Plouffe, Obama Aide, Lends Firm Hand to Campaign

Some may call them campaigns, but for David Plouffe, a political adviser to President Obama, they are “brass-knuckle time.”

WASHINGTON — David Plouffe is not a hugger, crier or someone who gets all gaga every time he walks into his West Wing office, just a few feet from that of the president. He disdains doomsayers as “bed-wetters,” press hordes as “jackals” and the political noise machine as a profanity that begins with “cluster.”

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David Plouffe “is the one most in tune with the president's personality,” a colleague says.

Fiercely data-driven, Mr. Plouffe revels in the company of spreadsheets, lists, maps and the Baseball Almanac. Fiercely competitive, he once decked a colleague in a friendly touch football game for taunting him. Fiercely unsentimental, he expends zero amazement over his career climb from selling knives door to door to a first-among-equals status in the White House’s closed circle.

Mr. Plouffe, 44, who managed President Obama’s campaign in the relatively dewy-eyed days of 2008, rejoined his team last year after a lucrative hiatus. Since then, he has asserted himself as the main orchestrator of the White House message, political strategy and day-to-day presentation of the candidate.

If the campaign of four years ago sold Mr. Obama as a force for what Mr. Plouffe called “a politics of unity, hope and common purpose,” this one is rooted firmly in the grind-it-out imperatives of re-election. Today, Mr. Obama seems every bit primed for “brass-knuckle time,” as Mr. Plouffe once termed campaign brawling, with Mr. Plouffe leading an effort that has shown every sign of doing whatever it takes to succeed.

This month, with Mr. Plouffe’s support, Mr. Obama ditched his long opposition to directing his campaign donors to “super PACs” — outside groups whose bankrolling of negative advertising against his Republican rivals has done much to change politics, and not in a “unity, hope and common purpose” kind of way.

Mr. Plouffe (pronounced Pluff) has also pushed for a more combative White House stance toward Congressional Republicans and an aggressive early tack against former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, whom the Obama team still views as its most likely and most formidable opponent in November. It was Mr. Plouffe who declared on “Meet the Press” last fall that Mr. Romney had “no core.”

Intense and self-contained, Mr. Plouffe, who declined to be interviewed for this article, is a temperament alter ego to a president who has always been drawn to loyal fixer types. Mr. Obama, whose favorite movie is “The Godfather,” has compared Mr. Plouffe to a character — a relentless cop played by Mark Wahlberg — in the more recent mob film “The Departed.”

Mr. Obama’s aides are hesitant about discussing the frequency of Mr. Plouffe’s dealings with the re-election effort led by Jim Messina in Chicago, presumably not wanting to suggest he is running the campaign from the White House. Likewise, they are reluctant to characterize Mr. Plouffe’s relationship with the president as special, or suggest that it trumps that of other top lieutenants, particularly Jacob J. Lew, the new chief of staff (Mr. Plouffe is a stickler for hierarchy).

But people inside Mr. Obama’s political apparatus say Mr. Plouffe is most in tune with the president’s thinking in terms of his unsparing focus on the middle class and his abandonment of the bipartisan bridge-building efforts that have mostly failed through his first term.

“The president probably took David’s opinion with more certitude than he did anybody else’s,” said William M. Daley, who left as chief of staff last month after a year in the White House. “If David said X, I think the president would more often believe X than challenge it.” Mr. Daley added that Mr. Obama would be more likely to heed Mr. Plouffe’s advice than his or that of other longtime confidants, the senior advisers Valerie Jarrett and Pete Rouse.

Mr. Plouffe’s history with the president ensures him a rarified place in any Obama endeavor. He became a folk hero within the grass-roots network in 2008, his sleep-deprived face and deadpan delivery evoking urgency (and twiggy frame crying out for cheeseburgers). Mr. Plouffe approaches campaigns with a tribal sense of good-vs.-evil, rarely seeing much humanity in opponents. (He assumed that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s crying episode before the New Hampshire primary in 2008 was “deviously contrived and staged,” he wrote in his campaign memoir, “The Audacity to Win.”)

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Romney Campaign Distances Itself From Congressman Grimm

Mr. Grimm acted as a surrogate for Mr. Romney during the primary in New Hampshire, and was one of Mr. Romney’s most prominent defenders after he was criticized for saying he likes “being able to fire people who provide services to me.”

But on Thursday, a spokeswoman for Mr. Romney’s national campaign, Andrea Saul, indicated that Mr. Grimm would no longer play such a role in the campaign.

Ms. Saul declined to provide a reason, but the move came on the same day that The New York Times published an article detailing how Mr. Grimm had engaged in questionable business practices involving his real estate and restaurant ventures.

Last month, The Times reported that the lead fund-raiser during Mr. Grimm’s successful 2010 campaign was under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Some donors said Mr. Grimm and the fund-raiser had made it clear that they would accept illegal donations.

Even as the Romney campaign was turning its back on Mr. Grimm on Thursday, his allies on Staten Island were rallying around him.

Guy Molinari, the former Staten Island congressman who is the state chairman of Mr. Romney’s campaign and Mr. Grimm’s political mentor, insisted that Mr. Grimm would still be a go-to campaigner for Mr. Romney.

“As a matter of fact they consider — and they reiterated this to me yesterday — they consider Michael as the number one person for the Romney camp,” Mr. Molinari said in an interview.

Mr. Molinari said Mr. Grimm, a former Marine and F.B.I. agent, had made energetic appearances for Mr. Romney in at least three states. “They like him a lot,” Mr. Molinari said. “Fortunately, they don’t make their decisions based on reading newspapers.”

But when told of Mr. Molinari’s comments, Ms. Saul, the spokeswoman, contradicted them. “I can’t speak to Mr. Grimm’s personal schedule, but he is not an official surrogate for the campaign,” she said in an e-mail.

That statement comes as a blow to Mr. Grimm. His 2010 campaign drew strength from the Tea Party, but he represents a swing district that includes Staten Island and a portion of western Brooklyn. He has been criticized by some conservatives for taking moderate positions, including his endorsement of Mr. Romney.

Indeed, Mr. Grimm’s supporters would not take no for an answer on Thursday. Told of the Romney spokeswoman’s statement, Mr. Molinari said: “I think she didn’t know what’s happening. They’re some distance removed from the real world.” He said that he was “100 percent” certain the Romney campaign would keep using Mr. Grimm as a surrogate in many states, and that they would be “fools” if they did not.

Mr. Grimm, who declined to speak to The Times about the campaign finance allegations or his business history, told The Staten Island Advance on Thursday that the articles in The Times were politically motivated.

“I’m not going to lie down and take it,” Mr. Grimm said, according to The Advance. “They are picking on the wrong Marine.”

Eric Ulrich, a New York City councilman who heads the Romney campaign in the city, has also declared that Mr. Grimm would continue to play a prominent role in the campaign, calling him “a rising star.”

On Thursday, Mr. Ulrich did not respond to messages seeking comment.

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