Thursday, September 06, 2007

Team Fred Responds to the Corner    [Stephen Spruiell]

As Fred and Jeri Thompson were leaving the Polk County Convention Center to board a bus to Council Bluffs, I asked Thompson's communications director Todd Harris about a couple of items posted on the Corner today.

Regarding aide Karen Hanretty's ethanol diss, Harris laughed and said he did not even want to get into the number of staffers for rival campaigns who have written or said things their bosses don't agree with, "and what's important is that [Fred] doesn't agree with it."

"The staffers are not running for president," he added. That's true, of course. The damage will depend on whether other campaigns are as careful to make that distinction.

As for David Freddoso's well-informed speculation about the timing of Fred's announcement, Harris said that FEC filing deadlines played no part in Fred's decision to announce at midnight, Sept. 6th. He said the campaign has unfolded according to a timeline that was planned out according to a set of criteria that had nothing to do with the FEC.

When asked specifically why the campaign picked Sept. 6th, Harris repeated that the timing of the annoucement was dictated by a carefully planned unfolding of events, and that any correlation with FEC deadlines was coincidental. Then Harris had to run to catch one of two "Fred Thompson 2008" buses, which will tour the state of Iowa for the next three days. After that, the campaign is headed to New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, and finally a welcome-home event in Fred's hometown in Tennessee.

09/06 05:44 PMShare