The former House Speaker is a distant third in delegates. Gingrich cuts staff, aims for Tampa

Newt Gingrich is cutting back his campaign schedule, will lay off about a third of his cash-strapped campaign’s full-time staff, and has replaced his manager as part of what aides are calling a “big-choice convention” strategy, communications director Joe DeSantis told POLITICO.

Michael Krull, a former advance man and a college friend of Callista Gingrich’s who took over the campaign after a staff exodus in June, was replaced last weekend by Vince Haley, who has worked for Gingrich for nine years and currently is deputy campaign manager and policy director.


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“We’re focusing exclusively on what it’ll take to win what we’re going to be calling a big-choice convention in August,” DeSantis said in a phone interview Tuesday night.

Gingrich officials declined to specify who else besides Krull would be leaving. “Not getting into it right now besides Krull,” DeSantis said.

But another campaign official said the layoffs would largely affect junior and advance staff, the latter of which was contracted out to Gordon James Public Relations. Gingrich consultant Kellyanne Conway and political director Martin Baker will both retain their roles, according to officials. The advance staff also received word on Tuesday afternoon to submit their final expense reports.

There is no real reason to believe that these drastic measures to turnaround a flailing campaign can save the former House speaker’s candidacy for a third time.

Following a string of embarrassing primary losses, it was only a matter of time before Gingrich had to make some kind of decision about the way forward. But the betting was on an actual withdrawal from the race rather than slapping a band-aid on the problem.

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After twice resurrecting his campaign from dire situations, Gingrich has effectively skipped big primary states since his loss to Mitt Romney in the Florida and Nevada primaries. He focused on the South but won only two states in the entire GOP primary contest: South Carolina and his former home state of Georgia.

The new Gingrich world order is largely a strategy of necessity: Gingrich places a distant third in delegates, behind Romney and Rick Santorum. His campaign-finance report for February, released last week, showed more debt ($1.55 million) than cash-on-hand ($1.54 million). That situation is unlikely to improve given Gingrich has captured no momentum in the polls.

DeSantis said the former speaker will continue to visit states with primaries, but will have a less intense campaign schedule. DeSantis promised that the campaign will be “more positive and ideas-focused,” eschewing attacks on Republican rivals. The aide said the campaign will be more digital, focusing on low-cost communications tools, including informational videos, social media and the Web.

“We think that a big part of how we succeed is getting back to core Gingrich, which is a focus on big ideas and positive solutions — having someone who is intimately aware of Newt’s policy positions and the way things are framed and has been working with Newt for so long on the policy front. We think that having [Haley] as the campaign manager is very important.”

DeSantis said Krull “has agreed to resign.” DeSantis and press secretary R.C. Hammond will remain. John Fluharty, the campaign’s director of ballot access and delegate operations, will also stay on.

About a dozen staff members “will be transitioning out by the end of the month,” including some at the campaign office in Arlington and some working out in the states, DeSantis said.

The remaining staff will be waging a campaign aimed at what DeSantis termed a “big-choice convention” in Tampa this summer. Both Gingrich — and Rick Santorum — argue that Romney cannot reach the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination, and even if they can’t either, they may be able to prevent him from doing so.

“This big choice convention phase will be focused on two goals. 1. Affecting the national dialogue to show that Gingrich is the most capable of defeating Obama, by leading on issues that put the president on defense – like Newt’s $2.50 Gas Plan; and 2. A parallel communications strategy directly to the delegates,” DeSantis wrote in an email.

DeSantis argued that one million more people had voted against Romney than had supported him.

“We believe that if Governor Romney is unable to secure 1,144 by the last primaries, he will be unable to do so at the convention where the vast majority of the delegates are conservative,” DeSantis said. “That creates [an] environment at the convention where Gingrich can emerge as the one candidate who can unite social, economic and national security conservatives (a fact which is borne out by polling).”

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Gingrich kicked off his presidential bid with high hopes in May 2011. But problems arose almost immediately in the candidate’s inner circle as his entire senior staff quit just a month later. But the ex-speaker regrouped and came back, peaking in the polls right before the Iowa caucuses in December.

Much of the Republican’s strategy centered around his debate performances in which he took straight aim at the media, and it worked. But Romney’s financial advantage — carried out by his super PAC — allowed him to pummel Gingrich with ads in Iowa that highlighted the ex-speaker’s “excessive baggage.” They worked — Rick Santorum ended up winning Iowa, starting a pattern in which the former Pennsylvania senator would eventually trump Gingrich as the choice of conservative voters who don’t like Romney.

Gingrich returned briefly in South Carolina but was pulled under again by Romney’s huge financial advantage in Florida. He never recovered, losing the Nevada caucuses and any momentum his campaign had.

Following Nevada, his campaign virtually disappeared, though it did hold a meeting attended by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson — whose family has bankrolled Gingrich’s super PAC — to reset priorities. It was decided the campaign would stay positive and focus on the South.

But that strategy didn’t pay off. While Gingrich virtually ignored Michigan and Ohio — hard-fought states where Romney and Santorum squared off — he focused on Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee. But aside from Georgia, it was Santorum who took those states, as well as Alabama and Mississippi, when those primaries were held.

The final indignity came when after spending an entire week in Louisiana, Gingrich couldn’t even score a single delegate on primary night.

Still, he pledged to go on, and has gone to Delaware and Maryland this week. Callista Gingrich is set to campaign in her home state of Wisconsin on Wednesday and Thursday.

At the campaign’s Virginia headquarters, Haley, 45, will now be in charge. Haley started working for Gingrich in 2003, at Gingrich’s Center for Health Transformation. He later served as Gingrich’s policy director at the American Enterprise Institute and was vice president of policy at American Solutions, Gingrich’s former think tank. He graduated from William and Mary in 1988, with a bachelor’s in political science, and law and master’s degrees from the University of Virginia.

Haley also has worked at a New York law firm and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Jonathan Martin contributed to this report.