Politico: Harold "The Hammer" Ickes Returns as Advisor to Clinton Campaign

The Hammer Returns

The Clintons are back on war footing, and Harold Ickes is back at the center of things.

Ickes is technically a volunteer for the campaign known as Hillary for President. His title, carefully chosen in a world with intricate internal politics, is "Adviser to the Campaign Manager."

"I jokingly refer to myself as the Assistant Sanitation Commissioner," he said in an interview this week.

But Ickes, 67, is a legendary figure in Democratic politics, a pedigreed political street fighter known for both his loyalty and his abiding grudges. The son of a key adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he came up in New York City's reform Democratic politics and later worked in the Clinton White House. Ickes was the architect of Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection before emerging as a central figure in Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2000 Senate victory.

"In 2000, he was indispensable," said Bill de Blasio, a New York City Council member who was Clinton's 2000 campaign manager. "He was the one figure who ranged farthest across the campaign. He, in many ways, was the person who insured that all the pieces came together and had the standing to do that -- had the history, had the relationships, had the style to make all the pieces fit."

Now, Ickes said, his candidate is far readier for political combat than she was in 2000.

"What's interesting for me is to see the difference of her sureness of foot between the 2000 campaign, when she was very unsure of foot, and now," he said. "She's much more adept politically."

But Ickes is returning to his 2000 role, visiting Clinton's K Street headquarters most days while working largely behind the scenes. His standing in the Clintons' circle is a matter of constant speculation, as it has been since he was abruptly dropped in a White House staff shuffle in 1996.

"She's a United States senator, and her business is the Senate, and I'm doing other stuff," Ickes said of the last few years. "Now I'm back with much more time."

He was in the background last November, when Clinton delivered a 67 percent to 31 percent shellacking to her Republican opponent, former Yonkers mayor John Spencer. The campaign, however, blew through at least $34.4 million doing it, and supporters questioned the thousands spent on flowers and millions spent on polling and television advertisements, all of which could have been saved for the presidential campaign. (In the end, Clinton was able to transfer $10 million from her Senate race to her White House bid.)

Much of her Senate campaign's spending went to television advertising and elaborate polling, and Ickes is seen as one of the few Clinton advisers with the stature to say "no" to the consultants who received much of that money.

"When there's no real opposition and there's a fair amount of money, I think people are not as rigorous," Ickes said of the 2006 Senate campaign. "This effort is going to be a lot more rigorous. Money is harder to come by and there's many more things to spend it on."

With Ickes holding a central role in spending and staffing decisions, the first quarter's filings -- in which Clinton spent a relatively paltry $5.1 million -- produced one surprise: She has fewer staffers and fewer consultants than Sen. Barack Obama, the New York Post reported.

Along with his informal (but heavy) hand on Clinton's purse, Ickes said he has been helping in two other areas: with the political operation, where his deep ties in traditional, liberal Democratic circles are unrivaled; and with the campaign's information technology.

And while Ickes may be volunteering for Clinton, his other political activities are not a hobby. His "bread and butter," he said, is lobbying. His lobbying clients have included a nursing home association, the insurance company Equitas, the Service Employees International Union and a subsidiary of Verizon communications.

Asked if his lobbyist status produced any complications for a campaign in which a leading Clinton rival, Obama, has returned contributions from lobbyists, Ickes dismissed the concern.

"It doesn't matter much one way or the other," he said.

Perhaps Ickes' largest-scale project is Catalist, a private company born out of his open distrust in the ability of Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean to build a voter database to rival that of the Republicans. Ickes is president of the company.

"It's unclear to me," Ickes said, whether the Democratic Party's database is uniform and rich enough for a national election.

The Democratic Party's voter database, a party spokeswoman said, is fully functional and accessible through a central interface.

"Given the proven success of VoteBuilder in the 2006 elections and the overwhelmingly positive response we've had from the campaigns and state parties who used it, we are very confident in our voter file," said DNC communications director Karen Finney.

Catalist had 19 clients last electoral cycle, many of them union-backed political operations and advocacy groups, such as the Sierra Club and the AFL-CIO, Ickes said.

Adding a bit of delicacy to his position, Catalist is in talks with the Clinton campaign as well as rival Democratic primary campaigns.

"We don't take sides," he said.

Ickes himself, however, does take sides. He's known for his total loyalty to his friends and his fierce enmity for their enemies. His feud with Dean -- whom he challenged in 2005 for the job of Democratic Party chairman -- is the only open front in what otherwise has been cool civility between Dean's wing of the Democratic Party and Clinton's circle. He has described Clinton's former adviser, and current critic, Dick Morris in terms too profane to print.

Hailing from the Democratic Party's more liberal wing, Ickes has also been at odds, at times, with both Clintons' more centrist advisers, such as the pollster Mark Penn. Ickes' departure from the Clinton administration was part of a more general shift away from the Democratic base, and when he joined Hillary Clinton's campaign in 1999, he joked to The Washington Post that there was "some irony" to his return: "Fired in the West Wing, hired in the East Wing."

He was circumspect, however, on the subject of Obama.

"He's a very attractive guy. He's not of Washington, he's fresh, et cetera," Ickes said. "At some point, he is going to have to lay out his programs -- we know nothing about his programs so far -- and then people will start judging him on that."

