Opinion: Comparing and contrasting
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One of the goals of political campaigning is to contrast yourself with opponents. Sometimes it’s overtly contrasting policies. Sometimes, as Top of the Ticket noted yesterday about the Mitt Romney campaign, it can be playing up your own seemingly idyllic family to contrast with someone else’s troubled one like, say, the thrice-married Rudy Giuliani, whose son isn’t talking to him.
Sometimes you might leak your good fundraising numbers a day or two before Sunday’s official reporting day, so everyone else will be compared to you. Sometimes contrasting can be as subtle as being extremely well-organized and punctual on the campaign trail in comparison to chronically-tardy candidates.
Clearly, Giuliani is driving home a bit of contrasting himself these days. With all the recent talk about John McCain’s fundraising troubles and staff cuts forcing him to concentrate efforts in Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire, Giuliani last week had his campaign manager, Michael DuHaime, initiate a national conference call to tell reporters that fundraising was going so well, they were beginning to expand campaign operations into another dozen states, like Florida and California. Get that message?
To follow up and to drive home the point even more, the Giuliani campaign has since been making a series of separate announcements about state staffs. Yesterday, the former mayor’s camp announced its campaign staff in California.
They include Brent Lowder, a former senior aide in the Bill Simon gubernatorial campaign, as state executive director; Thomas Roberts, who’s worked in various Bush campaigns and the current administration, as political director; Jessica Millan Patterson, a veteran California Republican Party organizer, as deputy political director; and Steve Frank, another veteran state party worker with strong ties to the GOP’s conservative wing, as coalitions director.
The fact is these folks have already been working for Giuliani in California in some cases for many months. But it’s a good contrast to be announcing campaign staff expansions now instead of layoffs.
--Andrew Malcolm
Photo: Mitt Romney; Credit: Orlin Wagner/AP