Dean, Trippi and Paid Media

[economic justice]

I am baffled by all the buyer's remorse regarding the contract Dean signed with Trippi, McMahon & Squier. The decision to allow the CM to also act as media buyer was wrong - just about any way you try to square it. It creates a built-in conflict of interest. What happened? Trippi made a lot of money. But, it was Howard Dean who approved of such a ridiculous plan and the rest, as they say, is history. However, before anyone gets too upset about "Trippigate," consider this: There is an argument to be made that Trippi was responsible, to a large degree, to get Dean in the position of having that money to spend on paid media in the first place. Thoughts?

[Tweed]

1. Up for debate

I remember over the summer when the Dean campaign did the $5 turkey sandwhich thing. I thought it was genius and I went and checked out his website right away. I remember thinking that his campaign manager must be a genius whoever it was. Was it really Trippi's idea though? I don't know a whole lot about how Dean's campaign operated, but isn't it possible that Trippi just had a lot of other great minds around him?

[Tinoire]

2. 2nd / 3rd place

Dean should have been in 1st with all that money and all the PASSION and energy behind him. That's what Trippi promised him. Instead Dean got a lot of smoke and mirrors and 60,000 people on the ground to undo damage that should have never been done in the first place.

I'll tell you one other thing. The night of that disastrous scream- a good campaign manager would have made damn sure Dean was calm and poised before going out on stage. He also would not have alienated every single Kucinich supporter out there by okaying literature that portrayed Dean as 'the' antiwar candidate and the like.

And that's just the tip of the ice-berg because no one know how responsable Trippi may have been for some of the nasty accusations that were made about Dean campaign tactics.

Trippi did fail Dean.

Trippi's the type of pit-bull we need against Rove but man, he failed Dean & every single Dean supporter out there. We won't even talk about the greed. That part is just despicable.

Just grateful for Dean supporters that it's not too late, that this happened early enough to be recoverable. In a few days this will be old news/ The money can be replaced and Trippi should be shamed into returning part of it (if that part is true). Just keep on trucking...

Ain't nothing but a bump in the road! Dean's campaign was never an establishment campaign relying on money anyway.

[windansea]

3. good points

when they first made the deal they probably had no idea they were going to pull in 40 mil...

[La_Serpiente]

4. that's true

Dean has never run for any federal office and had few connections with the big party fundraisers and organizers. Trippi was the only person he knew that could help him at least run a campaign that would be successful.

I guess what I am trying to say is that his options were limited. Sure, Trippi is a genius, but there are people just as talented as Trippi that could have joined onto the Dean campaign if Dean just had the connections to other experienced political consultants.

Personally, I think Trippi was banking on both Iowa and New Hampshire. That was his strategy from the beggining. Pour all the resouces into those two states, and you have the automatic upperhand in the race. Did he have a post-early primary strategy?

[aquart]

5. Some things you only learn the hard way.

[NV1962]

6. OK, this is what I can make of it, so far

In that other thread (now locked) I explained that the 15% agency commission / rebate is standard in media buying practice. Also standard is that the 15% isn't taken in money, but usually used to buy extra space (airtime) and that there's an additional small percentage (5% or so) that in large volumes are given on top of the 15%: that's called the kickback fee. Media buying agencies are supposed to pass that on to the clients too; the agencies get paid either a pre-determined commission or a flat fee.

But that's the "standard."

In this case, I'm still struggling to accept that at some point, the Dean campaign entered into an agreement to pay Joe Trippi (who did a helluba job so far!) not a regular fee / salary, but by giving him those "agency rebates."

Here's why I have trouble accepting that.

Howard Dean entered the race to win. To win, he chose to forego the federal matching funds, as he (correctly) predicted that the Bush maffia would laugh the spending caps away with their budget. That means, that the fundraising target was estimated initially to go well above the federal matching fund "ceiling."

That's no small amount of money. Fifteen percent of that is still a 7-figure amount, whichever and however you calculate.

That's why I find this very hard to believe: neither the beforehand desired / expected amount of funds raised (and therefore, the 15% provided and still assuming that there's truth to this!) nor the whopping idea of giving the whole media rebate as "alternate salary" looks credible. That's why I think the argument "they had no idea the fundraising would be so succesful" won't wash: otherwise, the campaign team would have been either very unconvinced of their potential, or very bad at doing the math. Neither of these two possibilities satisfies me.

That's why I very much hope it isn't true - for the sake of Howard Dean, who I very much respect and to whom all Democratic candidates owe a great deal of voters waking up from their lethargic state.

If it is... I'd be stunned, really. But, I maintain hope that all this is a major misunderstanding, a bad case of a kernel of truth (say, Joe Trippi got only a fraction of the rebate or part of the kickback - which still is a respectable 6-figure number if you apply the federal matching fund ceiling as the "break-even" point) and the rabid press dawgs doing their evil voodoo as usual in this campaign.

If that 15% story were anywhere near the truth, it's not a case that will go away with Joe Trippi paying his share back. Because in that case, there's a deeper problem which needs to be fixed, stat.

Howard Dean has come way too far to get into this kind of s#it now.

Anyway, that's what I can make out of this frantic rumor mill... Let's see what tomorrow brings in clarity and facts.

[AP]

7. I agree with you. Two parts to this:

- The conflict of interest was perfectly obvious. What was Dean thinking when he signed this Deal? Sure, there are deals like this on Wall St all the time, but do they ever work?

- Notwithstanding the bad contract, once they got to Iowa with poll numbers heading down towards 18% they had not chocie BUT to spend money. They must have known then what is obvious now: without a win in Iowa, it wasn't likely that Dean would win any primaries, barring unforeseen circumstances.

[OneBlueSky]

8. well, so much for the argument that one of Dean's strengths . . .

is a bankroll to carry him through all of the primaries, and his fiscal conservatism . . . I just hear on CNBC that the Dean campaign has told it's staff that their paychecks will be delayed for two weeks . . . which means that $40 million is pretty well gone . . .

where I come from, people are paid commissions when they MAKE money for their employer, not when they SPEND it . . . that kind of arrangement just provides an incentive to, well, SPEND it . . . which, apparently, Trippi did . . . becoming a multi-millionaire in the process on the backs of thousands and thousands of Dean contributors . . . if what we hear is true, the candidate approved this arrangement, which brings into serious question both his fiscal conservatism and his judgement, imo . . .