Controller hopeful Eliot Spitzer is adding another staffer to his campaign shop — and from the looks of it, he’s making the pick because he’s banking on that pushback from the “Corridors of Power.”
The hiring of Lis Smith marks the second Team Obama rapid-response specialist hired by the former governor, who left office in 2008 amid a prostitution scandal.
Spitzer’s Democratic primary opponent, Scott Stringer, has been ramping up his tough talk about the former “Sheriff Of Wall Street” on the campaign trail, although he perhaps hasn’t been quite as… intense about Spitzer’s self-inflicted implosion
.
And even if the pushback doesn’t emerge in the way Spitzer’s pumping it up, that theme fits very nicely into his storyline about being an underdog and someone who’ll be attacked by the rich and famous for the work he did as AG to get Wall Street cleaned up.
As Forbes noted in 2012, Smith isn’t just not afraid of pushing back on behalf of her candidate; she’s — yes, total reference to the 2006 Spitzer bio by Brooke Masters — known for, more often than not, spoiling for a fight.
in a piece about must-follow Obama tweeps:
“Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith) The Obama campaign’s director of rapid response, Lis Smith, is not afraid to take the gloves off on Twitter. She uses her feed to, well, rapidly respond to the news. Smith also gets points for interacting. She often mentions others in her tweets and sometimes gets into multiple tweet disputes with people she disagrees with, which are always fun to watch.”
Smith joins another Obama vet/rapid response specialist, Hari Sevugan, and longtime Spitzer spox Lisa Linden in the controller comeback effort. Also on the team: Admaker Jimmy Siegel and — also of Siegel’s shop —
, who worked as a top aide to Spitzer’s wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, in the 2006 governor’s race.
Stay tuned…
