Quinn In Trouble
IL Gov. Pat Quinn (D) has been on the job for about 18 months, but he hasn't had much of a honeymoon -- and now top Dem strategists close to the Obama team are beginning to believe he's almost certain to lose his seat this Nov.
The latest: Quinn has fired his media firm, AKPD, and gone with a different ad guru. AKPD is the firm formerly run by Pres. Obama's senior strategist, David Axelrod, and campaign manager David Plouffe.
"We and the Quinn campaign agreed that our divergent approaches to disciplined, professional communications are incompatible. We wish Pat well," AKPD said in an unusually terse statement, first published by the Capitol Fax Blog.
In AKPD's place, Quinn picked up Joe Slade White, a former advisor to VP Joe Biden's campaign and also crafted spots for oil barron T. Boone Pickens.
But Dems are starting to believe their party picked the wrong nominee in the first place, when Quinn barely edged out Comptroller Dan Hynes (D) in the primary. Quinn has had a string of bad luck and bad news, and a Green Party candidate's presence in the race means the Demcoalition will likely be split.
Quinn faces state Sen. Bill Brady (R), who won his own close primary in Feb. At a recent gathering of former Obama campaign staffers in Chicago, top strategists expressed serious concern at Quinn's fortunes. What's worse, Quinn's predecessor, Rod Blagojevich, will stay in headlines as his retrial approaches, further giving GOPers the opportunity to make the damaging link between the 2, even though Quinn and Blagojevich publicly feuded.