Expert Advisor Is Handyman in Kerry’s Camp

In the backroom realm of presidential politics, Michael J. Whouley is known as a candidate fix-it man, the hush-hush operative the big boss summons when strategies go south.

Four years ago, the plain-spoken campaign advisor brought his genius for field tactics to help Al Gore engineer a comeback when insurgent Bill Bradley seized the initiative in the Democratic primaries. Later, his eleventh-hour analysis of the Florida vote count on election night in 2000 saved Gore from making a rushed concession to George W. Bush before all the ballots had been counted.

This week, Whouley struck again.

He arrived in Iowa on a cold day in December and helped lift a long-written-off Sen. John F. Kerry to a surprising victory in the state’s caucuses Monday.

Kerry’s Iowa campaign manager says Whouley parachuted into the state and identified weaknesses in the campaign’s outreach to veterans. He directed staffers to approach not only registered Democrats but also independents who served in the Vietnam War. The goal: expand Kerry’s identification with all former armed forces personnel.

“He identified the trees we hadn’t shaken yet,” said Iowa campaign manager John Norris. “He not only expanded our vet universe, but identified how we could reach beyond prior caucus voters. He jumped in and hired new people and personally trained our field staff. His contributions were just invaluable.”

True to his behind-the-scenes persona, the reticent Whouley carries the art of avoiding the spotlight to near obsession. His mother-in-law once complained that he wouldn’t even walk by a C-SPAN camera so she could see him on TV, friends say.

In a telephone interview, Whouley -- whose role in Kerry’s New Hampshire effort remains unclear -- downplayed his role in the Iowa turnaround. He’s in the minority of top-tier strategists, many of whom like to get public credit for their work.

“This victory was 100% about John Kerry,” said Whouley, a veteran of two Kerry political campaigns in Massachusetts in the early 1980s.

“I did this because a friend of 25 years had his back against the wall and needed help. If I did anything it was help convince supporters that Kerry was a great closer and that he would connect with voters. And that’s exactly what he did.”

For those who know him, Whouley (pronounced Hoo-ley) is a hard-nosed product of working-class South Boston, whose accent hits you like a brick thrown from a fourth-floor window. At 44, he’s an often-droll taskmaster whose bluntness and brevity can scare the daylights out of young campaign workers. With his piercing glare, prominent cheekbones and balding pate, colleagues live in fear of what has become known as the “Whouley Stare.”

Many liken him to Gen. George Patton for his strategic marshaling of volunteers. Former Vice President Gore so respected his work, he referred to Whouley as his “brain.”

“There’s nobody better at understanding local grass-roots politics and how to get people motivated,” said Tony Coelho, Gore’s 2000 campaign chairman.

“Mike Whouley is not afraid to use four-letter words and will tell you to your face that you’re wrong -- even if you’re the vice president of the United States.”

Friends joke they have no nickname for Whouley because with such an odd-sounding, impossible-to-spell last name, who needs one? But they agree that he inspires a loyalty unrivaled in most political circles.

“He’s a bit like the Vince Lombardi of politics,” said Chris Lehane, campaign director for retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark’s , who worked with Whouley on the Gore campaign. “People would run through a wall for him. And he reciprocates that loyalty.”

Others say Whouley’s intensity is misread as aggressiveness.

“Mike cares about one thing and that’s winning -- not about how many points you’re ahead in the polls at any given time,” said former Gore advisor Donnie Fowler. “He’s as tough as nails. And people do get poked with those nails.”

While Whouley often angered Gore during the 2000 presidential race, Gore considered the tough-talking Bostonian one of his closest advisors, Coelho said. “He got in the vice president’s face plenty of times, but when Gore wanted straight information, he went right to Whouley.”

Raised in the heavily Irish community of Dorchester, Whouley rose from being a neighborhood party leader to becoming Bill Clinton’s national field director in 1992, a role he reprised for Gore in 2000. He combines an encyclopedic knowledge of the nation’s political geography with seat-of-the-pants campaign innovation.

In 1991, he arranged for lunching participants in a Democratic straw poll to each open a fortune cookie that read “Bill Clinton will be in your future.”

In another Whouley gimmick, Clinton’s gravelly voice greeted participants each day on their hotel wake-up call recording. The stunts helped the little known Arkansas Democrat win an upset victory in the straw poll, launching him as a serious presidential contender.

Whouley’s strength is his work ethic.

“He’s a basic guy who gets along with everyone as long as they’re doing their jobs,” said Coelho. “If not, he’ll fire you on the spot. He’s not interested in chitchat. He wants to know how you’re going to get it done, when you’ll get it done and, if you can’t get it done, don’t bother him.”

Lehane once saw Whouley work his tough-guy shtick in a smoky room at Gore’s Iowa campaign headquarters in 2000.

“There were 25 people there who looked like they’d hadn’t shaved or bathed in a week and there was Whouley barking out orders,” Lehane recalled. “It reminded me of those old movies where the guys are rowing in the bowels of a Roman ship, with their taskmaster cracking the whip to drive them on.”

Whouley’s insight and tenacity became evident on Nov. 4, 2000, when -- from a boiler room inside Gore’s Nashville campaign headquarters -- he pulled the vice president back from the brink of publicly declaring he had lost the election. For the moment, the move breathed new life into an apparently doomed Democratic ticket.

“Without Whouley,” said David Morehouse, a spokesman for Kerry, “Gore would have given that concession speech without having actually lost the election.”

This week, Whouley helped turn Kerry’s would-be Iowa defeat into victory.

Their work together began on Thanksgiving weekend when the candidate called Whouley following a meltdown within his campaign staff, which was wracked by internal rancor and competing strategists.

In early October, Kerry fired his campaign manager. The next day his chief spokesman and the deputy finance director quit in protest.

Kerry brought in Mary Beth Cahill, chief of staff for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), as campaign manager.

And he called the fix-it man.

Returning from his first trip to Iowa in December, Whouley ran into an old friend, Kerry strategist John Sasso.

“He said Kerry was going to surprise people because he was connecting with both veterans and women,” Sasso said. “I told him, ‘I don’t know, it looks pretty tough to me.

Whouley responded: “It is tough. But I couldn’t live with myself if didn’t go out and make an effort.”