Reply #13: I have no idea, but this is disturbing [View All]

http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/09/franke-ruta-g-09-25.html

Fan Friction
Hell hath no fury like a Draft Clark enthusiast spurned.

By Garance Franke-Ruta
Web Exclusive: 9.25.03

Whether jumpstarted through the goading of Clark's Arkansas friends or actively fueled by more calculating minds, by the time Clark finally did announce, the Draft Clark movement had become something genuinely grass roots and broader than any of its originators. But its two main factions were at each other's throats.

The conflict, which had simmered unbeknown to Clark or to some of the campaign pros who find themselves confronting it, is finally out in the open. Tensions did not subside last week until Donnie Fowler Jr., the former field director of the 2000 Gore-Joe Lieberman campaign and -- more importantly for a nontraditional campaign -- a former vice president of high-tech executives' association TechNet, stepped in and smoothed the ruffled feathers. Fowler is acting as Clark's campaign manager, but has not yet been formally hired, says Jacoby.

Also suddenly exposed was the fact that the draft movement's massive hype machine seems to have oversold what it could genuinely bring to a Clark campaign. "From what I understand, they basically have an e-mail list of around 200 people," one member of the Clark camp in Arkansas says of the resources DraftClark2004.com brought to the campaign. "They claimed they had this big, pyramidal structure when in fact they had branded anarchy," says a knowledgeable movement member. The list comprises potential state coordinators for a grass-roots, on-the-ground arm of the Clark campaign. Other assets of the draft movement also suddenly seem a bit less concrete. A "New York Headquarters" for DraftWesleyClark.com is actually home to a film and TV production company run by DraftWesleyClark.com leader Maya Israel and her husband, and Locus Media Inc., a New York gallery where "The Bill Clinton Show" is set to open Oct. 16.

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