Saber Comms rothfeld
<p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> ===</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 28px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's a strange universe," says a conservative strategist who's well acquainted with members of the Pauls' inner circle. "You've got the real <em>Star Wars</em> cantina identified—Hammerhead, Greedo—and let's be honest, a lot of these guys would not have work in the mainstream, even in the tea party."</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 28px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many of the central players in Paul World hail from the National Right to Work Committee, the leading anti-union group where these operatives spent their formative political years. Doug Stafford, who is Rand Paul's Karl Rove, is a former NRTWC vice president. John Tate, Ron Paul's former campaign manager, worked with Stafford at the NRTWC; he is now the president of Campaign for Liberty, the political group founded by the elder Paul. Kesari—described by someone who knows him as "like Radar from <em>MAS*</em><em>H</em>"—previously led the NRTWC's government affairs department<b>. Mike Rothfeld headed the committee's direct-mail operation in the late '80s and early '90s; he now runs the fundraising firm of choice for Rand Paul's PAC, as well as the NRTWC and Campaign for Liberty.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 28px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="section-lead" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">[nice map]
Of the GO</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">P</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">'s</span></span> current presidential hopefuls, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is most closely associated with an anti-union agenda, due to <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/06/wisconsin-supreme-court-walker-union" target="blank" style="color: black; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: white -1px 0px 0px, white 0px 1px 0px, white 1px 0px 0px, white 0px -1px 0px, white -1px -1px 0px, white 1px 1px 0px, white 1px -1px 0px, white -1px 1px 0px; background-image: url("/sites/all/assets/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0% 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x;">his 2011 law</a> curbing collective bargaining for the state's public-sector unions. But the Republican whose policy stances pose the most direct threat to labor is Rand Paul. In the eyes of the National Right to Work Committee, one former NRTWC staffer told me, "he is the golden child."Thanks in large part to this crew, Rand Paul has broken into the political mainstream, a feat never achieved by his father. But some of the operatives who have formed the backbone of his machine have at times thought little of stretching the rules to win elections and acquire power. And their past tactics may come back to haunt Paul during what could be the most important campaign of his political career.
</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 28px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After Paul was sworn into the Senate in 2011, one of the first pieces of legislation he cosponsored was the National Right-to-Work Act, the committee's holy grail. The bill—also championed by Ron Paul—would make every state in the union a so-called <a href="http://www.nrtw.org/rtws.htm" target="blank" style="color: black; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: white -1px 0px 0px, white 0px 1px 0px, white 1px 0px 0px, white 0px -1px 0px, white -1px -1px 0px, white 1px 1px 0px, white 1px -1px 0px, white -1px 1px 0px; background-image: url("/sites/all/assets/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0% 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x;">right-to-work state </a>and eviscerate organized labor as we know it. (Twenty-five states currently have such laws, banning unions from collecting dues from nonmembers to pay for representing those workers and bargaining on their behalf.) Since 2013, Paul has twice more introduced the <a href="https://www.opencongress.org/bill/s504-112/show" target="blank" style="color: black; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: white -1px 0px 0px, white 0px 1px 0px, white 1px 0px 0px, white 0px -1px 0px, white -1px -1px 0px, white 1px 1px 0px, white 1px -1px 0px, white -1px 1px 0px; background-image: url("/sites/all/assets/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0% 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x;">legislation.</a> (The bill never has gotten out of committee.)</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 28px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
Paul has credited John Tate, a former NRTWC vice president, with playing a "crucial role" in assembling his 2010 Senate campaign, including introducing Paul to Stafford, now his closest adviser. NRTWC <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cmte=C00395533&cycle=2010" target="blank" style="color: black; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: white -1px 0px 0px, white 0px 1px 0px, white 1px 0px 0px, white 0px -1px 0px, white -1px -1px 0px, white 1px 1px 0px, white 1px -1px 0px, white -1px 1px 0px; background-image: url("/sites/all/assets/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0% 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x;">donated</a> $7,500 to that campaign and deployed field staffers and other personnel to Kentucky to support Paul during his primary fight against establishment-backed Trey Grayson. In an <a href="http://leestranahan.com/email-shows-national-right-to-work-committees-gameplan-states-for-2010/" target="blank" style="color: black; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: white -1px 0px 0px, white 0px 1px 0px, white 1px 0px 0px, white 0px -1px 0px, white -1px -1px 0px, white 1px 1px 0px, white 1px -1px 0px, white -1px 1px 0px; background-image: url("/sites/all/assets/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0% 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x;">email sent </a>the day after Paul's primary upset, an NRTWC staffer congratulated the committee's field organizers: "What a week of History, and you get to say you were a part of it. Nice job!"He has frequently <a href="http://righttoworkcommittee.org/facebook/randpaulforward.htm" target="blank" style="color: black; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: white -1px 0px 0px, white 0px 1px 0px, white 1px 0px 0px, white 0px -1px 0px, white -1px -1px 0px, white 1px 1px 0px, white 1px -1px 0px, white -1px 1px 0px; background-image: url("/sites/all/assets/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0% 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x;">lent his name</a> to NRTWC fundraising emails and<a href="http://righttoworkcommittee.org/rprtwa_petition.aspx" target="blank" style="color: black; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: white -1px 0px 0px, white 0px 1px 0px, white 1px 0px 0px, white 0px -1px 0px, white -1px -1px 0px, white 1px 1px 0px, white 1px -1px 0px, white -1px 1px 0px; background-image: url("/sites/all/assets/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0% 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x;">petitions</a> drumming up support for the bill and the group. Days after Paul took office,<a href="http://righttoworkcommittee.org/facebook/randpaulforward.htm" target="blank" style="color: black; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: white -1px 0px 0px, white 0px 1px 0px, white 1px 0px 0px, white 0px -1px 0px, white -1px -1px 0px, white 1px 1px 0px, white 1px -1px 0px, white -1px 1px 0px; background-image: url("/sites/all/assets/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0% 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x;"> an NRTWC email blast</a> went out under his name spelling out his intentions: "They snickered when I said I came to the US Senate to change Congress," it reads. "But their laughter stopped when I sponsored the National Right to Work Act to free US workers from forced unionization and break Big Labor's multi-billion dollar political machine forever."</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 28px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just as the libertarian-leaning Pauls have worn the Republican label with unease, the 60-year-old NRTWC hasn't always played well with the conservative movement or the GOP. (The mantra inside NRTWC, says an ex-staffer from the 1990s, was: "We're Right-to-Work. We hate everybody.") The group's origins on the far right (its longest-serving president, Reed Larson, was affiliated with the John Birch Society) and fixation solely on defeating labor unions created a cultlike atmosphere in which even allies on the right were viewed with suspicion. "There has been a culture from the beginning of isolation and hyper-self-reliance," says a former NRTWC senior staffer. "It's the hermit kingdom of the conservative movement."</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 28px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, throughout the '80s and '90s, the committee gained respect for its brutally efficient political operation. It was one of the first outside groups to create an in-house phone bank to influence elections around the country, an operation that proved so successful that NRTWC spun it off into a stand-alone firm named Liberty Phone Center, Inc. Mike Rothfeld, a heavily caffeinated, hard-charging mentor to a generation of Virginia political consultants, cut his teeth running NRTWC's direct-mail shop; he went on to form his own fundraising firm, Saber Communications, the Paul World's go-to consultancy. (A born-again Southerner whose office features a mural of Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart, Rothfeld is no libertarian: He once<a href="http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/02/what-ron-paul-inc-really-thinks-about.html" target="_blank" style="color: black; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: white -1px 0px 0px, white 0px 1px 0px, white 1px 0px 0px, white 0px -1px 0px, white -1px -1px 0px, white 1px 1px 0px, white 1px -1px 0px, white -1px 1px 0px; background-image: url("/sites/all/assets/orange-border.png"); background-position: 0% 90%; background-repeat: repeat-x;">referred</a> to Ron Paul's most die-hard supporters as "cwazy wabbits.")</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A group that fashions itself the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">conservative alternative to the <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000082">National Rifle Association</a> </span>and uses Republican Sen. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00030836&cycle=2012">Rand Paul</a>'s
name and image in its fundraising appeals has longstanding ties to the
Paul family, according to various corporate and campaign filings.
The <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00481200&cycle=2012">National Association for Gun Rights</a> has been ruffling GOP feathers by <font color="#FF0000">targeting two conservatives, House Majority Whip <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00013131&cycle=2012">Eric Cantor</a> and Rep. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00030962&cycle=2012">Scott Rigell</a>,
both Virginia Republicans, with ads accusing them of being soft </font>on the
issue. The ads feature images of them morphing into Barack Obama as the
narrator accuses both of trying to assist the president in implementing
strict gun control policies.
</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Politifact
Virginia found enough distortions in the Rigell ad to warrant a <font color="#FF0000">"pants
on fire"</font> rating. And Cantor and Rigell both received high marks from the
National Rifle Association in 2012 -- Cantor earned an A+ and Rigell an
A-.
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></div>
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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rigell has called out Paul for allowing himself to be used in the group's marketing efforts, but so far his complaints have fallen on deaf
ears.
