Clinton's secret weapon in Iowa

[Herman Munster]

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=700397

Des Moines, Iowa - A legend in the world of political organizing, 49-year-old Teresa Vilmain has a simple job Jan. 3: Get Hillary Clinton through Iowa intact.

"If you're in a mess somewhere, and you need a good organization put together anywhere in this country, Teresa Vilmain is one of the first people you turn to," said Joe Trippi, strategist for Clinton rival John Edwards. "If it happens to be Iowa, you really want Teresa Vilmain."

As head of Clinton's Iowa campaign, Vilmain shuns publicity. But she's renowned among Democratic party professionals, a networking whirlwind with a peerless Rolodex and ubiquitous Forrest Gump-like campaign history.

An Iowa native who settled in Wisconsin more than a decade ago, Vilmain was tapped last June to shore up the Clinton effort in a place where the New York senator had little history and faced her biggest political obstacles.

The hiring ended speculation that the former first lady might overlook Iowa. And while the Clinton campaign has been second-guessed about many things here, its organizational mettle is no longer one of them.

The Iowa caucus process is so personal, laborious and peculiar that getting the mechanics right can be the difference between glory and oblivion (ask Howard Dean).

"There is nothing (in politics) more organizationally intense than this," said Vilmain, who has worked all over the country but has a special expertise in two battleground states: Iowa and Wisconsin.

Vilmain has been described more than once as Clinton's secret weapon here.

"Teresa Vilmain could organize Jell-O," is how veteran Democrat and commentator Susan Estrich put it recently.

[Bitwit1234]

1. HuffPuff had an article

saying a new Poll gives Hillary a 15 point lead over Edwards at 20 and Obma at 19....I guess it won't take long for the Obama Idolers to go batcrap crazy and pull an Oprah poll out of their butt.

[Adelante]

2. Fascinating read, thanks

I loved this bit:

She showed her backbone 20 years ago in the Dukakis campaign, when the Boston headquarters took so long to pay its bills that Iowa field offices were being shut down, the local party stopped providing voter lists and Vilmain began paying staffers out of her own pocket. Angry and fearful that the campaign's delinquency would hit the papers, she ordered the Iowa staff to stop talking to headquarters.

Boston got the message and paid its bills. After the caucuses, when the 29-year-old Vilmain was scolded over her mini-rebellion and told that her role would be diminished, she quit and never returned to the campaign.

Quite something to just stop feeding HQ that way.