Campaign Manager

As presidential candidate Jon Huntsman seeks to gain some traction in the GOP race, he's shaking up his campaign team. His campaign manager, Susie Wiles, resigned Thursday. The campaign said Huntsman's candidacy was moving into a more aggressive phase. "Susie has served the campaign well and was vital in getting it off the ground in such a short time frame,” said John Weaver, a senior advisor to Huntsman. “In just under three months, Governor Huntsman has returned from China, launched a campaign and created a strong infrastructure in the three early primary states.

In spite of the attention paid to the controversy over Elizabeth Warren's purported Native American heritage, the Democratic Senate hopeful has tightened the race against incumbent Sen. Scott Brown, according to new polling. The race is now well within the margin of error of the latest Suffolk University/7NEWS poll , with Brown holding a single point lead over Warren, 48% to 47%, with 5% of voters undecided. The numbers show a steady rise for Warren, who in February was 9 points behind Brown, 49% to 40%. “This leaves both campaigns no choice but to spend tens of millions of dollars in an all-out war to woo the 5% of voters who will decide this election,” David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said.

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to name the nation's first-ever federal chief technology officer sometime soon. According to Obama's website, the CTO's role will be to "ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century." It's not surprising that Obama plans a major emphasis on technology.

The battle for a San Bernardino County congressional seat has become a magnet for outside "super PAC" dollars. The June 5 primary election that pits Republican Rep. Gary G. Miller of Diamond Bar against Republican state Sen. Bob Dutton of Rancho Cucamonga has received close to $1 million in outside money, the most of any congressional race in the nation. By far, the greatest beneficiary has been Miller, who was elected to Congress in 1998 after making a fortune in home building.

Paul Johnson, campaign manager of Sen. Bob Graham's unsuccessful presidential bid, was hired Monday for the same position in retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark's campaign. Clark spokesman Matt Bennett said Johnson would start Monday. Johnson is a veteran of several Democratic campaigns for the Senate. He also worked on the presidential campaigns of former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey in 1992 and Walter F. Mondale in 1984.

Lenore Yeamans, 81, former Los Angeles mathematics teacher who managed San Fernando Valley political campaigns for such candidates as Los Angeles Mayor Norris Poulson and President Richard Nixon. A native of Chicago, Mrs. Yeamans grew up in the Covina area and graduated with honors from USC. The widow of attorney Richard K. Yeamans, she had run her husband's office when he was a state inheritance tax appraiser. Mrs.

Six weeks into the race, Democratic congressional candidate Bruce W. Sumner has replaced his part-time campaign coordinator with a veteran Orange County campaign manager. Sumner said the decision to replace Keith Glaser with Irvine political consultant Howard Adler did not suggest any confusion or dissension in Sumner's long-shot campaign to unseat five-term Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach). Rather, he said, the switch was prompted because Glaser, 31, was too busy with other commitments.

Councilwoman Lyn Gillespie has paid off a $15,000 debt to her former campaign manager, one month after her car was impounded for auction. On Friday, Gillespie's attorney delivered a cashier's check to Harvey Englander, who managed her successful 1988 council campaign, ending a two-year legal battle over how much money Gillespie owed Englander for his services. The check covered the original debt, plus interest and legal fees.

George Bush was much too modest when he listed the qualifications of his new presidential campaign manager the other day. In describing Fred Malek's background, the President said Malek was "a very successful businessman (and) political associate." But Bush left out one of Malek's more interesting credentials: Jew hunter. Malek was forced to resign from his Republican Party leadership post in 1988 because stories surfaced about how he had counted up Jews for Richard Nixon.

Charles H. Jelloian, former operations director of the private foundation that built the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, was appointed campaign manager for Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), the congressman announced Wednesday. Gallegly is running for a fourth term in the new 23rd Congressional District, which includes Carpinteria and all of Ventura County except Thousand Oaks. His Democratic opponent is education consultant Anita Perez Ferguson.

President Obama added an additional $43.6 million to Democratic coffers in April, a sum his campaign says will be put to quick use to build on its ground game for the fall. The monthly fundraising haul was down from the $53 million raised in March by Obama for America, the Democratic National Committee and two affiliate committees. The Republican National Committee also was quick to point out that Obama raised $32 million on his own in April 2008, without the advantage of incumbency.

Rep. Brad Sherman's reelection campaign is asking federal authorities to investigate what it says is improper coordination between his main rival, fellow Democratic Rep. Howard Berman, and a "super PAC" formed to support Berman in the nationally watched contest. In a complaint planned for delivery to the Federal Election Commission on Monday, Sherman campaign manager Scott Abrams alleges that a Berman operative did not wait the required 120 days between working for the Berman campaign and contracting with the super PAC. Such fundraising groups, which emerged as a controversial factor in the presidential primary contest, can collect unlimited amounts of money to use in support of, or opposition to, specific candidates.

Tied to the launch of the public phase of President Obama's reelection bid this the weekend, his campaign is on the air with a new 60-second ad that aims to sell skeptical voters on the notion of progress under his leadership. It's not quite "Morning in America," the iconic Ronald Reagan ad from the 1984 campaign that declared the nation "prouder, and stronger, and better" than four years earlier. It instead leads with a sober reminder of the "economic meltdown" of 2008. The Obama spot then pivots to a new president who would not concede that "our best days were behind us," and touts the resurgent U.S. auto industry and 4.2-million new jobs.

At a time when his campaign is working to attract reluctant conservatives, Mitt Romney won the backing Thursday of one-time rival Michele Bachmann, who has vowed to use her connections in evangelical and tea party groups to help unite the party behind him. "This is what victory looks like," Bachmann declared Thursday in Portsmouth, Va., as she took the stage with the presumptive Republican nominee and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell nearly four months...

WASHINGTON - If Barack Obama's first presidential campaign was part cultural phenomenon, part national movement, his second may look a bit more modest - like a series of well-run Senate campaigns. Facing the reality of running as a bruised incumbent in a politically divided country, Obama's advisors say they are plotting a strategy that doesn't depend on a wave of support to lift the president's chances across the country. And it won't hinge on a single theme based on ideas such as "hope" and "change" that defined the campaign and captured the zeitgeist in 2008.

The tenure of an openly gay spokesman for Mitt Romney's campaign lasted less than two weeks. On April 19, Romney's campaign announced it had hired Richard Grenell, 45, as its foreign policy spokesman. On Tuesday, Grenell tendered his resignation, citing a “hyperpartisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from being on a presidential campaign.” Grenell never had a chance to make an impression with the public in this job. Last Thursday, the Romney campaign held a conference call with reporters to blunt a foreign policy speech that Vice President Joe Biden was about to deliver.

A charismatic L.A. mayor appears to be riding an unstoppable populist wave to the governor's mansion -- but his victory celebration may be premature. Amid the campaign's down-to-the-wire twists and turns, nothing can be taken for granted except human fallibility in Chuck Rose's new drama, "Bedfellows" (as in "politics makes strange…"). The fine line between personal ambition and the public good -- and the resulting ethical dilemmas -- are hardly uncharted thematic territories, but they speak with particular relevance to a polarized electoral climate in Jack Stehlin's impassioned staging for his New American Theatre company.