According to a new biography of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) felt pushed aside by the former Massachusetts governor's 2008 campaign, citing his staff's "ego" and an aversion to outsiders.
"The Real Romney," a new book by Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, reveals that Gregg, who had been acting as Romney's national campaign cochair, felt sidelined by a campaign team who believed Romney had the New Hampshire primary all locked up.
[Gregg] felt out of sync with the campaign of which he was national cochairman. He appeared at some events and sometimes introduced Romney, but he was otherwise mostly shut out of the decision making. The Romney campaign "didn't want me or my organization to do anything," and, he said, he didn't try to push his way into the inner circle. Asked why a campaign wouldn't take advantage of one of the most experienced political operations in New Hampshire, Gregg responded with a single word: "Ego." He explained, "In these campaigns, people tend to be very resistant to outsiders. So my decision was not to get involved in how to run their campaign because they didn't appear to want to know."
Gregg, who has also endorsed the former governor for his 2012 campaign, told Kranish and Helman that he was "shocked" by the campaign's hubris during a meeting in Boston a few weeks prior to the primary.
Settling into a seat in a conference room, Gregg listened to Romney's advisers describe how easily the candidate was going to win the New Hampshire primary and the nomination. Gregg was shocked. From his years of experience, he knew all too well how a candidate could gain or lose twenty polling points in New Hampshire in a matter of days, earthquake-type shifts that depended on momentum and emotion.
In the days following Romney's victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday, he has made several media appearances, including an interview with Fox News in which he defended Romney's corporate record.