Gingrich cutting back on staff, campaign
Newt Gingrich’s presidential team announced a significant scaling back of operations Tuesday that suggests the campaign may be approaching its final days.
The campaign is cutting one-third of its full-time staff and replacing its manager as part of an effort to sustain itself, campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond said.
Gingrich has already replaced his top aide, Michael Krull, with Vince Haley, who had been deputy campaign manager and a policy adviser. In addition to the other staffing cuts, Gingrich will not travel as frequently to the remaining primary-contest states and will instead focus on communicating with voters via the Internet, videos and social media.
The news was first reported by Politico.
The Republican former House speaker has won just two state contests and is a distant third in the delegate count.
His campaign has had a significant drop-off in fundraising and is running low on cash. Gingrich’s recently filed campaign finance report, covering the period through the end of February, showed that he had more debt than cash.
“The money’s very tight, obviously,” he said during an appearance Tuesday in Annapolis. “We have the money to keep going.”
A super PAC supporting Gingrich that had received $16.5 million from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his family has largely run out of cash, with no indication that the Adelsons have continued to fund it.
Gingrich has had some of his most lackluster performances in states that have held recent contests. In the Illinois primary last week, he finished in fourth place, with 8 percent of the vote.
Despite this, Gingrich has pledged to stay in the race until the Republican National Convention in August, provided that Mitt Romney doesn’t win before then. Romney is on pace to win the nod, securing a majority of the available delegates.
“If we get to June 26 and Governor Romney does not have a majority, I think you’ll then have one of the most interesting open conventions in American history,” Gingrich said Tuesday.
It’s the second major shake-up for Gingrich’s campaign, but the first wasn’t by design. There was a staff exodus in June when Gingrich was floundering in the polls.
Once the early states started voting, he surged to victory in South Carolina and later won in Georgia. He hasn’t been able to sustain much momentum from those two wins, though.