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Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told reporters on Saturday that despite national tracking polls showing the president and Romney tied, Obama is still winning. "In all the battleground states, we continue to see all our pathways there," he told the White House pool at an Obama fundraiser in Milwaukee. "We're either tied or in the lead in every battleground state 45 days out." Messina, who drove from Chicago to Wisconsin to be with Obama on his first trip to a state that appears to have come into play when Paul Ryan was selected to be Romney's running mate, predicted that...

Add the National Republican Congressional Committee to the list of conservative groups capitalizing on former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina’s secret meetings with lobbyists at a Caribou Coffee near the White House. President Obama has repeatedly promised that his would be “the most transparent administration in history,” but the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report yesterday showing that high-ranking Obama staffers, including Messina, used private email addresses to bypass these rules and meet with industry lobbyists. “I will roll Pelosi to get the 4 billion,” Messina wrote Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America lobbyist Jeffrey...

Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior adviser to the Romney campaign, told reporters on a conference call this morning that Obama campaign manager Jim Messina "appears" to have broken the law, based off a series of emails Messina sent from his personal account as White House deputy chief of staff Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-fehrnstrom-jim-messina-obama-romney-emails-obamacare-2012-8#ixzz22PKKy5zs

Aides to President Barack Obama used personal email accounts to contact pharmaceutical companies and deliberately scheduled meetings in coffee shops away from the White House in order to skirt disclosure rules, according to a Congressional report on Wednesday. Among the most damaging findings are emails from Jim Messina – the former White House deputy chief of staff who now manages the president's re-election campaign – to a drugs lobbyist in the days before Mr Obama's health care reforms passed Congress in 2010.In an email from his personal account, Mr Messina promised "I will roll [Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi]...

With just three months to go in the election, President Obama’s campaign manager faced a fusillade of questions Wednesday about whether he deliberately skirted disclosure rules during his time as deputy White House chief of staff, undermining the administration’s claim to be “the most transparent administration in history.” A House Energy and Commerce Committee report released Tuesday revealed several emails from senior White House aides sent from private addresses, as well as email correspondence about meetings with lobbyists purposely scheduled off campus to avoid official records. Jim Messina, then Mr. Obama’s deputy chief of staff, sent one particularly embarrassing email...

Both David Axelrod and Jim Messina put out the bait and unfortunately Mitt Romney took it. Joe Ricketts, formerly of TD Ameritrade and whose family owns the Chicago Cubs, proposed putting together a series of Super PAC ads highlighting President Obama's relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Both Axelrod and Messina said that Romney should take a page out of John McCain's book and not focus on Wright. Well, of course, Axelrod and Messina would like that because, gee, McCain lost to Obama. Romney responded it would be "the wrong course for a PAC or a campaign." [Snip] What Romney...

Obama reelection campaign manager Jim Messina emceed an event for Obama campaign volunteers Sunday night that was headlined by a rock singer convicted of sexual battery on a college student in 1990.The popular rock group The Red Hot Chili Peppers played a concert at the House of Blues in Cleveland last night for about 1200 Obama for America supporters who volunteered time at Obama phone banks. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:...On Sunday, the Cleveland Heights woman joined 1,200 Obama volunteers at the House of Blues to hear the band play a 45-minute set that included its anthem, "Under the Bridge,"...

Kochs: ‘Disturbing behavior’ from Obama campaign looks to limit free speechBy Jonathan Easley - 02/25/12 12:55 PM ET Conservative activists and oil magnates Charles and David Koch slammed the Obama campaign for what they called “disturbing behavior” that is “at odds” with “the constitutional right to free speech.” The allegations were made in an open letter written by Phillip Ellender, president of public affairs for the Koch Companies, in response to a fundraising letter from Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, in which Messina accused the Kochs of bankrolling “Tea Party extremism” and profiting from “jacking up prices at the pump.”...

President Barack Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina sent out an official reelection campaign video wherein he said talk of Mr. Obama having a billion dollar campaign war chest is “bullsh*t” because “we don’t take PAC money unlike our opponents. We fund this campaign in contributions of $3 or $5 or whatever you can do to help us....

Obama campaign manager: 2008 model won't be enough to win second term By Michael O'Brien - 04/25/11 03:59 PM ET President Obama's campaign manager stressed Monday that Democrats couldn't rely on their 2008 game plan to win a second term for Obama in 2012. Jim Messina, Obama's former deputy chief of staff-turned-campaign manager, released a strategy video to supporters outlining the campaign's initial steps toward securing victory next fall. And the key takeaway from Messina was that he intended to throw out the 2008 model and rethink Obama's strategy for 2012. "The 2008 campaign was the most special thing a...

The next piece to fall into place will be the campaign operation. The Chicago-based reelection team will be under the direction of campaign manager Jim Messina, who recently stepped down as White House deputy chief of staff. David Axelrod, who has returned to Chicago after two years as senior adviser to the president, will again play the central role he did four years ago. In due course, the Obama campaign operation will be fully staffed and humming. At this point, it has studied the reelection campaigns of previous presidents. The campaign advisers understand their challenges and have ideas about how...

Romanoff Cracks: Secret White House Jobsgate E-Mail Revealed By Jeffrey Lord on 6.3.10 And…bang! Can you say James McCord? In a revelation that will send shock waves through the American political landscape, the Denver Post last night revealed that Colorado Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff has now reluctantly admitted he discussed "three possible jobs with the deputy chief of staff of the Obama administration -- all contingent upon a decision by Romanoff not to challenge U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet." The White House Deputy Chief of Staff is Jim Messina, a Denver-born Obama aide who served as the chief of staff of...

Andrew Romanoff, the former speaker of the Colorado house of representatives, issued a statement Wednesday evening claiming that the White House raised the possibility that he might be offered an administration job if he opted to not challenge incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. Romanoff also released what he said was an e-mail from White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina outlining three possible jobs -- deputy assistant administrator for Latin America and Caribbean for the U.S. Agency for International Development; director of the Office of Democracy and Governance at USAID; and director of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency...

Allegations that the White House offered Joe Sestak a job in exchange for dropping out of the Pennsylvania Senate race echo an earlier report of a job offer to candidate Andrew Romanoff in Colorado. On September 27, 2009 the Denver Post reported that the Obama administration offered Senate candidate Romanoff a position if he canceled plans to run for the Democratic nomination against incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet. The paper said the job offer, which specified particular jobs, was reportedly delivered by Jim Messina, Obama’s deputy chief of staff. One position cited by the Post was a job at USAID, the...

Senate Democrats are girding themselves for a month of vigorous debate over healthcare reform, armed with a new set of talking points from David Axelrod, the president’s chief political strategist. Axelrod and Jim Messina, the White House deputy chief of staff, met with the Senate Democratic caucus Thursday afternoon to strategize over how to talk about healthcare during the August break. Axelrod told lawmakers to focus on reform of the health insurance industry when talking to constituents in their states, said Democrats who attended the meeting. Axelrod also instructed senators to talk about Democratic healthcare reform plans in comparison to...