Buchanan Replaces Campaign Manager

Republican state treasurer candidate Angela (Bay) Buchanan said Wednesday that she has replaced her Washington-based campaign manager with a California team of consultants.

Buchanan, of Irvine, downplayed the impact of the disruption on her campaign and said the switch was not caused by any internal problems among her staff.

Strategists for her opponent in the Republican primary--incumbent Thomas Hayes--suggested, however, that the change is evidence of trouble. “It seems there may be some unstableness in our challenger’s campaign,” said Brian Lungren, manager of Hayes’ campaign.

Jeff Schmidt, the campaign manager who resigned from Buchanan’s race, said Wednesday that his departure was “very cordial.” Schmidt, who moved from Washington to California to run Buchanan’s campaign, said he was returning to the East. He said he had two job offers but had not yet decided which to take.

Buchanan’s new campaign manager is Ken Reitz of Marina del Rey, who formerly worked on California Republican Mike Curb’s campaign for lieutenant governor. The management team will also include Orange County consultants Scott Hart and David Ellis.

Buchanan, who was U.S. treasurer during the Reagan Administration, confirmed the changes in an interview with The Times on Wednesday and said they will be announced publicly today.

Schmidt was assigned to the Buchanan campaign by Washington political consultant Roger Stone, a partner in one of the country’s foremost conservative consulting firms--Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly. Stone said Wednesday that he will continue to advise Buchanan’s campaign, but he declined to comment on the circumstances of Schmidt’s resignation.

There will not be an adverse impact on Buchanan’s campaign at this stage, Stone said in a telephone interview from Washington. “Most of our emphasis now is on fund raising, he said. “We’re not into the phase that entails what I call resource allocation or resource expenditures.”

Within the past two weeks, the campaign has been host of Southern California fund-raisers featuring such conservatives as U.S. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig and the candidate’s brother, former presidential adviser and conservative Washington commentator Pat Buchanan.

Bay Buchanan said that until now Stone has been the chief adviser to her campaign and he will remain one of the campaign’s advisers. But because of Stone’s distance from the campaign, she said, she has been planning to acquire a California consulting team for several weeks. She said, however, that she was unaware that Schmidt was thinking about leaving the campaign.