Desert News: Hillary Clinton Enlists Consultants, Former Clinton 42 Staffers

Clinton enlists outside consultants

By Stewart M. Powell

Hearst Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., enlisted more than $1.1 million worth of outside consultants in the first 90 days of her campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination — including two veterans from President Bill Clinton's White House operation, according to her reports to the Federal Election Commission.

Hillary Clinton

The Clinton campaign spent $5.1 million in the first three months of her presidential campaign and incurred another $1.6 million in debts — commitments that brought total campaign costs to $6.7 million during the three months ending March 31.

Clinton's payments and commitments to consultants totaled $1,119,000 for their help in campaign strategy, fund raising, technology, communications and legal and accounting services.

Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign owed more than $277,000 to Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates Inc., the Washington, D.C.-based political consulting firm led by Mark Penn, who served as White House pollster for President Clinton.

Clinton also owed nearly $155,000 to Grunwald Communications, the political and communications consulting firm operated by Mandy Grunwald, advertising director for the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign.

The spending reports were part of the financial disclosure statements filed by the Clinton campaign with the Federal Election Commission by Sunday's deadline.

The reports showed the Clinton campaign made 1,333 payments to businesses and individuals during the first three months of operations ending March 31. These expenditures included 165 payments to firms and individuals based in New York state; less than $30,000 went to businesses and individuals in upstate New York — including almost $24,000 paid to New York state for payroll taxes for employees in New York state and $600 to the Verizon office in Albany, N.Y.

Clinton, who polls show has a narrow lead over rivals for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, emerged from the closely watched fund-raising competition with a thin edge over her closest rival, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. She raised $26 million in donations during the reporting period compared to $25.8 million raised by Obama, a newcomer to the national political stage.

But Clinton still holds a substantial financial advantage over Obama thanks to her transfer of $10 million from her 2006 Senate campaign. Clinton had nearly $31 million in cash on March 31 for the next phase of her presidential campaign compared to $19.2 million in cash held by Obama.

The latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp., nationwide survey released Monday showed Clinton leading Obama 30 percent to 26 percent, followed by former Vice President Al Gore with 15 percent and former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., with 12 percent. Gore is not a declared candidate.

The details of Clinton's spending gave an insight into the behind-the-scenes costs of setting up a nationwide presidential campaign:

• Salaries: The campaign spent $1,037,945.34 on staff salaries at campaign headquarters in Washington, D.C., in New York City and on staffers in a number of states with early 2008 contests including Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Florida and Ohio.

Staffers on salary include:

Evelyn Lieberman, the campaign's chief operating officer and a former Clinton White House official, who has been paid $20,883 since March 15;

Kim Molstre, a former aide to 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry and a former aide to now-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has been paid $19,242 since Feb. 2.

Capricia Marshall, White House social secretary during the Clinton administration, who has been paid $14,221 since Feb. 2.

• Postage: The campaign spent $648,089.16 on postage, the cornerstone of cam-
paigns' early efforts to solicit donations. The campaign also spent almost $231,000 for direct mail lists to help fund raising.

• Taxes: The campaign spent $631,661.95 on taxes, mostly payroll taxes for employees in various states.

• Office rent: The campaign spent $325,941.60 to rent office space in eight locations including Washington, D.C., McLean, Va., Las Vegas, Nev., Buffalo, N.Y., Chevy Chase, Md., New York City, Los Angeles, and Manchester, N.H.

• Event expenses: The campaign spent more than $371,000 on event expenses, including the cost of catering, renting locations, equipment and entertainment.

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.

New York Observer: Who is Huma Abedin?

Last June, under an oppressive sun, at a rally to save the Niagara military base at the University of Buffalo, all of New York’s top politicians—George Pataki, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton—poured sweat.

Yet there was exactly one member of the wilting delegation who managed, somehow, to stay cool: Hillary Clinton’s mysterious, glamorous and eerily unflappable aide de camp, Huma Abedin.

“It was like 110 degrees outside,” recalled the source, a political aide who asked to remain anonymous. “We were all just pouring down with sweat. But I have this distinct memory of Huma traipsing in in this blue pantsuit—it was like this wool pantsuit—not a bead of sweat on her brow, not a hair out of place, with everything perfectly organized in her Yves Saint Laurent handbag.”

That sort of fantastical, supernaturally tinged tale is not unusual. Indeed, in the insular world of New York and D.C. politics, Huma Abedin has become a sort of mythical figure.

On a day-to-day basis, Ms. Abedin is responsible for guiding the Senator from one chaotic event to the next and ensuring that the many hundreds of situations that arise at each—the photo ops, the handshakes, the speeches—go smoothly. The job of “body person”—industry-speak for the catchall role of an omnipresent traveling assistant—is a notoriously grueling one, requiring unfaltering level-headedness and a zeal for multitasking. These folks are constantly on the move, juggling 20 different chores, and they consequently often appear slightly disheveled (or even sweaty).

By most quantifiable measures, Ms. Abedin has the most challenging of those gigs. In the last 10 days, she has accompanied Mrs. Clinton to more than 20 events, involving nine plane flights and several trains. At each stop, they were mobbed.

“I think she has special powers,” said public-radio broadcaster Katia Dunn, who recently crossed paths with Ms. Abedin and Mrs. Clinton at a café on Capitol Hill.

Ms. Dunn explained that she had heard about the “cult of Huma,” but had never met her. “All of a sudden, I turn around and there was this woman I now know to be Huma. And it wasn’t just that she was gorgeous—she did just sort of have this presence. She stopped me in my tracks for a second.

Continued