The Politico explains the inside game of South Carolina Republican politics, and why it is a crucial piece of the 2008 presidential race:
...Richard Quinn and Warren Tompkins. It is impossible to understand South Carolina Republican politics without knowing about these rival campaign consultants, who seem to loom over the GOP here as much as any elected officials. Both are veterans of the South Carolina political wars, having worked in the Republican vineyards for decades. Their clients include many of the top politicians in the state, most notably both U.S. senators, other statewide officeholders and a raft of legislators.
In conversations with Republican politicians and operatives here in South Carolina, it is almost imperative to preface a conversation by asking whether they are a "Quinn person" or a "Tompkins person." In a state that knows something about civil war, this modern political battle pits Republican brother versus brother.
All this would be little more than inside baseball, of scant interest to anybody outside a five-mile radius of the gracious, copper-domed capitol here, were it not for one important fact that South Carolina Republicans delight in reminding visitors: Forget about snowy Iowa and frosty New Hampshire -- no GOP presidential contender has won his party's nomination without winning the South Carolina primary. So it was in 2000 when then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush bounced back from a thumping in New Hampshire at the hands of John McCain with a hard-fought victory in South Carolina over the Arizonan. The lead consultants in that bare-knuckle contest: Richard Quinn with McCain and Warren Tompkins for Bush.
Now, seven years later, there seems to be a reprisal of that now-infamous primary in the offing. McCain is back in the running and retains the services of Quinn and his team. Tompkins and his people are with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. One difference, however, is that this time around, some of the people who lined up with Tompkins and Bush in 2000 are backing the man they worked against that year rather than Romney. McCain has garnered endorsements from numerous elected officials, donors and activists who were in Bush's corner last time.
"We are not focused on the endorsement game," says Terry Sullivan, Romney's South Carolina director and Tompkins' business partner, dismissing McCain's strategy of rolling out a steady stream of Bush converts.
Chatting inside the bare-bones, one-story building that they moved into last week and that will serve as their state headquarters, Sullivan says that Sen. Lindsey Graham and state Attorney General Henry McMaster, McCain's top two backers in the state and Quinn clients, "are working very hard and most aggressively to persuade folks" to get on a train they claim is leaving the station.
"They've done a good job of getting people on board, but the question is: Can the campaign keep them on board?" Sullivan says. "If they run out of track, those people are going to start hopping off board." The support for McCain, in other words, is soft and could get softer if his standing in the polls doesn't improve. "He's got 100 percent name identification, and anywhere from 29 percent to 38 percent of Republican primary voters are supporting him," Sullivan notes, citing recent polling data.
In that recent polling data, Romney remains in the single digits - former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is thought to be in second place in S.C., despite barely having a campaign presence in the Palmetto State.
As The Politico explains:
The former New York mayor still basks in the glory of his 9/11 heroics and the attendant warm feelings from GOP primary voters that go with them. In this context, South Carolina is no different than any other state. Giuliani shows up in a solid second place in most polling here and is getting a look from Republican activists. But his organization is far behind those of Romney and McCain. Not only does he not have a county-by-county structure in place, he doesn't even have a state organization yet. Rumors abounded here that he may be close to signing up Rod Shealy, the biggest non-Tompkins, non-Quinn consultant in the South Carolina GOP, but so far he has nobody handling his day-to-day campaign in the state.
Can Giuliani translate fame into a ground game? Can McCain's endorsements beat Giuliani's celebrity? Can Romney win over enough conservatives to take the state? Will South Carolinians be sick unto death of the presidential race before they ever get to cast a vote. I wouldn't bet on any of the first three, but the fourth is a virtual certainty.
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