Dewey Square quietly flexes its political muscle
For a politician eyeing the White House, the Iowa caucuses have long been a test of political organization. Campaigns that identify friendly voters and get them to the polls in the frozen depths of January are the ones that succeed.
Which is why Steve Murphy, who was managing Representative Richard A. Gephardt's presidential campaign, tensed up earlier this year when he drove through Des Moines more than a week before caucus night: outside the Kerry for President headquarters on Locust Street was a fleet of rental vans.
''I said, 'Oh, that's Michael Whouley.' I'm sure all the vans in Davenport and Cedar Rapids and Sioux City were already rented, too," Murphy recalled.
Within political circles, Whouley enjoys a mythic reputation, the gravel-voiced son of Dorchester who quietly joins political campaigns, organizes grassroots activity, fills vans with voters, and then recedes into private life as his employers -- Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, or John F. Kerry -- bask in the glow of a nomination victory. ''The magical Michael Whouley," Kerry called him after Whouley took a leave from his job and helped engineer his out-of-the-ashes victory in Iowa on Jan. 19.
As publicity-averse as Whouley may be (he would not agree to be interviewed by the Globe), he is a partner in an even more press-shy political and business consulting firm: the Boston-based Dewey Square Group. In near silence, it permeated this year's Democratic presidential race.
If Boston is the quintessential political town, Dewey Square is the political shop that most represents the city's politics, with its attention to grass-roots organizing and turning out voters on election day. Its members are not only fully engaged in Kerry's campaign against President Bush; they are also regularly involved in the marquee races around the country. Jill Alper, head of the firm's political division, was instrumental in Jennifer Granholm's narrow victory in 2002 as Michigan's first elected female governor.
This year, a quarter of the roughly 45-person firm was affiliated with the major contenders in the primary race. Many Dewey Square operatives have become involved with Kerry's post-primary organization and that of his running mate, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. They can also be found throughout the organization and operation of this week's Democratic National Convention.
Whouley and the firm's other two principals, Charles M. Campion and Charles A. Baker III, are providing communications and voter-turnout advice, free, to the presumptive nominee, although Whouley will likely come aboard in September as a paid consultant for the general election sprint. His organizational work in Iowa during December and January was for free.
Nick Baldick, a member of the firm's Washington office, served as Edwards's campaign manager. Kiki McLean, who heads the firm's communications division, was campaign spokeswoman for Senator Joseph I. Lieberman. John Lapp, another member of the Washington office, was recruited after running Gephardt's Iowa campaign.
Some rivals accuse the firm of covering its bets, spreading its workers across the campaign landscape like a player laying down chips on a roulette table in hopes of covering a winner. Dewey Square and its admirers argue that politics is a quadrennial diversion for its employees, most of whom come out of politics and, like Whouley with Kerry, had prior relationships with the candidates. They say the vast majority of the firm's profits come from its non-electoral specialty: applying political grassroots organizing techniques to businesses and trade associations with a public policy goal.
But there's no doubt the firm has Democratic blood running in its veins.
In 1999 and 2000, people working for Dewey Square donated $58,000 to Democratic political candidates, from Gore to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and five of the 10 US House members in Massachusetts, according to donor records compiled by Dwight L. Morris and Associates, a Virginia-based campaign finance concern.
Last year and during the first five months of this year, donations from Dewey Square employees ballooned to $124,000. They were spread across seven of the 10 Massachusetts House members and four of the 10 contenders for the Democratic nomination, as well as party candidates throughout the country.
Joe Trippi, who managed Howard Dean's campaign, complained last winter that the former Vermont governor's political rivals were ganging up on him, fueled by the chumminess he saw among the Dewey Square employees in the other campaigns.
In a recent interview, Trippi said Baker went to Burlington, Vt., last November when Kerry was flagging and Dean's prospects were soaring, inquiring if the campaign wanted assistance from the Dewey Square Group.
''The thing I said back to them was, 'You're with Edwards, you're running Kerry, Alper and Whouley are floating around. My question is, how does that work? Do you guys talk to each other?'. . ." Trippi said.
Baker declined a request to be interviewed by the Globe. Speaking for him, a representative said he had not sought a contract with Dean, but introduced a junior associate from the firm's Florida office who was interested in volunteering for the campaign.
Despite his concern about Dewey Square's prospecting, Trippi expressed profound respect for the Dewey Square Group.
''If you look at the two campaigns -- Kerry and Edwards -- I think DSG deserves a lot of credit for how far they got. Maybe I should have hired them," Trippi said.
Murphy, the Gephardt campaign manager who spotted Whouley's rental vans in Iowa, said: ''They obviously recruit people who are the best at what they do, particularly when it comes to organizing and communicating. I certainly wish John Kerry had a relationship with one fewer Dewey Square member."
The breakdown of Dewey Square's political and corporate clients is not publicly available because the company is privately held and its principals refused to divulge the information. McLean, who as head of the company's communications division is the only employee Dewey Square allows to be quoted by name in newspapers, said the firm's primary focus is corporate and nonprofit work. Campaigns play a secondary role, she said.
Another person affiliated with the firm said privately that roughly 90 percent of its profits come from work with corporations and nonprofit groups.
''For all of us, politics is our avocation, it's where we come from, it's our passion, it's where we came into the business," said McLean.
Dewey Square counts
The company has done some federal lobbying in the past, according to records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington watchdog, but no one affiliated with Dewey Square has registered as a federal lobbyist during the past two years. Instead of pressuring lawmakers directly on behalf of a client, the firm specializes in an indirect approach known colloquially as ''grasstops lobbying."
Instead of asking political friends in Washington to help a client, Dewey Square starts by contacting people at the local level -- often workers its principals have met during political campaigns. It then works with them to organize prominent local citizens and organizations to lobby on behalf of interest groups that are its clients.
In that manner, advocacy comes from local people who live in a political figure's state or district, have a vested interest in an outcome, and hold sway over the political figure at the ballot box.
Mark Spalding, head of the Alaska Oceans Program, recalled Dewey Square's work in 1999 and 2000, when he was leading another effort to halt
''Some car dealerships in California couldn't process loan applications because their fax machines were tied up with messages from our supporters," Spalding said.
Dewey Square's grass-roots power play paid off. Mitsubishi dropped the project.
Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.
