As the e-mail traffic and briefings from the White House died down, the DNC began sponsoring conference calls on everything from stem cells to the budget. “August is our time,” McAuliffe told his war room. Hanging around the Crawford Elementary School gymnasium, Bush reporters often had nothing better to do than to patch into the calls. “We knew we had a captive audience,” says DNC press secretary Jennifer Palmieri, a veteran of the Clinton press office who was hired last month. “We learned a few tricks.” One is rapid response. When they got the word that Bush was making his stem-cell announcement, for example, they quickly put together a conference call that afternoon with former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta and medical expert Dr. Harold Varmus. Palmieri knows that the White House beat is fancy general-assignment reporting. Correspondents jump from covering the budget one day to the Middle East the next. The day of the DNC’s first conference call, she says: “We knew you guys needed a crash course-Stem Cell 101.”
Of course, they are not just being helpful. Even science is political. “Terry wants the DNC to be the center of gravity for coordinating the response to Bush,” Palmieri says. McAuliffe, a close friend of Clinton’s, is a high-profile, aggressive operator. He threw a big bash for himself in D.C.’s Union Station even before his election to head the DNC was tallied. The White House acts as if it’s unperturbed. (Though they did have to reschedule a conference last week with budget director Mitch Daniels that had originally been set for the same time as the one the DNC set up with Clinton’s economic guru, Gene Sperling.)
“The Democratic party is still in the control of Clinton’s people,” says press secretary Ari Fleischer. “The mentality is one of constant campaign. The president doesn’t believe in that.” The president might not, but the Republican National Committee is certainly matching an ad for an ad, and an e-mail for an e-mail. With the White House and Congress back to work this week, it’s going to be harder for the DNC to break through. But they planned to host yet another conference call-this one giving their spin on immigration, timed to coincide with Mexican President Vicente Fox’s state visit. “They are very good,” says RNC press secretary Trent Duffy. “But they don’t have the White House.”
When the Democrats lost the White House, they lost the most powerful media machine in Washington. There is no one I get more e-mail from than Rachael Sunbarger, e-mail traffic director for the White House. When she’s not tethered to her computer in the lower press office, she’s got her secure White House laptop with her (even at a cousin’s wedding in Phoenix, Ariz.). On July 9, a fairly typical day, she says she sent about 65 e-mails. Many are perfunctory notices about nominations or logistics for the press corps.
But she’s also the conduit for vital information, like when Bush announces he’ll be having a press conference in 40 minutes. Thankfully, she follows up urgent e-mails with a page. “Rachael is the nerve center,” says Agence France-Presse’s Olivier Knox. Bush’s speeches, for example, go to about 1,000 people, including regional reporters and staffers administrationwide. Sometimes Sunbarger gets replies-spelling errors pointed out by obnoxious reporters or commentary. One recipient sent her so many screeds she finally threatened to delete him from her e-mail list. That would normally make for a lonely e-mail inbox, except that these days the DNC would be all too eager to fill the void.
