Veteran South Carolina GOP consultant Warren Tompkins has signed on with Gov. Mitt Romney’s still-undeclared White House campaign, per The State’s Lee Bandy. Tompkins was President Bush’s top Palmetto State strategist in the 2000 race. Sen. John McCain’s SC guru was then and is still Richard Quinn; Quinn and Tompkins have been fierce rivals for years in the small world that is SC politics.
This is inside baseball to some degree, but that Tompkins would sign on so early with Romney is another indicator — and the respected Bandy says as much — that the Massachusetts governor is firming up his role as the chief McCain alternative in the early GOP running. Tompkins and his firm had been seen as leaning in Sen. George Allen’s direction earlier this year, before the, ahem, recent unpleasantness.