The Other McCain

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Bachmann Pulls the Plug in N.H.?

Posted on | October 21, 2011 | 24 Comments

John Pindell of WMUR-TV got the scoop:

All paid New Hampshire staff for Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign have quit over deep frustration with the campaign’s lack of commitment to New Hampshire. …

Because the rest of Pindell’s story is behind a paywall — charging 99 cents to read it online? really? why does that make sense for a TV station’s Web site? — we instead must rely on Politico:

They were going to [resign] even earlier, he reports, but didn’t because it would have harmed the candidate.
It certainly isn’t going to help her now – but they may have felt the hour was growing too late for things to change for her.

And Reuters has this:

“It certainly underscores the impression that New Hampshire isn’t a priority for her. She’s totally written us off,” said former Republican state legislator Fran Wendelboe. . . .
Bachmann has been on a slow fade since winning the Iowa straw poll of Republican voters in August. Bachmann has only been registering single digits in polls of New Hampshire Republican voters. In Iowa, she has been in fourth place in the polls behind Herman Cain, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.

Thanks to frequent commenter Joe for the tip. I called Bachmann’s spokeswoman Alice Stewart to get her reaction and haven’t yet heard back from her.

Category: Election 2012, Michele Bachmann

Comments

24 Responses to “Bachmann Pulls the Plug in N.H.?”

  1. Steve in TN
    October 21st, 2011 @ 3:06 pm

    charging 99 cents to read it online? really?

    I work for a major media corp that shall remain nameless.  Everything, EVERYTHING, will be going paywall in the near future.  The days of free news on the net are numbered.

  2. Anonymous
    October 21st, 2011 @ 3:24 pm

    But how many organizations can survive having a paywall?  I guess the WSJ does pretty well, and supposedly the NYT has 300,000 subscribers.  But you can get around them via google or twitter anyways.

    Those don’t seem like typical examples, especially compared with smaller outlets.

  3. Finrod Felagund
    October 21st, 2011 @ 3:27 pm

    Reportedly the WSJ is getting rid of its paywall.
     

  4. Finrod Felagund
    October 21st, 2011 @ 3:28 pm

    If Bachmann is running fourth behind Cain, Romney and Paul in NH, and that’s  bad enough for her campaign staffers to bail, what does that say about Rick Perry in NH?

    My bad, that was Iowa placement, not New Hampshire.

    In New Hampshire, the RCP averages are: Romney 40, Cain 18, Paul 10, Gingrich 6, Huntsman 5, Perry 4.2, Bachmann 3.8.

    Still horrible for Bachmann, but still pretty miserable for Perry to be behind Huntsman.

  5. Anonymous
    October 21st, 2011 @ 3:30 pm

    I didn’t have to pay anything to get a registration with WSJ; just had to put up with ads.

  6. Anonymous
    October 21st, 2011 @ 3:31 pm

    That Rick has about $13 million in the bank.

  7. newrouter
    October 21st, 2011 @ 3:32 pm

    ”
    Bachmann: Campaign Not Aware of N.H. Staffers Quitting

    October 21, 2011 3:20 P.M.

    By Katrina Trinko    

    Michele Bachmann said today she found the report that her entire crew of staffers in New Hampshire had quit “shocking” and said it was not true.

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/280953/bachmann-campaign-not-aware-nh-staffers-quitting-katrina-trinko

  8. Anonymous
    October 21st, 2011 @ 3:39 pm

    Yeah, losing to Huntsman is bad.  I saw somewhere that at least some of the Bachmann staffers were getting hired by Perry.

  9. Anonymous
    October 21st, 2011 @ 3:49 pm

    If Perry and Bachmann are behind Huntsman doesn’t that automatically trigger a suicide watch?

  10. Adjoran
    October 21st, 2011 @ 4:06 pm

    An outright denial?

    I sure hope she talked to the staffers personally before making such an assertion.  If it turns out to be a false denial, she won’t recover from it – not that her path is easy from here on, in any event.

  11. Bad Day for Michele Bachmann | The Lonely Conservative
    October 21st, 2011 @ 4:31 pm

    […] no one had quit.Maybe when she made the calls nobody was in the office to answer. It looks like she was not committed to New Hampshire, and her staff knew it.I like Bachmann, but her candidacy has really fizzled after the Iowa straw […]

  12. ThePaganTemple
    October 21st, 2011 @ 4:34 pm

    Hell, it was four people, its not like she had a skyscraper full of people and they all bailed on her. It was four people who didn’t like it that she wasn’t camped out there 24/7 spending her time and resources there the way they wanted her to. Read that as, that she wasn’t spending gobs of money there for their benefit.

