We already knew that we had two recent DC to CA imports, but it turns out there are a few more new hires, including a former Deputy Chief of Staff to Karl Rove. Last year we had Mike Murphy, Karen Hanretty (the mini-Colture) and Rob Stutzman. Most were local GOP hacks. After having steered him to miserable failure in November they have either been shown the door or left of their own volition.
Lets go take a look at who we knew about already and who is new to the left coast.
Known:
Matthew Dowd- one of the masterminds behind the B/C '04 campaign. Dowd will be one of the biggest players and clearly has had a lot of latitude to bring in fresh blood.
Steve Schmidt- Cheney's boy. His most recent assignment was acting as the Alito wrangler for the WH, maneuvering the nomination through congress.
New:
- Working closely with Dowd, as his Deputy, will be Sarah Simmons. Simmons has been serving as a senior aide to none other than Bush top strategist (and Deputy WH Chief of Staff) Karl Rove.
- Katie Levinson will be the new Communications Director. Levinson has been working in both the White House and at the RNC working in their communications shops - Director of Television.
- Matt David who worked has worked closely with Schmidt, and handled the communications efforts on the Alito confirmation, will be onboard as the new Deputy Communications Director.
- Finally, at least for this post, is a mention of Matt McDonald, the high-energy "rapid response" communications guy at the White House will be coming out West in a similar role for the Schwarzengger Campaign. His will be a shorter-term stay before he heads off to business school.
(This info comes right from the most dominent conservative blog in CA and was written by the former director of the state Republican Party)
This is going to make it damn easy for either Angelides or Westly to tie Arnold to George. These guys are not coming to play nice. Their biggest disadvantage is not knowing much about California politics. That is huge, it is different out here folks, not the least of which is that over 40% of the vote will come from mail in ballots.
Any google monkeys want to have fun looking up these new names?