What Has Mark Penn Lost, Exactly?
The day after the campaign announced Penn's titular demotion, it is not clear yet exactly what influence he has lost.
Marc Ambinder reported that Penn participated this morning on an internal campaign conference call, suggesting the highly plausible possibility that his loss of the right to be called “chief strategist” was more about cauterizing the Colombia mess than empowering Howard Wolfson and Geoff Garin to cut him out of the decision-making loop.
One campaign staffer I talked to who, like most Clinton campaign staffers, may be said to come from the anti-Penn camp, insisted that Penn had indeed lost juice, and noted that Hillary was not on the conference call this morning. Other staffers explained that the real significance of Penn’s apparent demotion was not that he would disappear completely, but that he had lost his all-important veto power over ideas regarding message and strategy.
"Every little ad and direct mail and radio spot and speech had to have Mark's approval on it -- he could look at everything he wanted," said one. "That's no longer the case."
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Clinton's Colombia ties don't stop with Penn
By: Eamon Javers
April 7, 2008 07:21 PM EST
Mark Penn isn’t the only Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter on the wrong side of the Colombia trade agreement.
The Democratic-leaning advocacy firm the Glover Park Group, former home to Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson, signed a $40,000 per month contract with the government of Colombia in April of 2007 to promote the very agreement that Clinton now rails against on the presidential campaign trail.
That means Glover Park Group was arguing the same position on the free trade agreement as has Penn, the contentious Clinton strategist and Burson-Marsteller chief executive who lost his campaign job over the weekend after The Wall Street Journal revealed that he’d met with Colombian officials to plot strategy on the pact.
Several other Glover Park employees have deep connections with the Clintons, including founding partner Joe Lockhart, who served as the White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton, and Joel Johnson, who was a senior communications adviser in the Clinton White House.
Six employees of Glover Park Group contributed a total of nearly $20,000 to Clinton’s campaign in 2007, according to data kept by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Wolfson, who is set to take over many responsibilities from the departing Penn, resigned from Glover Park last year to avoid conflicts of interest but retains an equity interest in the firm. He and his wife maintain an equity stake in the firm valued at from $500,000 to $1 million, according to a recent Capitol Hill financial disclosure filing.
A politician is a politician is a politician. They'll say anything to the public, while they quietly enrich themselves at the public's expense. Our fault for believing them.
what did Spitzer's prostitute lose? he probably needs to reschedule celebrations with his dead-squads pals;