The Obama campaign has hired a Communications Director for Minnesota. Its Nick Kimball, formerly the CD for the DFL. More recently, Kimball has held a variety of roles inside the Obama campaign. Nick’s uncle Joe at MinnPost has a nice summary.
He was busy with Obama during the primary season, starting out as new media director in Iowa, where the campaign really took flight. He then went to Texas, where he worked as spokesman for the campaign, then back home to Minnesota to be communications director in the weeks leading up to our caucuses. Then it was off to Indiana and Oregon, where he was press secretary for those primaries.
Nick is very well known in DFL circles and is a first rate operative. He’s going to do a great job in Minnesota.
Meanwhile, in a broader report on the McCain campaign’s media spending, Marc Ambinder writes:
In Minnesota, the [McCain] campaign is saturating the Minneapolis-St. Paul market; the data suggests that they’ve spent at least $150,000 dollars during the past two weeks.
My understanding is that this is not the full extent of the McCain buy in Minnesota, but $75k/week is a decent buy for the Twin Cities alone (though “saturating” seems to be an overstatement). I checked with a couple of people familiar with the cost of media buys in Minnesota and found that $75k gets you somewhere just under 700 gross rating points. That means that the average viewer should see the McCain ad 6 or 7 times in a given week.
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Do they have a state office for the campaign yet? I would suggest West St. Paul. Better parking, cheeper rent, bus lines, a place to eat, and it would drive Swiftee nuts to have the Obama people in his backyard.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/veep_watch/
RealClearPolitics Veep Watch
RCP Staff
June 20, 2008
Debating Pawlenty
After making the case for Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty yesterday, Chris Cillizza makes the case against him today - which boils down to the following:
1) he isn’t well known nationally
2) he has a weak political organization (he couldn’t even deliver the state for McCain on Feb 5th)
3) he doesn’t appeal to a natural Republican constituency like Evangelicals (who favor Huckabee) or fiscal conservatives (who favor Romney)
Cillizza doesn’t mention that Pawlenty survived in 2006 by the skin of his teeth, winning only 47% of the vote. He trailed in the polls just before election, and was saved from being a one and done Governor thanks to a meltdown by his DFL opponent Mike Hatch.
Regardless, it’s debatable whether Minnesota will be within McCain’s reach with or without Pawlenty on the ticket.