<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content=text/html;charset=iso-8859-1 http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.19154"></HEAD>
<BODY style="PADDING-LEFT: 10px; PADDING-RIGHT: 10px; PADDING-TOP: 15px"
id=MailContainerBody leftMargin=0 topMargin=0 CanvasTabStop="true"
name="Compose message area">
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>
<DIV id=fb-root></DIV>
<DIV class=header>
<DIV class=left><A href="http://www.nytimes.com/"><IMG
title="http://www.nytimes.com/
CTRL + Click to follow link" border=0
hspace=0 alt="The New York Times" align=left
src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif"></A>
<NYT_REPRINTS_FORM>
<LI class=reprints>
<FORM name=cccform
action=https://s100.copyright.com/CommonApp/LoadingApplication.jsp
target=_Icon></FORM></LI></DIV></DIV>
<HR align=left SIZE=1>
<DIV class=timestamp>October 26, 2011</DIV>
<DIV class=kicker></DIV>
<H1><NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">As Cain Promotes His Management Skills,
Ex-Aides Tell of Campaign in Chaos</NYT_HEADLINE></H1><NYT_BYLINE>
<H6 class=byline>By <A class=meta-per title="More Articles by Susan Saulny"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/susan_saulny/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
rel=author>SUSAN SAULNY</A></H6></NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>
<DIV id=articleBody><NYT_CORRECTION_TOP></NYT_CORRECTION_TOP>
<P>If <A class=meta-per title="More articles about Herman Cain."
href="http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/candidates/herman-cain?inline=nyt-per">Herman
Cain</A> feels his management skills are up to any challenge, some of his former
staff members think he should have started with the disorder in his own
campaign. </P>
<P>Mr. Cain has hardly shown up in New Hampshire and Iowa, they said, spending
the bulk of his time on a book tour through the South. He occasionally
mishandled potential big donors or ignored real voters. His campaign churned
through the small staff; last week, his campaign announced the appointment of
the veteran campaigner Steve Grubbs, his third Iowa leader in four months. </P>
<P>Even bumper stickers have been hard to come by. </P>
<P>And then there was that e-mail to the staff about traveling in a car with Mr.
Cain: “Do not speak to him unless you are spoken to,” the memo said. </P>
<P>“I found it odd,” said a former staff member who liked to prep Mr. Cain for
appearances while driving. The aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity,
quit not long afterward, citing the e-mail as one of the deciding factors. </P>
<P>Mr. Cain’s campaign has generated much promise since it began over the
summer. A former business executive rises improbably from anonymity to the top
of the polls, using the strength of his speechmaking, folksy charm and catchy
policy plans. </P>
<P>But Mr. Cain’s campaign may have undermined itself with questionable
decisions and a series of missteps, which have led to the impression that the
candidate lacks focus and preparation. </P>
<P>Mr. Cain has made several contradictory, and sometimes befuddling, remarks on
abortion and foreign policy, which have forced him to spend days clarifying and
defending himself. </P>
<P>This week, <A title="The video on YouTube"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6VnTqpTqvQ">an online video</A> became an
instant punch line, so untraditional that Mr. Cain faced questions about whether
the video was a parody, given its low production values and a sequence in which
Mr. Cain’s campaign manager takes a long drag on his cigarette and the candidate
grins. </P>
<P>All presidential candidates make mistakes — including experienced candidates
like Mitt Romney — and campaigns are chaotic and unruly by nature. For its part,
the campaign acknowledges that it has been hard to keep up with Mr. Cain’s
explosive growth in popularity. “We’re working overtime to make it all happen,”
said J. D. Gordon, a spokesman. </P>
<P>But interviews with Mr. Cain’s former staff members, volunteers and
supporters give a glimpse of a candidate who appeared to show ambivalence toward
basic campaign management, which led to problems in hiring, scheduling,
fund-raising and messaging. </P>
<P>Together, these problems are at odds with a central theme of his candidacy.
Because Mr. Cain does not have a legislative or political track record, his
campaign rests heavily on the contention that he would bring proven,
executive-level expertise from the business world to the White House. </P>
<P>Several former workers interviewed for this article said they were directed
by the campaign not to speak with reporters. (Two said they had signed
nondisclosure agreements, a rare demand within political campaigns, and they had
been reminded, they said, by the campaign not to speak with the news media.)
</P>
<P>Mr. Cain, a former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza, has announced that
he will increase the number of staff members in Iowa and New Hampshire as well
the number of his appearances in the early voting states. Mr. Cain now has a
total of six paid staff members working in Iowa and New Hampshire, with 44 more
workers across the country. </P>
<P>Some former aides said they had longed to see the problem-solving side of Mr.
