Gingrich's wife at center of presidential campaign turmoil, sources say http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/15/6865124-gingrichs-wife-at-center-of-presidential-campaign-turmoil-sources-say By Michael Isikoff
NBC News National Investigative Correspondent
Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign was crippled by behind-the-scenes blow-ups over the role of his wife, Callista, including her insistence that the campaign arrange for screenings of the couple’s movies made by their for-profit production company, according to current and former campaign staffers and advisers.
The use of campaign resources to promote the Gingriches' private movie ventures made some senior staffers uncomfortable and led to repeated confrontations over the issue, they said. The campaign even carved out space on the home page of the Gingrich campaign Web site, Newt.org, where a section dubbed “Callista’s Canvas” promoted the movies, with titles such as “Rediscovering God in America” and “A City Upon a Hill,” about American “exceptionalism.”
Four current and former advisers provided new details to NBC News about the internal conflicts that last week prompted 16 top staffers — including his campaign manager, Rob Johnson, and his longtime spokesman, Rick Tyler — to resign. The mass resignations have undermined Gingrich’s efforts to raise money — he has barely collected $3 million, according to two sources — and left his struggling campaign on life support, the current and former advisers said.
During Gingrich’s campaign trips, Callista Gingrich repeatedly insisted that the campaign carve out time for public screenings of their movies, where the couple answered questions from the audience, and then sold DVD copies, eating up hours of time on the candidate’s schedule, the campaign sources said. When Callista Gingrich sent out an email insisting that a movie screening be arranged in New Hampshire, the candidate’s senior staffer in the state, David Carney, fired off an angry reply, saying he would refuse to do so, sources said. Carney declined to comment...