by Jill Zuckman
Hillary Clinton’s top strategist, Mark Penn, was forced to resign today, following a series of disappointments at the ballot box and most recently, an embarrassing conflict of interest.
Penn (pictured at right), who runs public relations giant Burson Marsteller and the polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland, met with the leaders of Colombia last week to discuss forging a free trade agreement between the South American nation and the United States. The Colombian government had hired Burson Marsteller to advocate for the trade deal in Congress.
But Clinton opposes the agreement and has campaigned vigorously in Ohio and now Pennsylvania, appealing to labor and touting her refusal to go along with trade deals that could be harmful to workers.
“It was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said one Clinton adviser.
Penn apologized for his “error in judgment” and was promptly fired by the Colombian government.
Maggie Williams, Clinton’s campaign manager, issued a terse statement late Sunday afternoon saying that Penn had asked to give up his role as chief strategist. She said Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, who recently joined the campaign, and Communications director Howard Wolfson will coordinate the campaign’s message.
Penn, who worked as President Clinton’s pollster and advised Hillary Clinton in both of her Senate races, had become an increasingly isolated figure within the campaign. Other advisers refused to talk to him and tales of shouting matches quickly became public.
In recent weeks, other campaign aides were openly dismissive of Penn’s political analysis. “Don’t listen to everything Mark Penn tells you,” one senior adviser warned.
With the disastrous, third-place result in Iowa, Clinton prepared to fire Penn and her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, the morning after the New Hampshire primary. But Clinton surprised even herself and won the first-in-the-nation primary, scrapping plans to reorganize her campaign.
Penn was the person who argued at the start of her campaign that Clinton’s appeal to women voters would carry her to victory because women make up a majority of the electorate. But he clashed with other advisers about whether Clinton should try to project strength or warmth on the campaign trail, and the staff complained that he did not share polling data with them.
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