“Alexander Burns & Jonathan Martin” - Newt Gingrich's route: 2012 path paved with questions

By ALEXANDER BURNS & JONATHAN MARTIN | 3/3/11 4:25 AM EST

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/50569.html

Newt Gingrich appears poised to become the first major Republican to enter the race for president, a step that would give him a first-mover advantage in a slow-forming GOP field.

He’ll need it.

Before the former House speaker can start competing against his Republican rivals in earnest he must bring order to the unruliness and chaos that surrounds almost every aspect of his candidacy – from Gingrich’s organization, to his message, to the candidate himself.

His tumultuous political universe became clear this week, when one of his senior advisers told the Des Moines Register that Gingrich would announce an exploratory committee in Atlanta on Thursday.

A few hours later, Gingrich spokesman Rick Tyler blasted out a statement saying that was incorrect. Gingrich wouldn’t be announcing anything formal.

The remarkable retraction was a nod to Gingrich’s complex web of businesses and political activities – his advocacy operation American Solutions, the Gingrich Group consulting firm, his contract with Fox News and more – that could have been placed in legal jeopardy if Gingrich declared his campaign.

Dealing with that array of financial interests is only one of the many challenges the controversial former Georgia congressman will have to handle at the outset of a campaign. He’ll have to answer questions about his record in office and, perhaps more importantly, his three marriages.

By getting into the race first, Gingrich would have extra time and space to explain all that, set his political house in order and refashion himself as a candidate for the first time since the 1990s.

“I think being able to get in gives him an opportunity to confront those questions in the genuine context of a campaign and answer them as the demands of a campaign would dictate,” said Ralph Reed, the former Georgia Republican Party chairman who heads the Faith and Freedom Coalition.

“The potential down side,” Reed continued, “is it brings a level of scrutiny that you have to be ready for. You can’t just go on a Sunday morning show and when asked about it say, ‘I look forward to making my case.’ You have to be ready to answer the question now.”

One veteran Republican who knows Gingrich suggested an early start would give the at-times impulsive candidate, who hasn’t run for office since 1998, some spring training before the thick of the campaign.

“He’s going to have to go through a transition,” the Republican said. “He’ll need time to adjust to what is a very different role. He’s going to have to be a little bit more measured.”

Weekly Standard editor William Kristol put Gingrich’s dilemma in terms of political identity.

Gingrich had little choice but to announce early, Kristol said, because the former speaker has been out of public office for well over a decade and must start selling himself to primary voters as a president – not just a pundit.

 “He has to make the case now that he’s not just somebody who was speaker 14 years ago and is now a smart guy on Fox,” Kristol said. “So there’s no point in being coy. He’s extremely well known and has got to go and convince people who like him but are skeptical he could or should be the nominee. And the only way to do that is to get out there and run.”

Kristol compared Gingrich in 2012 to Richard Nixon in 1968, a familiar face for a “dangerous” world.

The difference, Kristol added, is that Nixon was seen as “steady, sober and reliable,” where Gingrich “gets so distracted and falls in love with different ideas and formulations.”

Gingrich traveled Thursday to Atlanta, where he held a press event at the state Capitol and said he is "seriously" considering a 2012 presidential campaign. He also launched a website to explore a potential bid for the White House

For a candidate in search of a sharper identity, the trip to Georgia is a symbolic political homecoming. Gingrich represented the state in Congress for two decades before settling outside of Washington in McLean, Va.

Republicans in Georgia say there’s still great affection for Gingrich there, especially among activists who remember him as the state’s only GOP congressman during the 1980s.

“I think he would be viewed very favorably by the Georgia delegation and would probably get our support very quickly. I certainly would support him,” said Rep. Jack Kingston. “I knew him when he had jet-black hair and I was a college Republican.”

Rep. Rob Woodall, a first-term House member, praised Gingrich as a “transformational figure in Georgia politics.”

Republican insiders in Georgia, many of whom will support other candidates, predicted Gingrich would lock down the support of many in the state’s heavily-GOP congressional delegation. Not, though, because they think he can win, but because he’s a safe candidate to endorse. By endorsing a home-state candidate, the members can avoid choosing between the other alternatives.

Still, even in the state that launched his political career, Gingrich has a ways to go in defining himself as a candidate for the White House.

After all, it’s been more than a dozen years since Gingrich served as a congressman from Georgia. And as in other states, many Republicans know him less as a legislator than as a conservative figurehead – “as a spokesman, as an educator, as a professor, as a policy wonk,” said former state Senate President Eric Johnson.

“I do think he’s got this professor-in-chief image that he’s got to turn into a commander-in-chief image,” Johnson said. “They almost see Newt more as a chief of staff than as a president.”

Johnson added: “I don’t think he can count on carrying Georgia [in the primaries]. I think he’s going to run strong here, but he’s going to have to make it through a whole bunch of hurdles.”

The tallest of those hurdles is likely to come in the early presidential primary states, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, where Gingrich must win over conservative activists who like his ideas but worry about his personal skeletons.

Chief among their concerns is the extramarital affair he conducted while speaker with the woman who is now his third wife, along with other mishaps and scandals in the 1990s.

“I’ve heard Newt speak a number of times and know about his past, good and bad,” said Kevin Alons, a Republican activist in Iowa’s northwestern Woodbury County. “He’s smart, articulate and has good ideas and would be a competent guy to do it, if he can get past what got him the first time.”

Fran Wendelboe, a veteran New Hampshire activist, similarly pointed to Gingrich’s past when asked about the central challenge he’d have to address.

“How’s he going to handle the baggage?” she asked, referring not just to the affair but also the 1995 government shutdown and 1998 midterm election defeats that triggered Gingrich’s resignation.

Even if Gingrich manages to successfully recast himself as a politician ready for the White House and address concerns about his past, there’s still that trouble about the tentacles of his political organization.

Republicans familiar with the former speaker’s operation, developed over four decades in politics, say that it will be a tall order to avoid future snafus like the ones that marked the trip to Atlanta.

“You’re not just getting Newt. You’re getting three worlds around him that don’t talk to each other,” said one well-known GOP operative. “It is a potential legal problem and a more serious political and organizational problem.”

One Georgia Republican put it wryly: “Welcome to the next crazy chapter of ‘Gingrichland!’”