Presidential campaigns tap the Volunteer State for advisers.
Presidential teams tap Tenn.
WASHINGTON — Chip Saltsman’s crazy week on the campaign trail with Mike Huckabee started with fundraising events in Dallas and ended back home in Nashville just in time for church on Sunday.
The next day, he was back on the road. Two days in Milwaukee, two days in California and a quick swing through Iowa before coming back to Tennessee for a few days with the family. The next week was more of the same — more travel, more organizing, more strategy sessions and more shadowing Huckabee as the former Arkansas governor tries to convince voters that he should be America’s next president.
“I guess I’m a glutton for punishment,” joked Saltsman, who spends three weeks out of every month on the road with Huckabee as the campaign’s senior adviser.
Saltsman, who graduated from Christian Brothers University in Memphis before jumping into politics, is part of a small cadre of Tennesseans who are deeply immersed in presidential campaigns, as staff members, consultants or advisers to the Republicans and Democrats battling for the White House. They are helping the candidates fine-tune their messages, produce campaign commercials, raise money, deal with the press, qualify for the state ballots and build the army of volunteers needed to run a national race.
“This is much more than a job for me,” Saltsman said. “It’s a passion. This is somebody I truly believe in.”
Lenda Sherrell believes strongly in Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
“She was out there doing things and really fighting battles, particularly for women and children and families, when it was really hard to do,” said Sherrell, who lives in Monteagle,
just northeast of Chattanooga, and leads Clinton’s grass-roots engagement effort in Tennessee. “She has always sort of been a hero and a role model for me.”
The Clinton campaign reached out to Sherrell in April, just as she was coming off her own unsuccessful race against a Republican incumbent, U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais of South Pittsburg. Sherrell had served as the volunteer regional field organizer for Organizing for Action, a group working to support President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda. The Clinton team wanted her to help ramp up its campaign effort in Tennessee.
Sherrell works with point people across the state to set up grass-roots events, such as debate watch parties, phone banks and voter registration drives. When Clinton campaigned recently in Nashville and Memphis, Sherrell worked the phones to make sure Clinton’s supporters knew about the events.
“I think she is the best qualified person for the job, male or female,” Sherrell said.
Tom Ingram, a political consultant from Knoxville whose extensive resume includes work on campaigns for Gov. Bill Haslam and U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, is part of the team working to get Republican Jeb Bush elected president. The former Florida governor’s campaign hired Ingram in September as an adviser.
Ingram said his primary role is to help Bush select delegates in Tennessee and other states. But, “I will do anything I can to help him be successful,” he said, arguing that Bush is the bestqualified candidate for the presidency.
Former U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp of Chattanooga is serving as co-chairman of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign in Tennessee. Wamp considers the Florida senator “a transformative candidate” — one who can reach the country’s changing demographics and help the GOP appeal to nonwhite voters and young “millennials.”
“I just totally believe Marco Rubio has the best chance of winning in November 2016 of any of the Republican candidates,” Wamp said.
Wamp said he and Rubio have a lot of the same friends, and Rubio asked him in June to head up his campaign in Tennessee. In that role, Wamp is responsible for helping recruit delegates and organizing regional and county leaders on Rubio’s behalf. When Rubio came to Tennessee for a campaign rally in September, Wamp held a fundraiser for him in his Chattanooga home.
Brad Martin of Memphis is heading Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s efforts in Tennessee. Martin, the retired chairman and CEO of Saks Inc. who served as interim president of the University of Memphis in 2013, has a long political resume as a past chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party and former Tennessee state representative.
“Governor Kasich is the complete package,” Martin said after his selection as state chairman was announced by the campaign Tuesday. “He understands how to work with the private sector, not against it, to promote job creation and create opportunities for millions of people. He has the foreign policy chops and the executive experience to make our country safer. I look forward to sharing his ideas with voters here in my home state.”
Saltsman’s gig with Huckabee isn’t his first. A longtime political operative and former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party, Saltsman was Huckabee’s campaign manager when the candidate sought the GOP presidential nomination in 2008. The two met after Huckabee became Arkansas governor in 1996 and have become so close that Saltsman is the godfather to Huckabee’s oldest granddaughter.
Huckabee doesn’t have a huge pile of campaign cash like the leading Republican candidates, but Saltsman is encouraged by the enthusiastic crowds he sees at Huckabee’s campaign events.
“Our job,” Saltsman said, “is to make sure he has the energy and the resources to take advantage of an opportunity when it comes.”