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Fred Thompson Not the Energizer Bunny; Secret Service Ronald Kessler The knock on Fred Thompson is that he is not exactly the Energizer Bunny. Republican operatives were amazed at the contrast between the 1994 Senate campaigns run by Thompson and Bill Frist, both from Tennessee. Frist ran a tightly organized, business-like effort. Thompson's effort was amateurish, and he was not inclined to push himself to hold fundraisers. In deploying volunteers to call voters, Frist's campaign used computerized lists of telephone numbers. They had been pre-selected based on clues that the voters might be inclined to listen to a pitch for Frist. When making calls, volunteers read from a carefully prepared script. In contrast, the Thompson campaign gave workers pages torn from local telephone books. The campaign told workers to try the numbers and did not supply them with specifics on what to say when they called. Because of the lack of organization, volunteers flocked to Frist's campaign. If Thompson makes it to the White House, it will likely be as disorganized an operation as Bill Clinton's White House was. However, Thompson recently told a close friend that he honestly does not know if he wants to run. Near the end of his first term as senator, he made a similar statement to supporters and ultimately decided against running for a second term. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has garnered more endorsements from members of Congress than any other candidate, Republican or Democrat. While endorsements do not translate directly into votes, they do help encourage state leaders to jump on one bandwagon or another. In the latest poll by ccAdvertising, which conducts private polls for members of Congress, 9.96 percent of those who said they intend to vote in a Republican caucus or primary in California, Iowa, New Hampshire, New York or South Carolina said they will vote for Romney. That compares with 3.1 percent in January when the poll was taken in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
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"If I were on the Romney team, I would be pleased by the progression that I am seeing," Gabriel S. Joseph III, president of ccAdvertising, tells me. "You have money in the bank, and you are making progress. People like to go with winners or those that they think will be." In the ccAdvertising poll, Rudy Giuliani leads with 24.67 percent. Next is John McCain with 18.21 percent, then Newt Gingrich with 10.08 percent. What is most interesting, Joseph says, is that 28.95 percent of those polled say they have no preference, indicating the race is wide open. That means a candidate like Romney with little name recognition has a good chance of climbing in the polls as he gets his message out. "Politics is a form of marketing," Joseph said. "Sometimes just mentioning someone's name gets people interested. The way you sell a Lexus automobile is you mention Lexus, Lexus. People will say, ‘I've heard a lot about Mitt Romney.' You ask them, ‘What have you heard?' They'll say, ‘I'm not sure, but I've heard a lot about him.' So at this point I think this is what the polls are measuring." Making the Secret Service Happy
Most political operatives believe the presidential nominees will be decided next February by a few of the 20 states that so far have opted for early primaries. What that means for candidates is anybody's guess. "This primary season is turning into the most challenging Rubik's Cube that we've faced in our lifetime," says Ben Ginsberg, Romney's counsel who previously was counsel to the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004. But the Secret Service knows exactly what early primaries mean: potentially fewer candidates to protect down the road. So far, based on the public record, the Secret Service counts 15 potential candidates By law, the Secret Service provides protection of major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses. The secretary of Homeland Security determines who are the major candidates after consulting with an advisory committee consisting of the speaker and minority leader of the House, the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, and one additional member selected by the other members of the committee. The secretary of Homeland Security decides when to begin protection of candidates. Protection of spouses begins 120 days before the general election. The Secret Service is already asking most of its 3,000 agents for their preferences on types of candidate protection assignments. For example, agents can ask to join a general protection shift, operations and logistics, or transportation details. If only two candidates emerge from the primaries, the Secret Service will save tens of millions of dollars.
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of NewsMax.com. © NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.
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