http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=700397Des Moines, Iowa - A legend in the world of political organizing, 49-year-old Teresa Vilmain has a simple job Jan. 3: Get Hillary Clinton through Iowa intact.
"If you're in a mess somewhere, and you need a good organization put together anywhere in this country, Teresa Vilmain is one of the first people you turn to," said Joe Trippi, strategist for Clinton rival John Edwards. "If it happens to be Iowa, you really want Teresa Vilmain."
As head of Clinton's Iowa campaign, Vilmain shuns publicity. But she's renowned among Democratic party professionals, a networking whirlwind with a peerless Rolodex and ubiquitous Forrest Gump-like campaign history.
An Iowa native who settled in Wisconsin more than a decade ago, Vilmain was tapped last June to shore up the Clinton effort in a place where the New York senator had little history and faced her biggest political obstacles.
The hiring ended speculation that the former first lady might overlook Iowa. And while the Clinton campaign has been second-guessed about many things here, its organizational mettle is no longer one of them.
The Iowa caucus process is so personal, laborious and peculiar that getting the mechanics right can be the difference between glory and oblivion (ask Howard Dean).
"There is nothing (in politics) more organizationally intense than this," said Vilmain, who has worked all over the country but has a special expertise in two battleground states: Iowa and Wisconsin.
Vilmain has been described more than once as Clinton's secret weapon here.
"Teresa Vilmain could organize Jell-O," is how veteran Democrat and commentator Susan Estrich put it recently.