With the clock ticking down until the next Republican National Committee chair is selected (and time seemingly running out for current chair Michael Steele), some of the committee’s highest-profile staff members are heading for the exits.
From an email sent this morning by RNC Communications Director Doug Heye:
I wanted to let you know that I’ve decided to leave the Republican National Committee following our Winter Meeting next week. At the Winter Meeting, the committee will be electing a Chair and I want to give whomever that might be the opportunity to choose their own staff without any complications.
Heye’s not the only one, according to Politico. The committee’s Chief of Staff, Mike Leavitt, is also heading out the door this month.
The RNC’s 168 voting members will meet later this month to determine who will helm the RNC through the 2012 presidential election.
According to Politico‘s Mike Allen, both men “were baffled” by Steele’s decision to seek reelection as chair after a tenure that was known more for gaffes and failures than for the epic electoral performance of Republicans in November.
Heye has been the public face of the damage control operations that have been central to Steele’s term in office, a role he said began soon after he started at the RNC a year into Steele’s tenure last February.
“When you’re the flack, that’s your job — to be the shield,” Heye told Politico‘s Amie Parnes in an interview.
Heye, who first worked for Steele as a spokesperson for his failed 2006 Senate bid in Maryland, has become a Republican fixture since he took over communications at the RNC. Heye has not said where he’s going next.
Leavitt, on the other hand, has said he’s leaving both the RNC and DC. He “will accept a job with a lobbying/consulting firm in his native Maine,” Allen reports, a role that will leaving him “splitting his time between [DC] and the Pine Tree State.”
