winning formula

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June 20, 2016

By Jim Barnes

News that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has dumped Corey Lewandowski as his campaign manager rocketed around the cable television news shows today and scored headlines on the Internet home pages of media outlets around the country. After all, Lewandowski managed Trump’s remarkable upset victory in the GOP presidential nominating contest. To be sure, this is a major development for Trump’s candidacy that some saw coming amid reports that Lewandowski was often at odds with Paul Manafort, whom the Republican standard bearer recruited in late March to oversee his convention operations and outreach to the Republican establishment.^[1]

This kind of high-level presidential campaign shake-up is not that unusual, even on the eve of a national party convention or the general election. But it rarely works out well for candidates who have to make changes at the top of their campaign organization charts. One other tidbit from the news reports on the Trump shake-up is that his daughter, two oldest sons, and son-in-law were key players in prompting him to act. That’s not unheard of either—close family members that the candidate naturally trusts are often in on the act.

As campaign coups go, this one fits a fairly typical pattern: stories of friction between key advisers or reports of widespread concern and dissatisfaction with how the nominee’s candidacy is faring from a variety of sources inside or outside the campaign—or all of the above—presage a shake-up.

This was part of the context for James A. Baker’s move from his post as Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Treasury to take over the flagging 1988 presidential campaign of his close friend, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush in August of that year.^[2] What’s different from the Trump shake-up is that many Republicans expected Baker—who managed Bush’s unsuccessful bid for the 1980 GOP nomination—to eventually take the helm of Bush’s 1988 effort. Also, Baker was layered on top of the existing Bush apparatus and no other top advisors’ heads rolled.

Ironically, that year also saw big changes in the campaign hierarchy of the losing Democratic Presidential nominee, then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Before the caucuses and primaries even began, Dukakis fired his campaign manager John Sasso who had handed opposition research to a reporter against Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, who was also mounting a bid for the Democratic nomination. The blowback over Sasso’s role in derailing Biden’s candidacy forced Dukakis to exile him.^[3] But Sasso was Dukakis’ closest political confidant and it didn’t come as a shocker when he returned barely eight weeks before the November election. Dukakis didn’t jettison his campaign manager, Susan Estrich, in Sasso’s return, but as veteran Boston Globe journalists Christine M. Black and Thomas Oliphant recounted in their insightful book on Dukakis’ fateful presidential run, All by Myself (The Globe Pequot Press, 1989), while Estrich retained her title the change saw “real power gradually drifting to Sasso, who had the governor’s ear…”

The 1988 Baker transfer worked out well for Bush, but the one in 1992 didn’t. When a president runs for reelection, the campaign is often directed from the West Wing of the White House where the Chief-of-Staff and other senior advisors have the closest contact with the candidate and control not only key campaign functions like the president’s travel and speeches, but also the levers of government. In 1992, Baker was Secretary of State, a job he loved. At the same time, he was well aware of the dysfunction in Bush’s reelection bid. Just days before the Republican national convention opened in Houston, Baker stepped down from his cabinet post to run the White House and Bush’s reelection effort.^[4]

In 1992, Texas businessman Ross Perot was mounting an extraordinary independent run for the presidency and in the spring of 1992, he was actually leading in some general election trial heat polls.^[5] Perot had enlisted Ed Rollins, a veteran GOP political operative, to manage his campaign. But the querulous Texan was not an easy candidate to work for and Rollins fired the candidate by quitting in July.^[6] A few days later, Perot inexplicably withdrew from the race, only to revive his campaign in October, sans Rollins.^[7]

Bill Clinton, the 1992 Democratic standard bearer, had to refocus his campaign in the spring of 1992—a process championed by his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton—but he avoided the turmoil at the top the Bush and Perot campaigns and wound up winning the general election.

In 2000, Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore had two major campaign shake-ups. One came in 1999, when Gore brought on former California congressman and House Majority Whip Tony Coelho to chair his campaign. Coelho applied his trademark managerial skills in helping direct Gore’s victory in the primaries and caucuses. Nevertheless, Coelho was replaced as Gore’s top gun by Bill Daley in June of 2000.^[8] Coelho’s health was the official explanation for the change, but he had also fallen out of favor with some Gore insiders and members of party establishment blamed him for the woes of that campaign.

Often the ax falls on the leadership of a presidential campaign well in advance of a general election. In 2003, the eventual Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, replaced his campaign manager, Jim Jordan, with Mary Beth Cahill.^[9] Cahill then came under fire after the 2004 Democratic convention. Not interested in becoming a campaign manager serial killer—never a great image for the presidential nominee—Kerry kept Cahill on, and supplemented—some said supplanted—his team’s senior management with a number of new players as the fall campaign got underway.^[10]

In 2007, Arizona Sen. John McCain dispatched his longtime political consigliere, John Weaver, and his campaign manager Terry Nelson, who were engaged in a power struggle with other factions in the Arizonan’s budding 2008 presidential campaign.^[11]

It would be wrong to finger presidential candidates’ spouses for wielding the ax in these campaign executions—discord among the candidates’ top advisers and lagging poll numbers typically drive these decisions. However, that doesn’t mean close family members don’t have a hand in the bloodletting. For instance, when Coelho was brought on to chair Gore’s campaign in 1999, his wife, Tipper, reportedly played a leading role in that shake-up. Ironically, Gore himself reportedly favored Bill Daley the job he’d eventually get when Coelho was let go.^[12]

And Nancy Reagan, undoubtedly Ronald Reagan’s closest adviser, was a major factor in the firing of his 1980 campaign manager, John Sears, whom she had urged her husband to hire to run his unsuccessful 1976 White House run.^[13]

The lesson here may be that if you want to keep your job running a presidential campaign, minimize the infighting among senior advisers and don’t get on the wrong side of the candidate’s family.

James A. Barnes is a senior writer at Ballotpedia who has covered every Democratic and Republican national convention since 1984. He will be in Cleveland and Philadelphia for Ballotpedia in July.

Presidential campaign shake-ups: Not uncommon, rarely a winning formula

June 20, 2016

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