McCain taps respected California campaigner

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GOP presidential candidate John McCain's decision to tap a tough California political operative and former adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to head his campaign operations is being hailed by Republicans as evidence that the Arizona senator's campaign is on a new track.Steve Schmidt was the strategist behind President Bush's 2004 re-election "war room," and his hard-core approach to high-level politics has won him a reputation as a political "artillery shell." He will assume full operational control of the campaign, McCain's team confirmed this week. Sources close to the McCain camp said campaign manager Rick Davis made the decision to hire Schmidt. Davis, who announced the change, now will handle long-range planning.Schmidt is known in California political circles as the tough and famously disciplined strategist behind Schwarzenegger's successful 2006 re-election bid. He has shown particular relish for "rapid response" politics, which is becoming a signature of this year's campaign.McCain shook up his campaign a year ago when competitors like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney were outgunning and outspending him in the primaries. McCain laid off dozens of staff members in cost-cutting moves and was reduced to a bare-bones organization, but Schmidt remained as an unpaid adviser to the senator and has remained close to him ever since. Adam Mendelsohn, Schwarzenegger's former communications director and a partner with Schmidt in the Sacramento, Calif.-based consulting firm Mercury LLC, said the move is a good one for McCain. "Steve is a good friend and huge admirer of John McCain," Mendelsohn, who also does work for the McCain campaign, said. "I know it's tough for him to be away from family, and he never intended to be this significantly involved in the campaign. But he is fiercely loyal to his friends and has a tremendous sense of duty." The changes follow increasingly loud grumbling from GOP insiders unhappy with McCain's organization and fundraising and alarmed at a growing number of polls in battleground states that show Democratic rival Barack Obama opening leads. Republicans also are concerned about polls indicating that the GOP base is markedly less enthusiastic for McCain than Democrats are for Obama. Some political observers cited McCain's recent trip to California, where he was criticized for his call to lift the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, as an example of the setbacks in a campaign in which planning, execution and message have been lackluster at best. "He has been the nominee now for four months, and the question is: In that time, has he really laid out a predominant theme for the fall election and taken the fight to Barack Obama?" asked Bill Whalen, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. "For the moment, the answer on both fronts is no." Whalen, a former adviser to Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, said Schmidt will need to address McCain's most glaring challenge: the absence of a dominant message and "a core rationale" for his run for president. "McCain needs three or four very specific ideas that connect with the American people that draw a distinction with Barack Obama," said Whalen. "John McCain has a wonderful biography -- but he is not a movement politician," he said. "It means people aren't voting on a political philosophy, they're voting on the man." To solidify his base and expand his appeal to independents and moderate Democrats, Whalen said McCain simply will have to get tougher on Obama."Obama is talking about change and working across party lines," he said, but McCain must go on the attack to raise questions about the Democrat's positions and his leadership. "If I'm McCain, I'm tying him to the Democratic leadership in Congress and making him into a rubber stamp," he said.Schmidt's political resume is deep and wide. He was a member of the exclusive "breakfast club" of top-level advisers led by White House political guru Karl Rove and ran Bush's 2004 re-election campaign "war room."In his work as a White House insider, Schmidt also successfully oversaw the nominations of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito and was an adviser to and spokesman for Vice President Dick Cheney. He was summoned to bring his razor-sharp quotes and political skills back to the bluest of the blue states for Schwarzenegger's 2006 re-election challenge -- a tough assignment that came on the heels of a disastrous 2005 special election that saw the GOP governor's polls go into the tank.E-mail Carla Marinucci at cmarinucci(at)sfchronicle.com. (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)