AtLaw Blog: Patrick Millsaps in Iowa as Gingrich campaign deputy counsel

Patrick Millsaps in Iowa as Gingrich campaign deputy counsel

2:23 pm, January 3rd, 2012

The polls and the pundits and the experts don’t matter right now. It’s all up to the voters.

That’s the view from the ground in Iowa on caucus day 2012, according to Patrick Millsaps, a partner with Georgia firm Hall Booth Smith, and former chairman of the Georgia Ethics Commission.

Millsaps was tapped for deputy counsel to the Newt Gingrich presidential campaign just last week. With his colleagues’ blessings he rushed out the door and headed northwest, where he’s busy pouring over Iowa balloting law on the day of the caucuses – the traditional, kickoff day in the run-up to national political party nominations.

Millsaps was clearly excited to be under the political circus tent that is Iowa in January of a presidential election year. Through the din of raucous background noise at the Gingrich campaign’s Iowa headquarters he told the Daily Report the scene there was ”crazy” (in a good way), and that he was experiencing a “disconnect” between published polls and, anecdotally, what he’s seeing on the ground as a fervent support for Gingrich.

By tomorrow, though, the Iowa votes will be counted, someone will have won, and Millsaps will be out the door quickly. It will be on to New Hampshire or another key state in the Republican primary. He’s not sure where he’ll land, saying:

I’ve never bought so many one-way tickets in my life!