McCain's campaign shakeup

Samantha Hayes
Washington, D.C.
July 2, 2008

A year ago, pink slips were flying in John McCain's campaign, which at the time was essentially bankrupt and on the verge of collapse. His staff called it "Black Monday."

One year later, and McCain is now the presumptive GOP nominee, but there are still obvious problems in house. This morning, campaign manager Rick Davis announced that Steve Schmidt, who has been a close advisor to McCain, would take over day to day operations. This means Schmidt is in charge of communications, campaign organization and structure, and messaging.

This is a significant sign that everything is not hunkey dorey in McCain world. A senior aide says Schmidt's top priority is to stop "errors in the campaign." One that comes to mind is that much-maligned green backdrop behind a recent high profile speech. But in a broader sense, there have been rumblings that senior aides and elected officials have been unhappy with the state of McCain's campaign and feel that it has been slow to organize and build momentum after the senator from Arizona captured enough delegates for the nomination back in March.

So what will McCain's campaign manager do now? Rick Davis is expected to work on the search for McCain's VP running mate, and the convention in St. Paul at the end of the summer.

At that point, when the balloons drop and there's only two months to go until Election Day, they certainly hope the changes put in place today are working.

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