Harold Ickes

• Author: admin
• Filed under: World News
• Date: May 31,2008

Harold McEwen Ickes was deputy White House chief of staff for President Bill Clinton. He is the son of Harold L. Ickes, who was Secretary of the Interior under Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was the model for the Primary Colors character Howard Fergerson. Since 2005 Ickes has been associated with a progressive data collection and voter file organization called “Data Warehouse” (now Catalist, with Laura Quinn, CEO). He currently serves as Catalist’s President.
Nearly 40 years after attending his first Democratic National Convention, Mr. Ickes — who has survived losing presidential campaigns, grand jury investigations and a tumultuous stint in Bill Clinton’s White House — is back at another campaign. He has a good 30 years of presidential history on nearly everyone in the Clinton campaign headquarters, but he is as sassy and dyspeptic as he was when he worked for Eugene J. McCarthy.

“I’m a little dismayed by the lack of fight on the part of our staff,” Mr. Ickes, the assistant to the campaign manager, scolded an audience of Clinton staffers dispirited after Mrs. Clinton’s losses last week, before beginning a roll call of the presidential campaigns he had helped win and lose.

Ickes is a political strategist working on Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the 2008 presidential election. The Clinton campaign should focus on winning pledged delegates as a result of elections, not these say-or-do-anything-to-win tactics that could undermine Democrats’ ability to win the general election,” Plouffe added.

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