Mark Penn Leaves Clinton Campaign; UPDATE: Sort Of
Sen. Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist Mark Penn left the campaign after it was reported he was advising Columbia on how to get a free trade deal passed through Congress. That conflicted with Clinton’s criticism of free trade agreements. Here’s the statement from the campaign:
Statement from Maggie Williams
After the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as Chief Strategist of the Clinton Campaign; Mark, and Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, Inc. will continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign.
Geoff Garin and Howard Wolfson will coordinate the campaign’s strategic message team going forward.
The Chicago Sun-Times‘ Lynn Sweet reports:
Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams announced Sunday that Mark Penn was cut from his role as chief strategist of the campaign, with the decision to move out one of Clinton’s most controversial advisors coming after he met with Columbia’s ambassador to the U.S. talk about a bi-lateral trade agreement.
Clinton has been against the Columbia trade deal; the Wall Street Journal broke the story of the Penn meeting, which he did wearing his hat as chief executive of Burson-Marstellar Worldwide. Penn has a long history advising Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
It turned out that Penn’s firm had a $300,000, one-year contract with the Colombian Embassy since March, 2007. Columbia fired Penn after the WSJ story and on Sunday, Williams moved to limit Penn’s roll.
This has turned into a very bad week for Hillary. She got caught lying about dodging snipers in the Balkans, lying about criticizing the Iraq War before Sen. Obama, and now learning her chief strategist has a huge conflict of interest.
[via Media Lizzy]
UPDATE: The Nation’s Ari Melber carefully looked at the wording of Maggie Williams’ statement. It is the Clinton campaign where every word counts. Penn’s gone as chief strategist but he and his firm will stay on to “provide polling and advice to the campaign.” Penn will still be sending and receiving e-mails and phone calls. His BlackBerry will continue to hum.
[picture via creepysleepy]
Well, he’s sort of gone. Not as gone as Gerri Ferraro, but moderately gone.