New York Times: Bill's Spokeman Jay Carson Crossing Over to Hillary's Campaign

March 29, 2007, 4:43 pm
A Clinton Crossover

New York Times


By Patrick Healy

The first Bill-to-Hill crossover of the presidential season involved the career shift of Jay Carson, a respected political operative who has worked as Mr. Clinton’s communications director since June 2005.

Mr. Carson is now pulling roughly two-thirds of his salary from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, and the remaining third from Mr. Clinton personally, while dispensing with his former duties at the non-profit William J. Clinton Foundation.

No one event triggered the shift; rather, according one adviser to Mrs. Clinton, the campaign and the Clinton foundation reoriented Mr. Carson out of “an abundance of caution” to avoid co-mingling the apolitical foundation and the very political presidential campaign.

Mr. Carson has always fielded reporters’ questions about Mr. Clinton’s political activities outside of the foundation, but those inquiries only increased as Mrs. Clinton prepared to announce her candidacy. After she did, on Jan. 20, the media phone calls grew exponentially: When would Mr. Clinton begin stumping for his wife? What impact would he have on the campaign? Was he driving her advisers crazy with strategy suggestions? (We know this, in part, because we were asking some of the questions.)

Plenty of Republicans donate to the foundation, meanwhile, including some people who never contributed a dime to Mr. Clinton’s campaigns (nor might they to Mrs. Clinton’s). So the appearance of a campaign operative at the foundation wasn’t ideal in the eyes of advisers to both Clintons.

Mr. Carson crossed over last month, just as Mr. Clinton’s role in the campaign expanded. The former president has hosted or taken part in about 12 fundraisers for his wife since late February, and has also helped lead online appeals to donors and made calls to some A-list fundraisers.

The change is not a big surprise. Mr. Carson, 30, was the national spokesman on Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in 2004, and was on Bill Bradley’s national advance staff in 2000. In 1998 he worked for Howard Wolfson — a senior adviser to Mrs. Clinton — on Charles Schumer’s campaign for United States Senate. Indeed, he first met Mrs. Clinton that year when she was visiting New York to help Mr. Schumer beat Senator Alfonse D’Amato.

Title-wise Mr. Carson remains Mr. Clinton’s communications director, and will continue to be based in New York, though he has been replaced at the foundation. But he is immersed in the campaign operation, participating in the morning media/communications conference call, for instance.

Mr. Carson declined to comment this afternoon.