Former Obama administration official Jon Huntsman kicked off his presidential campaign today, and has already lined up staff support from many veterans of John McCain’s 2008 operation.
Apparently, they’re a little rusty.
Every detail of Jon Huntsman’s long-awaited campaign launch was meticulously planned, except of course for one minor detail: the misspelling of the candidate’s name.
Members of the media were handed a press pass that read “John Huntsman for President”. — adding an unnecessary H in the candidate’s first name.
As it turns out, this wasn’t the only “detail” that wasn’t “meticulously planned.” For example, the campaign forgot to register JonHuntsman.com. Worse, visitors to Huntsman’s online donation page this morning saw this message alongside the contribution form:
If you prefer you can contact us by mail or by telephone.
Jon Huntsman for President
123 Main Street
Charlotte, NC 12345
(123) 456-7890
All of this is wrong, and was obviously just put in as placeholder text the campaign forgot to replace.
As Jamison Foser noted, “So far today, Huntsman campaign has gotten his name, phone number & address wrong. That’s a rough day in first grade.”
That’s not all. The Huntsman campaign picked a location for the kick-off speech where the Statue of Liberty would be in the background, but put the television cameras in such a place where the Statue of Liberty wasn’t seen by viewers at home. Some pundits knocked the new candidate for a “bland, uninspiring speech,” and the cable networks didn’t stick with his remarks very long.
Well, at least Huntsman had a good crowd for the campaign launch, right? Wrong. Only “about a hundred” people showed up, and roughly 60 of them were political reporters.
It’s probably not the start the former governor was looking for.
