The individual behind the successful campaign of New York City mayor-elect Bill DeBlasio has now moved south — as the new campaign chief for former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in his attempt to win back his old job as a Democrat in 2014.
Bill Hyers — chatted up by Crist less than 24 hours after the New York mayoral primary — has become the hottest thing in political consulting, according to Manuel Roig-Franzia in the Washington Post. His role, and part of his strength, is helping candidates bond their identities with a sense of place and time, as the way to connect with voters.
Although his candidates rise and fall on their locales — city, state or region — Hyers does not allow himself that luxury. He appears reluctant to disclose exactly where his roots are. When asked, he talks vaguely of small towns in Illinois and Florida, but nothing pinning him down specifically to a region, unlike James Carville’s “Ragin’ Cajun.”
Hyer’s home is the “perpetual American political campaign,” Roig-Franzia writes, and his “place” the campaign office of the next race.
Like the thoroughbred horses that he owns a share (a passion picked up during an upstate New York campaign) Hyers prefers candidates who pace themselves, not breaking fast and losing steam early. That was true in the case of Democrat Michael Nutter’s 2007 mayoral campaign in Philadelphia, where the candidate was pressured to keep pace with his better-polling opponents.
Hyers, who managed Nutter’s campaign, kept the candidate (and the campaign) calm, reminding everyone he has a strategy and to stick with it. Nutter went on to become mayor.
DeBlasio was also down in the polls six years later, and was also wondering if he should step up his pace, spending more money to increase name recognition. Hyers again recommended sticking with his organized strategy — DeBlasio too listened and won.
With Crist, Hyers hints he will portray the former governor as a strong administrator who moved to the center during his stint in Tallahassee. He will outline Crist as moderate, highlighting populist acts like when as governor he vetoed the bill requiring women to pay for ultrasounds before an abortion.
The key is to establish a distinction between Crist and incumbent GOP Gov. Rick Scott, whom Hyers will show as “extreme.”
There is another benefit for Hyers running a campaign out of Tampa, a chance to visit “Granny” Virginia Hyers, who turned his life around after a troubled childhood. Although they are not blood — only related “tangentially” by marriage — he took the Hyers name at age 19 after a stint in the Army, since it was Granny, now 86, who offered “unconditional love and support” at an important phase of his life.
After years of learning his trade, through successfully running Kirsten Gillibrand’s 2006 U.S. House race, Midwest director for then-Sen. Barack Obama, then managing his Pennsylvania presidential reelection campaign, and working with Nutter and DeBlasio — in addition to a few failures — Hyers feels the hardest part of the campaign is leaving it behind when it is time to move on.
But for him, there will always be another race to call home.
The entire article can be found at the Washington Post website.
