McCain ad consultants quit campaign

[nevadamedic]

Story Highlights

Two ad consultants resigned on amicable terms, campaign spokeswoman says
According to FEC records, they received no money and were owed none
McCain's campaign manager and a top adviser resigned earlier this month
McCain says "We'll be just fine" over time

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/26/mccain.departures.ap/index.html

I don't understand why he won't admit he is done. Even his campaign staff doesn't have any faith in him.

[avatar4321]

i hear maybe he is staying in it to get matching funds (which is a rant for another topic) just so he can pay back some campaign creditors and break even.

[red states rule]

Top phone firm hangs up on McCain, GOP

By: Kenneth P. Vogel
Aug 3, 2007 06:13 PM EST


A well-connected Republican political firm is closing its call center partly because it was struggling to raise cash in fundraising calls for John McCain, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and others.

FYI Messaging, founded by operatives with close ties to the Bush administration, this week laid off 60 people working in a new call center in Phoenix.

The company would not comment officially on the layoffs, but someone familiar with FYI’s operations said, “We weren’t making a profit at it, and we didn’t really see that we were going to turn the corner as soon as we’d intended. It was a function partly of our business model and partly the environment we’re in right now.”

That environment has been particularly rough for McCain, the Arizona senator who was the Republican presidential front-runner before posting lackluster fundraising and poll numbers.

Brad Hubert, a former FYI employee, said he and other FYI callers seeking contributions from donors who’d already contributed to McCain were greeted like illegal immigrants crashing a Lou Dobbs dinner party.

Donors were particularly ticked by McCain’s effort this year to reform immigration laws, Hubert said, explaining, “We were calling right in the middle of that, and you were getting people just hanging up on you or yelling at you about him being a traitor because of the immigration stuff.

“It explains why his numbers are so bad,” said Hubert, who has a background in Arizona GOP politics. “He’s not getting the response that he needs from his donors to maintain a campaign.”

A person close to the McCain campaign said that the company’s plight is neither because of nor a reflection on McCain, but would not comment on how the campaign would adjust.

Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the RNC, which this year closed its in-house call center and outsourced its fundraising calls to FYI and a handful of competing firms, declined to comment on the developments.

NRSC spokeswoman Rebecca Fisher played down the significance of the company to the committee, which pays six firms to make fundraising calls.

“It won’t affect NRSC fundraising operations,” she said. “They had a tiny piece of the pie over here.”

But FYI’s struggles could be an ominous sign for Republicans – both because the company is run by some of the GOP’s brightest stars and because it comes after the party’s committees and candidates were trounced in the fundraising race by Democrats in the first half of the year.

The folding of FYI’s call center shouldn’t be interpreted as suggesting GOP fundraising is stagnant, said the person familiar with the company.

“I don’t think you could really make that broad of a conclusion from our perspective,” the person said. “Starting up any business is a challenge. I don’t think it’s something that’s broader than just one business.”

Hubert, who previously worked for a competing political telemarketing firm, said FYI adopted an unusual business model as it branched out this year from direct mail and list maintenance into telemarketing. It shelled out big bucks on its call center’s computer infrastructure and staff, hiring better-educated callers at more than $16 an hour, nearly twice the industry average, he said.

Though he said the company had not expected to turn a profit initially, Hubert added “clearly they didn’t plan to lose as much as they did. They really thought the McCain campaign was going to be the gravy train that they were going to ride through the primary.”

McCain’s campaign this year has paid FYI and a connected firm, Response Consulting, $78,100 for fundraising phone calls and finance consulting, according to Federal Election Commission data. That pales in comparison to the $623,000 the campaign paid throughout the first half of the year for fundraising calls made by another company, Strategic Telecommunications, of Oakdale, Minn.

FEC data show FYI and Response have pulled in a total of $213,200 this year for a range of services performed for the RNC, the National Republican Congressional Committee and a handful of other clients.

But FYI, which will retain about 25 employees to handle direct mail and other services, is perhaps more impressive for its pedigree than its 2007 earnings. Its backers and affiliated companies undeniably are a big deal in the big business of political consulting, lobbying, fundraising, telemarketing, mailing and mobilizing.

Two of FYI’s four founding partners are Thomas Synhorst and Douglas Goodyear, the chairman and chief executive officer, respectively, of DCI Group, a top GOP lobbying and consulting shop. It helped run Progress for America, a 527 group that played a key role in boosting President Bush’s 2004 reelection.

Synhorst, along with fellow GOP operatives Tony Feather and Jeffrey Larson, also founded FLS Connect, a fundraising firm that has pulled in $3.3 million this year from a range of candidates and committees, including the RNC ($2.2 million), the NRCC ($337,000), former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign ($319,000) and the National Rifle Association ($146,000).

And the crew behind FYI appears to be branching out, as last month three of the four partners filed papers to incorporate IPM Advancement. According to its website, IPM is a fundraising firm serving nonprofit groups, including some that tend to be considered more liberal, such as a Phoenix theater and GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0807/5245.html