WASHINGTON – Newt Gingrich is scaling back his campaign for the presidency in an effort to stay afloat until a contested convention.
Campaign officials said Gingrich will cut one third of his staff and limit campaign events with more of a focus on courting individual unpledged convention delegates, an acknowledgment that money is tight and the prospects of picking up pledged delegates in upcoming states are slim.
The former U.S. House Speaker from Georgia also swapped campaign managers. Michael Krull, who took over after a mass staff exodus in June, is out. Vince Haley, a longtime aide who worked with Gingrich at his various post-Congress ventures, is in.
The true campaign manager remains Gingrich, who vowed again Wednesday to stick it out even as most observers deem his strategy hopeless. The idea is to keep former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney from clinching the required 1,144 delegates before the end of the primary season in June then prevail in a convention floor fight.
“Until Mitt Romney has 1,144 locked down solidly, I owe it to the people who have helped me for the last year to represent their views and their values,” he said in an interview with Washington’s WTOP radio station. “I find it fascinating – none of you guys would call a football team or basketball team and say, ‘Gee, why don’t you drop out?’ You say, ‘OK, there’s a season, let’s play the season out, let’s see what happens.’”
Gingrich ended February carrying slightly more debt than cash on hand, and personnel was a big chunk of his spending. The campaign spent $116,725 on salary for the month to 33 employees. It also paid $340,180 for consulting to 44 people and firms. In all for the month, the campaign spent $2.87 million. Spokesman R.C. Hammond said the campaign would cut about a third of its employees.
Gingrich aides said the intent is to remove the candidate from the day-to-day mud fight of the campaign so he can offer “ideas” against President Barack Obama. This has been true for some time in practice: Gingrich has only contested Southern states since early February and has been largely out of the national limelight as Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum have competed in big states. Gingrich's travel schedule in the next few days is not much of a departure, as it is all in states that will vote this coming Tuesday: The District of Columbia, Maryland and Wisconsin.
The campaign will have a narrower focus in the coming weeks on states that vote in May and June: North Carolina, Kentucky, West Virginia, Texas and California, Hammond said. Still, the fact that Gingrich did not garner the required 25 percent of the vote to earn delegates in Louisiana – despite his natural Southern advantage and a week of campaigning there – is a sign of how far his campaign has plummeted nationally and the tough odds of siphoning away more committed delegates.
Hammond and others have dubbed it a “big choice” convention strategy. Hammond noted in an email that Gingrich could win a floor fight as “there are no TV ads on the convention floor.”
Gingrich adviser Kellyanne Conway said Gingrich will be making a lot of calls to unpledged delegates, whose convention votes are not tied to state primary outcomes. Conway said the new approach “liberates” Gingrich.
“This is the campaign he’s always wanted to run -- the opportunity to be positive, solutions-oriented and bold,” Conway said. “It’s got nothing to do with Romney except that he’s competing for the same nomination.”
The approach puts the Gingrich-allied Super PAC, Winning Our Future, in an odd position, as the primary tactic of the group has been to produce advertising on Gingrich’s behalf. It has been funded almost entirely by the family of Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas billionaire who has committed more than $16 million to the cause through February. Rick Tyler, a former Gingrich aide and Winning Our Future spokesman, would not comment on the prospect of additional Adelson money.
In comments this week reported by JewishJournal.com, Adelson said Gingrich is "at the end of his line" in the campaign, though Adelson did not speak directly about donations and remained critical of Romney and Santorum.
Tyler said the group has made an ad buy in Wisconsin and it has “not as much money as we did, but we’ll do what we can with less.”
Tyler also raised the possibility of wooing uncommitted delegates individually on Gingrich’s behalf, though he said the group has not made a firm decision on that. Super PACs can raise and spend unlimited money on behalf of a candidate but cannot coordinate spending with a campaign.
Gingrich spent Wednesday in Washington, and his day included a visit with some of his supporters in the U.S. House, most of whom are from Georgia.
“It was an informal meeting where the Speaker articulated his plans going forward,” said Jen Talaber, spokeswoman for Rep. Phil Gingrey of Marietta. “It seems he intends to stay in the race. He also sought the opinions and the advice of the members in the room.”
Gingrich gave a speech at Georgetown University, in keeping with the theme of speaking frequently at colleges in recent weeks. Campuses almost guarantee a healthy crowd, and the former history professor appears at home lecturing students. He focused his speech and a sometimes testy question-and-answer exchange on his big ideas and alluded to frustrations at his own dire political straits.
“I haven't done a very good job as a candidate because it is so difficult to communicate big solutions in this country, and the entire structure of the system is so hostile to it,” Gingrich said. “But we are in deep trouble as a people. ... Your generation is inheriting a dysfunctional country which cannot communicate with itself and whose political leadership has no ideas big enough to get us back on track, and that’s why I decided to run.”
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