Tuesday, July 5, 2011

* * Vault * Green Room * Ed Morrissey Show Pawlenty’s new senior political advisor: Huckabee’s daughter

Gamechanger?

Here’s the news that Pawlenty campaign manager Nick Ayers promised via Twitter earlier today: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the daughter of the 2008 presidential candidate, is joining the Pawlenty campaign as a senior adviser.

She served as national political director for her father — who won the Iowa GOP caucuses — during the last presidential cycle. She also worked as the campaign manager for Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) in 2010.

She’s got a caucus-winning rolodex and a brand name that’ll get Pawlenty a second look from Christian conservatives who might have been tilting towards Bachmann. Will it get him her dad’s endorsement, too? That would be a real gamechanger, but maybe only if it happens sooner rather than later: T-Paw desperately needs a shot in the arm before the straw poll next month to halt the swell of Bachmania and convince big donors he’s capable of beating Romney. Is there any chance whatsoever that Huckabee would endorse before Ames? I’m guessing no, although…

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is joining Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s presidential campaign as senior political adviser. She begins her new role in the campaign’s Iowa headquarters today, taking the lead for the campaign on the Iowa Straw Poll effort with a focus on expanding the campaign’s grassroots operations across the first-in-the-nation caucus state.

Coming in a few weeks: *Ring* “Hi, dad. It’s Sarah. Listen, I need a favor…” And speaking of Iowa gamechangers, take five minutes to read RCP’s report on Palin supporters quietly organizing inside the state to help her hit the ground running if/when she jumps in. One local tea partier with state organizing experience thinks she’d be the frontrunner once she jumped in — but warns that she’d probably need at least 30 days to be well positioned for Ames, which is just … 39 days from now. If she decides not to run, where do those Palinista boots on the ground go?

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