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As ex-aides speak out, Gingrich pursues bid

Newt Gingrich vowed to campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination on his own terms despite the exodus a day earlier of nearly his entire senior staff.
Image: Newt Gingrich
Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich poses for photos at the Portsmouth Country Club in Portsmouth, N.H., on Thursday, the same day his entire senior staff quit the former House Speaker' campaign.Elise Amendola / AP
/ Source: The New York Times

Newt Gingrich vowed on Friday to campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination on his own terms, saying he would do “whatever it takes” to remain in the race despite the exodus a day earlier of nearly his entire senior staff.

“There is a fundamental strategic difference between the traditional consulting community and the kind of campaign I want to run,” Mr. Gingrich said. “Now we’ll find out over the next year who’s right.”

Even as some prominent Republicans, including Gov. Terry E. Branstad of Iowa, questioned his viability, Mr. Gingrich made plans to deliver a foreign policy speech in Los Angeles on Sunday night and to participate in a Republican debate in New Hampshire on Monday night. And he sought to rebut suggestions by his former aides that he had failed to engage in the campaign as fully as necessary because his wife, Callista, was micromanaging his schedule and did not wish to devote every waking minute to the slog of a campaign.

“We make decisions as a couple,” Mr. Gingrich told reporters gathered outside his home in Virginia on Friday morning. “I think most couples would find that refreshing, not a problem.”

The departure of the campaign staff came after the couple returned from a cruise that left them out of public view for 11 days, just as the Republican contest was getting going in earnest and as Mr. Gingrich was seeking to recover from some missteps.

'Not going to cut it'
At times in the early stages, he appeared intensely engaged in the race. He made 17 appearances over five days in Iowa last month, seeming to thrive on the energy of larger-than-expected crowds.

But when his Iowa campaign manager, Craig Schoenfeld, proposed in a memorandum that Mr. Gingrich spend 40 percent of his time in Iowa to be competitive in a straw poll in August, the traditional kickoff of the race to win the state’s crucial January caucuses, Mr. Gingrich committed to only a handful of visits.

“That’s not going to cut it,” said Mr. Schoenfeld, who resigned along with the five other paid Iowa staff members.

Before Mr. Gingrich would agree to an event, former aides said, they had to meet with the couple and Mrs. Gingrich’s personal staff. Mrs. Gingrich said yes to certain cases — appearing on the Fox News Channel’s national telecast, for example — but if an overnight trip out of state was required, she frequently vetoed it, the former aides said. Mr. Gingrich did not overrule her.

With the campaign heating up recently, they said, the bureaucratic scheduling process made it hard to book Mr. Gingrich to appear in front of voters or at fund-raising events.

The lack of fund-raising had an impact on the campaign, former aides said. Lacking permanent office space, top staff members — Rob Johnson, the national campaign manager; Sam Dawson, a consultant; and Rick Tyler, Mr. Gingrich’s longtime spokesman — met in a rented room at the Hyatt hotel in Arlington, Va.

Newt Gingrich

In Iowa, the staff met briefly each morning at Mr. Schoenfeld’s law office, then left to work out of their own homes.

Despite chartering a private jet for Mr. Gingrich during his swing through the state, the campaign could not afford $35,000 to buy a contact list of Iowans who attended past caucuses.

The final straw for the staff was the Gingriches’ decision, over aides’ pleas, not to cancel their luxury cruise. Staff members, who tried to keep the details out of the press, worried that it would exacerbate Mr. Gingrich’s image as a spendthrift after the revelation that he had a $500,000 revolving line of credit at the luxury jeweler Tiffany & Company.

“I don’t blame him and Callista for wanting to get away,” said Mr. Tyler, one of several who pleaded with Mr. Gingrich not to go. “But it was the timing. It just fed into a whole other dialogue that was out there.”

This story, "As Ex-Aides Speak Out, Gingrich Continues Bid," originally appeared in The New York Times.