Cain, or to see Mr. Cain at all. Over the spring and summer, he did not spend
much time with workers. He did not plan conference calls or staff meetings and
was given to changing his mind about appearances, sometimes with little notice,
a tendency that angered his field workers. </P>
<P>“It was frustrating because we couldn’t get him here as much as I was led to
believe he was going to be here,” said Kevin Hall, who worked for Mr. Cain in
Iowa in June. </P>
<P>“Everything we tried to do was like pulling teeth to get accomplished,” said
a former staff member in Iowa, who asked for anonymity. “I’ve never been
involved in a job that was as frustrating as this one. We couldn’t get an answer
on anything. Everything was fly by the seat of your pants.” </P>
<P>Some of Mr. Cain’s staff was put off by his devotion to publicizing his newly
released memoir, “This Is Herman Cain! My Journey to the White House.” His book
tour took him mainly through the South, where primaries will not be held until
February at the earliest. The tour helped increase his name recognition and has
been “very successful for us,” Mr. Gordon said. </P>
<P>Not everyone agreed. “When I found out about the book in June, I thought,
‘Are you kidding?’ ” said the same aide who found the e-mail troubling. </P>
<P>“That approach alienated some of his former staffers,” said Chris Buck, an
unaffiliated Republican strategist in New Hampshire who said he considered
working for the Cain campaign earlier this year, but changed his mind. “I think
everybody was bewildered.” </P>
<P>Setting up offices was also something of a trial. “When I told people,
‘You’ll be getting offices and phone lines,’ I’d have to postpone that,” the
former staff member in Iowa said. “It was like they were running for sophomore
class president.” </P>
<P>Mr. Hall added, “We couldn’t even get our own e-mail addresses,” for the
campaign. </P>
<P>Mr. Cain’s workers said basic supplies, like signs and bumper stickers, were
hard to find. In many cases, they have to buy their own, said Donald L. Overman,
a retired marketer who is a loyal volunteer for the campaign in New Hampshire.
</P>
<P>He thinks the campaign can do better. “You can’t go out and buy bumper
stickers,” he said. </P>
<P>Management problems extended to important events. In July, a businessman and
<A class=meta-classifier title="More articles about the Tea Party movement."
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/tea_party_movement/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">Tea
Party</A> supporter, Bill Hemrick, invited some 200 friends to the private
Standard Club in Nashville to meet Mr. Cain. Mr. Hemrick said the Cain campaign
had asked him to serve as its financial chairman for Tennessee. </P>
<P>After speaking to the crowd, Mr. Cain was to attend a private club dinner for
a select group of conservatives, who were in a position to donate the $2,500
maximum. </P>
<P>But somehow Mr. Cain forgot, or his staff failed to follow through. After his
speech, Mr. Cain called to thank Mr. Hemrick for the evening. “I said, ‘I’ll see
you upstairs,’ Mr. Hemrick recalled, where the potential donors had gathered.
“He said, ‘Well, I’m at the airport.’ ” </P>
<P>“I thought, wow, good communication there,” Mr. Hemrick said. </P>
<P>Mr. Hemrick, a founder of the Upper Deck trading card company, said that
shortly afterward, the Cain campaign named someone else as its Tennessee
financial chairman — which he first learned from his replacement. </P>
<P>Mr. Hemrick, who is now a fund-raiser for Representative Michele Bachmann,
likes Mr. Cain’s conservatism and bears him no hard feelings. But he is a bit
mystified by the candidate’s lack of attention to detail. He also figures Mr.
Cain left a pot of cash at the Standard Club. </P>
<P>“This is his first rodeo, so people make mistakes,” Mr. Hemrick said. “But I
wish he would have called and said ‘Bill, I’m going in another direction.’ But
he never did.” </P>
<P>As the months have passed and Mr. Cain has continued to rise in the polls,
his attitude toward retail politics seems not to have changed much. “He can’t be
everywhere at once, but we are doing everything we can as best we can,” said Mr.
Gordon, the spokesman. </P>
<P>On a trip to Iowa last weekend to participate in the Faith and Freedom Forum,
a meeting of evangelical conservatives, Mr. Cain stayed on his campaign bus
until it was time to take the stage, while other candidates worked the crowds.
Shortly after he finished speaking, he left the room. </P><NYT_AUTHOR_ID>
<DIV class=authorIdentification>
<P>Trip Gabriel contributed reporting.
</P></DIV></NYT_AUTHOR_ID><NYT_CORRECTION_BOTTOM>
<DIV
class=articleCorrection></DIV></NYT_CORRECTION_BOTTOM><NYT_UPDATE_BOTTOM></NYT_UPDATE_BOTTOM></DIV></NYT_TEXT>
<DIV id=upNextWrapper>
<DIV style="RIGHT: -410px" id=upNext>
<DIV class="wrapper opposingFloatControl"> </DIV></DIV></DIV></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>_________________________</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>Wayne A. Fox<BR><A
title="mailto:wayne.a.fox@gmail.com
CTRL + Click to follow link"
href="mailto:wayne.a.fox@gmail.com">wayne.a.fox@gmail.com</A><BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>