Bye Bye Huckabee

Mike Huckabee cuts salaries of senior staff

The campaign is redirecting its resources toward Iowa, his daughter tells POLITICO.

By DANIEL STRAUSS

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign, struggling with its low standing in the polls and underwhelming fundraising, slashed the salaries of senior staffers amid the departure of its top communications aide.

The salary reductions took place over the past few weeks, according to multiple Republican sources familiar with the Huckabee campaign's operations. The reductions were limited to senior staff, according to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the candidate's daughter and campaign manager.

The abrupt departure of Alice Stewart, Huckabee's communications director, was partly due to disagreements within the communications shop about the direction of the campaign and partly because of the salary cuts, several Republicans inside and outside the campaign said.

"The campaign is being run by the family and it's going nowhere. It's a dead campaign," said Republican strategist Ed Rollins, who ran Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign in 2012, was the campaign chairman for Huckabee's 2008 bid, and who also talked to the former Arkansas governor about running in 2012. "And my sense is Alice is at a place in her life where she doesn't want to work for the fees that she got eight years ago."

Publicly, Huckabee chalked up Stewart's departure to campaign fatigue, with the governor saying on CNN that she was simply "exhausted." But Stewart, a marathon runner, shot back in response to questions from POLITICO that she is "far from exhausted."

The Huckabee campaign also tried to negotiate an alternative role for Stewart where she would serve as a media consultant. But those discussions fell through, and Stewart in the end left the campaign.

Huckabee staffers and Stewart stress there's no bad blood.

"I love Alice. I have worked with her now for the better part of a decade," said Hogan Gidley, who has worked with Stewart for years and has assumed her duties.

"Sometimes things work out, sometimes things don't," Gidley added. "And that's just one of those deals where sometimes campaigns have to make decisions, sometimes employees have to make decisions and that's where we are today."

Stewart, a respected Republican operative, was the press secretary for former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum during the 2012 campaign, and prior to that, in the same cycle, was the communications director for Bachmann's ill-fated presidential campaign. In 2008, she served as communications director for Huckabee's first presidential bid, and she remained deeply loyal to the former governor during his years as a Fox News personality and a regular radio commentator.

"I love Governor Huckabee and his entire family," Stewart said in a text message on Wednesday. "You can search heaven and earth and you won't find a person who comes close to his high level of integrity. It's been a blessing to work for him."

Huckabee Sanders told POLITICO that the salary cuts would help facilitate the campaign's redirection of resources toward Iowa, where the former Arkansas governor is hoping to replicate his 2008 victory.

As of Thursday, the campaign has 13 full-time paid staffers in Iowa. It will add at least five in another week or so and tack on a few more in the new year. "Right now our goal is we're going to put a lot of our resources into Iowa, and that's what we're doing," Huckabee Sanders said.

If Stewart had stayed with the campaign, Huckabee Sanders said in response to a question from POLITICO, she would have kept her existing salary "for the foreseeable future."

"Obviously, if we go to Iowa and lose — well frankly we probably won't keep going," Huckabee Sanders said. "If we end up at 2 percent in Iowa then, no, because nobody's getting paid. But if we go and pull out a win in Iowa then I would assume probably it's increase salaries."

It's hard to ignore the difficulty Huckabee has had in generating the level of interest he enjoyed in 2008, when he not only won Iowa but also ended up with 240 delegates in the Republican primary. This time, he's lagged far behind most of the field in both fundraising — having raised only about $1.2 million in the most recently reported quarter, with roughly $760,000 cash on hand — and in polling, garnering just 2 percent support nationally and about the same in Iowa. Since October, he's failed to qualify for the primetime GOP debates.

Huckabee has also been eclipsed by other conservatives angling for the evangelical vote, especially Sen. Ted Cruz, who recently bagged the endorsement of influential Iowa conservative Bob Vander Plaats, who endorsed Huckabee in 2008 and served as his state chairman.

As Vander Plaats told Huckabee at the beginning of this campaign cycle, however, "2016 is not 2008, and it’s not 2012."