News just weeks into San Diego mayoral race from candidate District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis really got folks talking about her race.
It wasn’t big donor dollar numbers (which we’ve yet to see), but that she had already fired her campaign manager, Republican consultant Tom Mitchell.
The rumor mill ran amok with folks saying she looked vulnerable.
Today, her camp released news that she’s poached a Mayor Jerry Sanders press aide, Kevin Klein, to take over the helm under general consultant, Jennifer Tierney.
Still no official word as to what went wrong with Mitchell, though Tierney did give some clues in a story from San Diego News Room:
“This is not about the strategy of Bonnie’s campaign,” says Tierney. “It’s about getting a really competent day-to-day person to manage the campaign; this isn’t about a big change, it’s about someone who can implement the overall strategy.”
Tierney says there are three main reasons Dumanis’ campaign chose Klein to take over the position: experience, skill and personality.
“He has been involved in campaigns before and when we talked to him we felt he would fit in well with the group of people that are with Bonnie’s campaign,” says Tierney.
No doubt we’ll get a better sense of camp stability when we see her first campaign financial report in coming days.
– Follow me @erica_holloway.
Comments 3
He’s a fit because he’s a liberal just like they are. Mitchell didn’t last because he didn’t go along with them wanting Bonnie to be a center-left candidate. Mitchell has experience and the skill set, I guess he just didn’t have experience as a liberal or the personality that was agreeable to that strategic direction.
Author
Dear Insider:
The quote from Tierney certainly seems to support your judgement of the situation.
Though, I have to wonder about the logic behind running a Republican as left-leaning. No doubt San Diego’s high-propensity voters skew Blue Dog, but other Republicans who took this path (McCain, for one) learned it causes your base to flee and the other side tends to, as we do, coalesce behind the chosen one from their team.
Perhaps it works. We’ll just have to see.
Best, Erica
It’s all water under the bridge. Bonnie is already losing. She has not raised as much money as Carl & Nathan and the people that already work for her don’t like her. She is charmless and uncharismatic.
Those medical marijuana folks are hounding Bonnie every which way she turns and they are not about to stop now. ALL her big shot guests at the Electra Building campaign kick-off were mercilessly vilified as they walked into the event. It was so embarrassing for them. There are other issues Bonnie will need to address during the campaign & the inevitable debates: Diana Gonzalez’s death, the Marine Widow persecution, Suzanne LaTour’s escape from prosecution, including her excessive pension. How about Bonnie picking and choosing cases to charge based on how easy the D.A.’s office can intimidate the defendants into pleading out to maintain high conviction rates?