The Boy Wonder and his guardian
Nick Ayers, former executive director of the Republican Governors Association during the 2010 cycle and official boy wonder of the Republican Party, has signed on with Tim Pawlenty.
This is, in the parlance of our times, a BIG GET.
Ayers, the former executive director of the Republican Governors Association, will take the helm of Pawlenty’s bid for the White House when he is expected to forge ahead with his full-blown campaign for the presidency, a Pawlenty source confirmed. Fox News first reported the 28-year-old’s hire Sunday evening.
Ayers served as the top strategist at the RGA in the 2008 and 2010 cycles — the latter of which was under the chairmanship of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, another potential presidential candidate actively looking at a bid. Ayers also worked at the RGA with Pawlenty, who served as the group’s vice chairman last cycle.
Ayers' success at the RGA last cycle has made him a conservative hero, and it's also given him access to a large contingent of well-heeled donors. So this is certainly a shot in the arm for the Pawlenty campaign, which has a lot of "institutional" (read: Beltway) support but is still well within the second tier of GOP candidates in national polling. Pawlenty's hopes took a hit recently with the addition of fellow Minnesotan Michele Bachmann (who, for all her faults, has ten times the charisma and personal appeal of Pawlenty) to the Presidential field; the signing of Ayers seems to indicate that they think the best way to fight the crazy is with professionalism.
Pawlenty could use a little bit of the RGA's impressive fundraising prowess from last cycle. Surely the hope is that Ayers brings some of that with him...but it will be interesting to see how he fares without Haley Barbour, who could make money grow on trees and fall out of the sky.
For those who like reading tea leaves, it's worth asking why Ayers signed on with Pawlenty instead of Haley Barbour, his fellow Southerner and former boss at the RGA. This could be an indicator that Barbour isn't going to make the race after all, leaving us with an ever smaller GOP field that might ultimately come down to five or six candidates.
The smaller the field gets, the better it breaks down into two disparate groups: the GOP professionals (Romney, Pawlenty, possibly Daniels, Newt), the hard-line right-wingers (Bachmann, Santorum, and newly minted birther Trump) and the irrelevant (Roy Moore, Herman Cain).