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul's office didn't return calls seeking
comment, but his chief-of-staff, Doug Stafford, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/rand-paul-backed-group-attacks-republicans-89561.html">told Politico</a> that the
senator is "not affiliated with the group in any way, he doesn’t control
how they decide their activism should take place in terms of who the
people are that need to be shored up on an issue.”
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the Kentucky senator and his family are connected to at least some prominent officials at the organization.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">OpenSecrets
Blog found that, according to annual <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/GunRights2013.pdf">corporate reports</a> filed in
Virginia, where the National Association for Gun Rights is set up as a
politically active 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, one of the five
members of the group's board of directors is a man named<b> Michael I.
Rothfield. Rothfield (pictured at left) is the <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/Saber%20Communications%202013.pdf">sole director</a> of a political consulting firm
called </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b><a target="_blank" href="http://saberinc.net/about_us.html">Saber Communications</a>. </b>OpenSecrets.org data shows that Rand
Paul'</span>s 2010 Senate campaign <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/expend.php?cycle=2010&cid=N00030836&type=I">paid Saber Communications roughly $847,000</a>. Saber was also the single largest vendor being paid by Paul's leadership PAC in the 2012 cycle, <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/expenditures.php?cycle=2012&cmte=C00493924">receiving $143,000 in payments</a>.
In the same election cycle, the gun rights group <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/expenditures.php?cycle=2012&cmte=C00481200">donated $5,000</a> to Paul's leadership PAC. Paul's office did not return multiple calls seeking comment.
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But
Rand Paul wasn't Saber's biggest client in recent years. That would be
his father. In the 2012 cycle, now retired Rep. Ron Paul's presidential
campaign paid Saber <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/expend.php?cycle=2012&id=N00005906">almost $7.7 million</a> -- making Saber the campaign's second highest-paid vendor. Rothfield was <a target="_blank" href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0911/How_Ron_Paul_won_the_debate.html">singled out</a>
by Paul's own campaign staff as a top adviser who helped make his
presidential bid as successful as it was. Ron Paul's leadership PAC, <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2012&strID=C00234641">Liberty PAC</a>, also hired Saber, <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/expenditures.php?cycle=2012&cmte=C00234641">paying the firm $67,000</a>.
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">OpenSecrets.org data shows that at least one other prominent Republican hired Rothfield's company:<b> Minnesota Rep. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cycle=2012&cid=N00027493,&type=I">Michele<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Bachmann</span></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">'s </span>congressional campaign <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/expend.php?cid=N00027493,&cycle=2012">paid Saber $362,500</a> in 2012. </b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rothfield did not respond to a phone message asking him to comment.
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And
there's another Paul connection to a prominent member of the National
Association for Gun Rights board. Attorney David A. Warrington, who is
listed as the organization's president, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.leclairryan.com/david-a-warrington/">works</a>
for Virginia law firm LeClairRyan -- which was paid by the Ron Paul
presidential campaign. Warrington was hired by the Paul campaign to <a target="blank" href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/08/ron_paul_backers_wont_back_dow.html">challenge</a> <a target="blank" href="http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/alaska-gop-warned-stop-meddling-ron-paul-delegates">various</a> Republican state party moves to block convention delegates backing Paul.
</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Iowa Gun Owners</font></b></div><div><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></b></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The
National Association for Gun Rights also took steps during the
presidential primary to boost support for the elder Paul's bid in the
weeks running up to the Iowa caucuses -- while two of the group's
directors were on the payroll of the Paul campaign. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Dec. 2, 2011, Iowa residents <a target="_blank" href="http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2011/12/02/robo-calls-in-iowa-accuse-newt-gingrich-of-anti-gun-record/">received robocalls</a>
which, according to the message, were paid for by the National
Association for Gun Rights and a group called the Iowa Gun Owners. The
calls targeted then-presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, unfavorably
comparing him to Paul and Bachmann, who were both his rivals in the
state caucuses.
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"With the Iowa
caucuses just weeks away, Gingrich still refuses to answer the Iowa Gun
Owners presidential gun rights survey," the recording claimed. "What is
he hiding? Congressman Paul and Congresswoman Bachmann have completed
their survey 100 percent correct" [sic].
</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According
to filings made by the Paul presidential campaign, between Nov. 15 and
Dec. 20, 2011, Saber Communications was paid $1.5 million by the
campaign for mailings and consulting. During that period Warrington's
firm was also paid $16,000 for legal consulting. Bachmann's campaign
filings show that Saber Communications was paid earlier in 2011 and in
February of 2012. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><i>Images: Photo of Mike Rothfeld via Flckr user <a target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/8005189897/sizes/l/">Gage Skidmore</a>.</i></font></div>
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