    Bachmann knows that New Hampshire is going to go to Romney. Hell look at the polls. 40%. Romney would curse his dead father to hell if he could get those kinds of number nationwide. But he’s got them there, so why should Bachmann waste any time or effort there? She’s got a decent shot at turning things around in Iowa, if she diverted her resources to NH she’d just lose them both.

  13. Anonymous
    October 21st, 2011 @ 5:11 pm

    Just like the days of free music, eh?

    Good luck with that.

  14. Anonymous
    October 21st, 2011 @ 5:14 pm

    This is like one of those “Robbery up 300%” stories, where the town had one robbery last year and three this year.

    But Bachmann does seem to not stay in touch with campaign people.  I know she’s busy, but she needs to get ahead of these things.

  15. Anonymous
    October 21st, 2011 @ 5:18 pm

    A little inspiration can go a long way.

  16. ThePaganTemple
    October 21st, 2011 @ 6:04 pm

    Agreed. There’s other things she should do that she’s not. For example, she needs to focus on Romney, not Cain or Perry. The person that knocks out Romney is the person conservatives will flock to if for no other reason than sheer gratitude.

  17. jwallin
    October 21st, 2011 @ 6:36 pm

    I don’t get this. They’re PAID employees not volunteers. What do they care if she’s not paying NH enough attention? Maybe if they did their f’n JOB she wouldn’t be so far behind. Oh and I love how they didn’t do this before out of concern for her campaign. WTF???? Do they think that NOW is SOOOO much better? Or maybe they just wanted to bail while they had a just to get a gig with one of the other candidates? Maybe one they were more simpatico with?

    And quitting? Yeah that’s the thing to do, quit because your employer isn’t paying enough attention to the great job and stuff you’re doing.

    Why do I think that there’s more to this story that isn’t getting told? Like maybe they haven’t got paid for awhile? Or they were really only in it for the resume?

    God, grow up people.

  18. Friday Night Follies, October 21, 2011
    October 21st, 2011 @ 8:39 pm

    […] As for where the story started, my own initial link came from Katrina Trinko at The Corner, who found it here. Having been burned by his source, I hope James Pindell will let us know who that was. That’s what Stacy would do. […]

  19. Mike
    October 21st, 2011 @ 11:25 pm

    One. James Pindell isn’t worth the paywall. I only read him if the column is free.

    Two. Bachmann NH staff haven’t been paid for a month. That can’t help their frustration level!

  20. Adjoran
    October 22nd, 2011 @ 1:12 am

    So people drawing a paycheck in this economy just up and quit – disqualifying them for unemployment benefits – because they don’t like the boss’ strategy?

    If you buy that, call me when you need a good toll bridge.

  21. Adjoran
    October 22nd, 2011 @ 1:14 am

    Exactly.  If they quit, it is 95% more likely it’s because their pay has either been drastically cut beneath what they were promised, or they aren’t getting paid at all.

  22. Adjoran
    October 22nd, 2011 @ 1:16 am

    If you have the article’s head or a quoted line, just go to Google News or Yahoo! News or any hub and search for it.  The paywalls disappear like liberal college students when the rent is due.

  23. ThePaganTemple
    October 22nd, 2011 @ 8:32 am

    I don’t know what the problem is there and don’t pretend to know. I can only point out that, again, this is only four or five people and at least one of them has gone to work for Rick Perry already, which tells me that whoever the person is has already been in touch with the Perry campaign for at least a small amount of time prior to this move. But if she hasn’t been paying her people on time, then yeah that’s bad, even if she isn’t directly in charge of signing the checks and sending them out. She should keep up on that stuff.

  24. ThePaganTemple
    October 22nd, 2011 @ 9:05 am

    Or she wasn’t just pouring unreasonable sums of money into a state she knew she had no realistic chance of winning, which means these campaign workers-who probably weren’t hired off the unemployment line, by the way-didn’t have any extra funds to spend on pizza, beer, hotel rooms in first one town and another, and parties thinly disguised as campaign events.