Visit with Governor Huckabee's Staff

Visit with Governor Mike Huckabee Staff
July 17th, 2007

On July 17th, Fred Plett, Sarah Jane Knoy, Ruth Heden, and Ken Galdston met With Debra Vanderbeek, state co-chair of the Huckabee for President Campaign. The meeting was set up by Fred Plett.
The GSOP Participants all thought the meeting went swimmingly. Debra was very interested in the Presidential Action on September 15th. She said that the major concern is where he would be that week, New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina or another state. Presidential campaigns only have a 2-3 week lead time on their candidate availability, and even then the situation can be fluid. The staff lines up events on a daily and weekly calendar where the candidate could possibly be, then the staff waits to find out if the candidate is actually available in state. If the candidate is, then the staff recommends where the candidate should be at, hopefully 2-3 locations in a day. This is weighed by size and nature of crowd, potential voters, and all sorts of other calculations.
Debra was interested in the makeup of GSOP and said that Governor Huckabee would take right to it, since he is a Baptist minister. She was impressed with the potential turnout at this one event. There aren’t too many opportunities with as many potential undecided voters. She told us that the questions were well formulated and of broad interest. She was impressed that the questions came from the bottom up, and that they were broad in nature. She did distinguish us from the single narrow issue pleas she gets all the time for Governor Huckabee’s time.
All in all, she was very supportive of Governor Huckabee’s attendance at the event. She couldn’t promise anything because she doesn’t know where he will be that week, but her statements and her body language suggested that she wanted him there.
Debra was Chief of Staff for Congressman Jeb Bradley before joining the Huckabee campaign.

Respectfuly submitted,
Fred Plett