9:27 AM Mon, Oct 22, 2007 | Permalink
By Pamela Reinsel Cotter  Email this author | Email this entry |
News Flash: Governor Carcieri intends to keep his communications director, Steve Kass.
Earlier this month, an unidentified Carcieri backer leaked a now-famous memo to the news media containing a “strategic plan” for buffing up the governor’s image. Among the top recommendations: replace Kass, a former radio talk-show host, with a new communications director “responsible for developing (with the input of consultants and others) … a strategic internal and external communication plan.”
The memo recommended some strategies that the governor was already using to “deliver the message beyond/around The Providence Journal,” such as making himself a frequent guest on radio talk shows.
Recent events indicate he took other suggestions to heart. On budget matters, for example, the memo recommended that the governor “take back control of the conversation,” present the budget as a “crisis,” announce “The Big Audit Pays off,” and “lay the framework for the budget message for the next six months with the announcement of the workforce reduction.”
It also urged a statewide tour to “sell” the job cuts and a “new stump speech” that incorporates the “budget crisis … with sections of the ‘State House as a box’ speech that was effectively used during the governor’s first campaign.”
The memo brought to mind Carcieri’s first communications director, Laurie White (wife of Channel 10 reporter Jim Taricani), checking off each message-point on her clipboard at early news conferences.
But this was Carcieri’s response when asked by Channel 10 reporter Bill Rappleye, during a taping of yesterday’s 10 News Conference, “What about Steve Kass, is he going to be with you for much longer?”:
“Steve is sitting right over there. Yeah. No, Steve’s not going anywhere. He’s a big supporter, so he’s not going anywhere.”
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