It appears that Team Fred has not yet landed anyone from Team McCain
Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic called The Tower’s attention to a well-detailed post by the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza on “The Fix”. Cillizza has obtained - from a rival campaign - a painstakingly detailed summary of the staff acquired by Fred Thompson’s unofficial presidential campaign.
(The Tower deems it unlikely that the McCain campaign is Cillizza’s source, since the drastically-scaled-back team would probably not have the resources available to study other campaigns in depth).
However,The Tower happened to notice what was - inconspicuously - absent from the roster of Team Fred. Although this is not definite, since Team Fred did not issue an official staff list (since it doesn’t officially exist), there does not yet appear to be a single former McCain staffer - at any level - now on board with Fred.
This is puzzling, for three reasons:
1) There were initial reports (albeit by necessity, vague reports, anonymous quotes, et al) that Fred would be scooping up McCain staff.
2) The reports and speculation made perfect sense. The departure (due to resignations, layoffs, etc.) of much of the McCain staff in July meant that the political marketplace had suddenly become flooded with Republican staff.
Moreover, unlike the other Republicans, Fred still needed to assemble a staff for his shadow campaign largely from scratch. And if one campaign was losing staff and another needed to assemble one - simultaneously - it seemed logical to assume that at least some of the former McCain staff would end up with Fred.
3) Senator McCain has enjoyed a long friendship with Fred. Fred was the national co-chairman of his 2000 campaign, and was one of only four Republican Senators to support him that year. They sat together in the Senate.
When the initial bombshell of the staff departures hit earlier in July, there was speculation - and this seemed to be logical - that the closeness of McCain and Fred would mean:
although Senator McCain was not going to withdraw from the race as a result of the weak fundraising numbers, he would not mind seeing his former staffers end up with the campaign of his old friend.
It’s now July 27. Cillizza’s list is the most comprehensive (public) one created of Team Fred to date - and there is, surprisingly, still not a single McCain staffer (at least among those names familiar to The Tower’s publisher) on that team.
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