Republican Gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner has brought onboard one of the nation’s most successful political strategy and media firms to help guide his campaign. Stuart Stevens and Russ Shriefer 
(Stevens is pictured below left, Shriefer below right) have amassed a pretty impressive record of taking Republican Gubernatorial candidates successfully through primaries and then into Governor’s mansions
across the country. Some of their wins included the election (and re-election) of Governor George Bush in Texas, Florida Governor Charie Crist, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, Alabama Governor Bob Riley, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich, and Massachussets Governors Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci.
Wayne Johnson, President of JohnsonClark Consulting (pictured right), is himself a big-wheel in the U.S. Political Consulting scene, as the former President of the American Association of Political Consultants. Johnson has a storied resume, but he most notably was the lead consultant for Poizner’s successful 2006 campaign for Insurance Commissioner. He joins back with Team Poizner in a senior strategist role. In 2008, Johnson played key roles in defeating Prop. 93 (the Fabian Nunez Term Limits Weakening Act) and Proposition 5.
I caught up this morning with former State Senate Republican Leader Jim Brulte, who serves as Chairman of Poizner’s Gubernatorial Exploratory Committee, and asked him about the pick:
With the presumed pending entry of Meg Whitman into the Gubernatorial primary, we can all look forward to the most intense and expensive competitions for a GOP Gubernatorial nomination that California (and probably the nation) has ever seen. We’ll have to wait until Whitman’s formal announcement (rumored to be late January or early February) to start to see the full extent of the team she will pull together.