The presidential election is still more than two months away and polls show it could go either way. Nonetheless, GOP challenger Mitt Romney has put together a transition team that has slowly been picking up steam since June.
Known in the Romney campaign as “The Readiness Project,” the group led by former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt has been camped out in space borrowed from a Washington law firm,
The New York Times reported.
“With Mitt, his approach to problem solving is first to identify the problem, make sure you’re solving for the problem actually there; second, look at best practices; third, apply best practices to the problem at hand; and fourth, execute on it,” Beth Myers, a top Romney adviser who worked on his gubernatorial transition team in 2003, told the Times.
Until recently, the team was made up of Leavitt, Myers, Bob White, chairman of Romney’s transition in Massachusetts, and Ron Kaufman, a senior adviser and Republican national committee member from Massachusetts. The team, which met this week, however, met with a larger group of loyalists from the private and public sectors.
“The transition group is more of a table setter, a drafter of an agenda, an outliner of what you need to do,” a Romney adviser told the Times. “They will be asking, ‘What are the things you can do right away? What are the things you can think about? What can this president still do between Nov. 6 and Jan. 20?’”
The Romney camp is operating under the Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act of 2010, a law that encourages planning before the election. Under the act, the General Services Administration will provide the campaign with office space and other resources after the nominating convention, the Times reported.
The GSA has held meetings with the campaign and Leavitt met with Jacob Lew, President Obama’s chief of staff, about a month ago, according to the Times.
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