Politics

Sarah Palin again left us scratching our PR noggins this week. Fan or not, she's crushing it in terms "Going Rogue". So why did her people outright kill her sizable AKGovSarahPalin Twitter account and open SarahPalinUSA to promote the book? Are they people who run the 7-figure Facebook Fan page? The new feed has been languishing all week at between 24,000 to 25,000 followers. You can maintain a following with a simple Tweet announcement after simply changing one's screenname.

We thought it had something to do with public offices or PACs needing to migrate to a personal brand for legal reasons. We checked in with Nicco Mele, founder of poli-digital consultancy EchoDitto in Washington who is nearly as confused:

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One day after news broke that Communications Director Anita Dunn would be leaving the White House, the administration has granted an interview to Fox News' Major Garrett, Matt Drudge reports.

Dunn led administration attacks against Fox News in recent weeks. No doubt many will be asking if the two moves are connected. More to come...

UPDATE: Sources tell TVNewser the interview isn't confirmed as of yet. The administration had told Fox News not to expect an interview until 2010.

Sarah Palin's book tour for "Going Rogue" begins next Monday with an interview on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." From there, Palin will stay away form major cities and instead focus on stops in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama and Florida.

"I've decided to stop in cities that are not usually included in a typical book tour," Palin said this week on her Facebook page. Tina Andreadis, Director of Publicity at Harper Collins is handling all press. She has not responded to requests for comment as of the time of this post.

The role in the Obama administration with the highest level of turnover is that of Communications Director. As news broke today that interim Communications Director Anita Dunn would be stepping down, the question remains: why?

Several scenarios have been tossed around: Did she have to clear room for her husband to join the administration and remove any potential concerns about conflict of interest? Did her attacks on Fox News have an effect? Or, was the move simply what was expected, as Dunn was always "interim" Communications Director?

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Breaking: White House communications director Anita Dunn will step down from her post at the end of the month and Dan Pfeiffer, her deputy, will take over, reports the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza.

Dunn, who had taken the job on an interim basis earlier this year, will remain with the White House as a consultant. She is most known for recently leading the White House attacks against Fox News. On October 11th, Dunn appeared on CNN's "Reliable Sources" and stated, "The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party." More to come.

UPDATE: ABC News reports, "There have been discussions at the White House about Dunn's husband, Bob Bauer, replacing White House counsel Greg Craig. Today's move presumably makes that switch more likely."

[image: Dunn speaking with White House senior advisor David Axelrod.]

Communications teams are still spinning results from last night's elections, in which Republicans won governor's races in New Jersey and Virgina. Republican Michael Bloomberg was re-elected as New York's mayor, in a race that was much closer than expected. In a highly publicized special House election in upsate New York, Bill Owens defeated Doug Hoffman, who had drawn support from Sarah Palin and other conservative leaders.

Some media reports say the losses in New Jersey and Virgina are a "setback" for President Barack Obama, especially in New Jersey where Obama campaigned up until the last minute with incumbent Jon Corzine. "Neither race should be viewed as strictly a referendum on Obama. But if there is a danger in overinterpreting off-year elections, it is also a mistake to underinterpret," wrote Politico's John F. Harris & Jonathan Martin.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs defended the administration this morning, saying that the losses in VA and NJ, "didn't involve the President," and that results showed it was "pretty clear people went to the polls and voted for local issues." The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz thinks we're all overreacting. "...let's face it, there's a huge hype machine out that's been pumping up the national significance of these off-year results," he wrote today.

[Image: New Jersey Governor-elect Chris Christie]

Michael Bloomberg won a third term as New York City mayor tonight, defeating Democratic challenger Bill Thompson in a race that was much closer than his last campaign against Fernando Ferrer. This despite Bloomberg being predicted to spend almost $100 million on his campaign, which is already, "the most expensive self-financed campaign in United States history," according to NY1.

The New York Times reports that when first planning Bloomberg's re-election, his top guru Kevin Sheekey, "urged him to quickly send a warning to potential challengers. He suggested recruiting a high-profile attack dog for the campaign and disclosing it to the press. The choice was obvious: Howard Wolfson, the combative former communications director for Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential run."

Indeed Wolfson had a busy day in the press, forcing updates to Daily News stories at 7pm and appearing on NY1, in addition to his multitude of other duties running PR for the mayor's campaign. Wolfson made waves last July when he joined Fox News as a contributor. He also had somewhat of a fallout with Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn in the wake of the aforementioned Clinton presidential campaign. Can Wolfson count Bloomberg squeaking buy as a win? No doubt he'll try.

How big of an effect does your organization's digital work have when it comes to shaping public policy? The answer is maybe more than you would think. Edelman today released its Capital Staffer Index, a five-country survey of almost 400 senior staff in the U.S. Congress and European Parliaments. The results:

96% use online resources for public policy research

54% reported learning of policy issues for the first time online

19% actually changed policy positions based on information and opinions they found online

On the other hand, 60% of staffers reported that they use Facebook more for personal usage than professional reasons. Complete survey results are available at the agency's website.

Election day is tomorrow, and the press teams of several of the high profile races are working overtime to make sure not a minute of time is wasted. Particularly, gubernatorial campaigns in New Jersey and Virgina have attracted attention. In New Jersey, incumbent Jon Corzine (D) is up against Chris Christie (R). In Virgina Robert F. McDonnell (R) is up against R. Creigh Deeds (D).

Corzine press secretary Elisabeth Smith's last Twitter update states, "Lots o polling. All gonna come down to turnout tomorrow." Christie spokeswoman Maria Comella posted this morning, "Last day of the bus tour. New polls out today show Chris with lead, but this is still a close race."

In the Virginia race, McDonnell press secretary Taylor Thornley's last tweet is from 10/27, where she highlighted favorable polling results for her candidate. Deeds Communications Director Jared Leopold's feed is heavy on re-tweets, the last of which is a picture of a campaign stop in Hampton Roads.

At a White House press briefing last week, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, when asked about the governor's races, said, "I don't think they portend a lot." However, President Obama spent yesterday at two major Corzine rallies in Newark and Camden, New Jersey. New Jersey is the closer race as the Quinnipiac poll this morning shows it is in a "statistical tie."

First it was Fox News. Now the White House is getting attention for going after a much smaller, albeit influential media outlet, car blog Edmunds.com. In a White House blog post yesterday, titled, "Busy Covering Car Sales on Mars, Edmunds.com Gets It Wrong (Again) on Cash for Clunkers," Macon Philips said Edmunds.com released "faulty analysis suggesting that the Cash for Clunkers program had no meaningful impact on our economy or on overall auto sales."

The blog shot back, stating, "instead of shooting the messenger, government officials should take heart from the core message of [our] analysis: The fundamentals of the auto marketplace are improving faster than the current sales numbers suggest."

Our question is: why are people surprised they are using the blog to communicate in this manner, when they claimed they would do so from the beginning? In the first post on the blog, Phillips wrote, "Millions of Americans have powered President Obama's journey to the White House, many taking advantage of the internet to play a role in shaping our country's future. WhiteHouse.gov is just the beginning of the new administration's efforts to expand and deepen this online engagement." We've reached out to the White House media affairs team but have not heard back as of the time of this post.