Paul Weissmann
Thirty years after Paul Weissmann and Martin O’Malley traveled the back roads of Iowa for Colorado’s Gary Hart, the two are reunited on another presidential campaign.
This time the candidate is O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, and Weissmann is serving as a close adviser, once again mining the Iowa cornfields for votes and running the campaign’s Colorado effort.
Last week, O’Malley made his second trip to Denver in five months to raise campaign cash and attend a roundtable on marijuana. He also met with Gov. John Hickenlooper in what his office called a “social visit.”
Weissmann, the Boulder County Treasurer and former Colorado House majority leader was at O’Malley’s side for much of the trip.
In the 1984 presidential campaign, Weissmann canvassed eastern Iowa and O’Malley worked the western side of the state. But the two didn’t meet until the campaign shipped them to Texas after the caucuses.
Weissmann said his three recent trips to Iowa for O’Malley’s campaign “has been like deja vu.” He is connecting with the same people from the Hart campaign and traveling frugally, trying to borrow a car to drive and find free places to sleep.
“For our campaign to be successful, it really is about getting out of the blocks right,” Weissmann said.
He added, “The Iowa caucus game is different from any place in the world. “It is really designed to let someone unknown become known.”
In Colorado, Weissmann said he is tapping other Hart connections as he starts to form the team that will help O’Malley gather votes for the state’s caucuses in March. He said Colorado is a good state for O’Malley to raise campaign cash, even though much of the focus is on the early states at this point.
Weissmann sees O’Malley’s campaign akin to Hartap effort — “Quite frankly, itap a similar story campaign wise,” he said. “Only one candidate on the Democratic side is of a different generation.”
