Los cocineros electorales de Perry

Todo hace indicar que Dave Carney y Rob Johnson se repartirán los papeles de estratega jefe y campaign manager en la campaña presidencial de Rick Perry.

El texano Johnson dirigió su campaña de reelección del año pasado, que recaudó 40 millones de dólares y superó el desafío de Kay Bailey Hutchison en las primarias. Y Carney, natural de New Hampshire, se instaló en Texas hace más de una década para manejar todas sus campañas anteriores (la de 1998 a Vicegobernador, y las de 2002 y 2006 a Gobernador) salvo las de 1990 y 1994 a Comisionado de Agricultura que las dirigió Karl Rove.

Rescato un perfil de Dave Carney publicado en la revista Time en 1995, cuando actuaba como organizador de la campaña de Bob Dole en New Hampshire:

(...) At 36, Carney is already a legend among Republican operatives. He cut his teeth running the field operations for John Sununu's losing 1980 race for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire. That was when Carney lived in an unplugged walk-in refrigerator in a bagel deli and showered at a YMCA across the street. Carney followed Sununu into Bush's '88 campaign and then served as the White House political director.

The pinball machine in his office kept people coming by -- "and helped keep me in the loop," Carney concedes. "He's temperamental and a bit nuts," says Andy Card, who was Bush's Transportation Secretary, "but he defines action. He gets things done." After Bush's '92 loss to Clinton, which Carney says he has "almost completely repressed," he was instrumental in the G.O.P.'s brilliant 1994 senatorial campaign effort, in which the party picked up eight seats. Carney was recruited by just about every '96 Republican presidential wannabe and chose Dole, who says that "having Dave helps me sleep at night."

Carney is an "Etch-A-Sketch" politician. He begins every campaign from scratch and views each as a personal test to do the job better than it was done before. Consider just some of the New Hampshire moves Carney is helping oversee, work Dole's rivals can only envy.

New Hampshire has 259 towns and wards; Dole has two volunteer co-chairmen in almost all of them already. "Dole had only 20 regional chairmen statewide in '88," says Carney. "We'll have 500 people. Those are vested folks. They see their own reputations on the line, so they work hard." To goad their efforts, each chairman has been given a vote goal. Over the next seven months, their performance will be measured periodically and made known to their colleagues. "Politics is the state sport," Carney explains, "so competition is a powerful incentive."

Carney hopes to know the first choices of all 200,000 potential Republican voters in the state. "That way," he says, "we can strike for them if their first choice falters, like we did for Bush in '88 when Al Haig tanked." Dole already has 25,000 New Hampshire Republicans committed to him publicly, which is about the same number that Bush had at the end of his winning 1988 primary. To cement the allegiance of those supporters and encourage them to enlist others, each will soon get an audiocassette from Dole and the first issue of a newsletter, as well as constant calls from their town leaders. An elaborate fax and E-mail operation helps "everyone feel some ownership in the candidacy," says Carney. Affinity groups are being formed too. The leaders of some 20 such groups -- like Teachers for Dole -- will also have vote goals to reach. "Bind 'em in early," says Carney of the volunteers, "and you have 'em when things go wrong, which they always do."

(...) Of the hundreds of calls placed so far, perhaps none have been so important as those that have won the endorsement of every one of New Hampshire's nine Republican county sheriffs, a first ever sweep. "They're kind of a secret weapon," explains Carney. "The sheriffs up here know everybody and are perceived as less political than the other elected pols, so their support carries a lot of weight, and not just with the pro-gun crowd." The special attention is "damn impressive," says sheriff Walter Morse of Hillsborough County. "I got calls from Dole and met with him three times. The others called only once, and they're a hell of a lot less busy than he is. You want to win, so you want to be with the most serious guys. That's clearly Dole and his people." (...)