Kevin Madden, a senior adviser to presidential candidate Mitt Romney, will soon adopt a larger presence in the campaign, sources tell
CBS News.
That may be a sign the campaign is trying to regroup after several political snafus and heated criticism from conservative Republicans.
Madden, press secretary for Romney during his 2008 presidential bid, will spend more time on the road with him and will probably appear more on TV representing the candidate, the sources said. Madden will accompany Romney in his travels next week.
The Romney campaign was buffeted last week when fellow senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said the individual mandate of the healthcare reform law constitutes a penalty rather than a tax. Those remarks came after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts labeled the mandate a tax and conservatives had begun to hammer President Barack Obama over the issue for imposing a huge tax.
Romney ultimately retracted Fehrnstrom’s remarks. But the campaign has taken major lumps from Republicans this week, including a scathing editorial in The Wall Street Journal and critical remarks on Twitter from Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp., which owns The Journal.
Romney campaign sources told CBS that the elevation of Madden just represents an effort to give him more "bandwidth and additional responsibilities," rather than a campaign shake-up. But that sounds pretty much like the standard non-denial denial.
In any case, the Romney camp thinks it has plenty of time to right the ship. "Today's job numbers will set the frame for the rest of the campaign," one adviser told CBS. "People are just starting to tune in and put their barbecue sets away."
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