2010: Re-Meet Team Shami

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the new staffers on the Farouk Shami for Governor campaign.

Three weeks after starting his campaign, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Farouk Shami fired four top staffers, including campaign manager Joel Coon and communications director Jason Stanford.  Today, he is announcing their replacements — and others.

Vince Leibowitz (pictured left), until recently the communications and policy director for gubernatorial-turned-ag commissioner candidate Hank Gilbert, has taken over as campaign director and senior strategist.

Charlie Ray (center) and Kelly Love Johnson (right) of Austin-based media company Broad Street Interactive will both be hopping on the Shami bandwagon. Love Johnson, formerly the Communications Director for the Linda Ketner for Congress campaign in South Carolina, will perform the same job for Shami.  Ray, formerly the author of the political blog "Pink Dome" and current Broad Street CEO, will be the press secretary handling rapid response communications.

Jamila Shami, the candidate’s niece who has been handling campaign matters in this interim period, is the new deputy campaign director.

“Farouk was looking for a team of people to augment our already talented team to ensure that we had the winning formula,” said Leibowitz.

That already talented team includes general consultants Robert Jara and Dan McClung, pollster Ben Tulchin of Tulchin Research, media specialists Tad Devine and Julian Mulvey of Devine Mulvey.  Also already working for Shami are public relations director Jessica Gutierrez, and executive outreach director Scott Emery.

More additions are said to be forthcoming.

Here are further updates from a campaign press release:

Joining the campaign as the media buyer of record for television, radio, and online media, is Fortune Media, headed by founder Ondine Fortune. Ondine is recognized as one of the nation's top experts in media planning and buying for politics and public affairs campaigns. Fortune Media enjoyed a 41-9 win ratio on behalf of its campaigns in the 2008 election cycle. Nicole Bouda, Vice President of Media Buying for Fortune Media, will also be working with the campaign.

The Baughman Company joined Shami's campaign last week to handle direct mail. Its previous clients include former presidential candidates Howard Dean and Hillary Rodham Clinton as well as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Strategic Telemetry also joined Shami's campaign for predictive analytics and microtargeting work. The firm recently performed similar services for President Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Also joining the Shami team is Progressive PST, a company founded by longtime netroots activists that offers professional Twitter campaign tools which were recently used by the "No On 1" campaign in Maine to recruit volunteers, donors, and help drive the online debate. Progressive PST's client list includes Joe Hoeffel's gubernatorial campaign in Pennsylvania, David Krikorian's congressional campaign in Ohio, and Lois Herr's congressional race in Pennsylvania.