Campaign managers, a near-perfect reflection

J. Patrick Coolican and Michael J. Mishak

Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2007 | 7:02 a.m.

One campaign manager uses the word "loyalty" a half - dozen times in a 20-minute conversation. Another describes meeting his candidate as a near-religious awakening. The third is labor's man, and rather than be a lobbyist like most of his former congressional colleagues, he taught labor studies before taking command of a presidential campaign.

Can you guess which top campaign managers go with which Democratic presidential candidates?

The top campaign staffs of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards seem almost perfect reflections of their bosses.

Clinton's circle can seem almost Cosa Nostra-like in their demands; Obama's staff is drawn to a cult of personality; and Edwards' team is deeply focused on issues, even at the expense of the campaign's prospects.

Here are glimpses of top managers in each of the three campaigns:

There are few people closer to Hillary Clinton than Patti Solis Doyle.

She was Clinton's chief scheduler during Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign and his two terms in the White House. For the past seven years, Solis Doyle has overseen the former first lady's vast political operation at the center of what she once deemed "Hillaryland," a close network of advisers and true believers.

The Northwestern University graduate joined Hillary Clinton 16 years ago from the campaign of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

Her boss at the time, David Wilhelm, said the campaign would not take long. He fully expected Bill Clinton, then an obscure Arkansas governor , to lose. And then he gave a surprise: Solis Doyle would be working for the first lady, not the candidate.

"When he told me, I was like, 'I'm working for the wife?' " she said last week.

But that feeling changed on their first meeting in the Arkansas governor's mansion, when Hillary Clinton laid down ground rules.

"Listen, I want to do everything I can to get my husband elected," Clinton told Solis Doyle. "But there's one thing: I need to be home for Chelsea."

"That made a real impact on me," Solis Doyle said. "She had her priorities. Family was first. The rest is history. I've been with her 16 years, and she's a friend of mine."

The relationship typifies the kind of fierce loyalty the Clintons inspire - and demand. (Hillary Clinton gave a reading at Solis Doyle's wedding, called her father on his deathbed and visited her mother after his passing.)

Solis Doyle solidified her role in the Clinton organization when Clinton dispatched her chief aide to New York to bring order to a group of warring political consultants during the 2000 Senate campaign.

The level of discipline Solis Doyle achieved in 2000 was evident in an interview with her in Las Vegas last week. Also in attendance were Rory Reid, Clark County Commission chairman and head of Clinton's Nevada campaign, and two local press aides - prepared for anything and everything a reporter might ask.

The question for Solis Doyle: Can candidate Clinton generate enthusiasm to match the discipline of her machine?

David Bonior, a former congressman from Michigan with deep ties to organized labor, was in New Hampshire in 2004 with his wife when he ran into Edwards. "We were looking for a candidate," Bonior said. It's his style to fly on his own dime to New Hampshire in the middle of winter to help him decide whom to support for president.

Edwards saw him in line and they talked. "He was connecting with people," Bonior said.

Bonior wears the closely cropped beard and sweater vests of a professor, and , after he left Congress, that's what he became.

In Congress, the labor movement had no better friend than Bonior, who also could wield a verbal and political knife, taking on then- House Speaker Newt Gingrich and sullying the Georgian's rise to power with ethics charges.

Bonior said his admiration for Edwards grew after the 2004 campaign, when the former trial lawyer helped union - organizing campaigns, took on poverty as a signature issue and helped his wife battle breast cancer.

"He's poured his whole heart and soul into working people," Bonior said.

It all sounds great, but Bonior's never run a campaign of this magnitude.

The question for Bonior: Can his laserlike moral vision compensate for the Edwards campaign's financial and organizational disadvantages?

Steve Hildebrand had just about had it with politics after 2004.

He watched his friend and mentor, then Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, get drummed out of the upper house, while President Bush was reelected despite worsening news from Iraq.

The former political director of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and Iowa state director for Al Gore's presidential campaign considered looking for another line of work.

Then he went to a steak fry.

When Hildebrand accompanied Obama to the September 2006 event, hosted by Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, BlackBerrys in D.C. buzzed. Hildebrand, who's very unassuming for someone with his resume, would be considered a big get.

Now he's managing Obama's campaign in the four early states of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

For Hildebrand, the steak fry was his Obama conversion. He was floored, he said. Obama was swarmed with Iowa Democrats holding copies of his book, "Dreams From My Father." Hildebrand had someone he could believe in, a cause with a leader, he said.

Thousands of Democrats, as well as unaffiliated voters and even a few Republicans, report the same experience with Obama.

Hildebrand is well aware of the danger this poses. The list of charismatic or of-the-moment candidates beaten by more ruthless and efficient campaigns is long and inglorious.

Obama, who comes from Chicago, where politics is a rough business, will not be Howard Dean, Hildebrand emphasized. They want to win - badly.

The question for Hildebrand: Can he convert the enthusiasm into a nuts - and - bolts operation strong enough to win?

archive