Maverick STRATEGIES

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</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/can-the-republicans-be-saved-from-obsolescence.html?r=0</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;"><b>Can the Republicans Be Saved From Obsolescence?</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">By ROBERT DRAPER</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">FEB. 14, 2013</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One afternoon last month, I paid a visit to two young Republicans named <b>Bret Jacobson</b> and Ian Spencer, who work in a small office in Arlington, Va., situated above an antique store and adjacent to a Japanese auto shop. </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Their five-man company, Red Edge, is a digital-advocacy group for conservative causes,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> and their days are typically spent </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">designing software applications for groups like the Heritage Foundation, the Republican Governors Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Lately, however, Jacobson and Spencer have taken up evangelizing — and the sermon, delivered day after day to fellow conservatives in the form of a 61-point presentation, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">is a pitiless we-told-you-so elucidation of the ways in which Democrats have overwhelmed Republicans with their technological superiority.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">They walked me through a series of slides showing the wide discrepancies between the two campaigns. “And just to make them feel really bad,” Jacobson said as he punched another image onto the overhead screen. “We say, ‘Just wait — this is the most important slide.’ And this is what kills them, because conservatives always look at young voters like the hot girl they could never date.” He read aloud from the text: “1.25 million more young people supported Obama in 2012 over 2008.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
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</span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the light of his Apple monitor, Jacobson’s grin took on a Luciferian glow. He is 33, wiry and well dressed and has the twitchy manner of a highly caffeinated techie. “And then we continue with the cavalcade of pain,”</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> he said. The next chart showed that while the Romney campaign raised slightly more money from its online ads than it spent on them, Obama’s team more than doubled the return on its online-ad investment.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Spencer chimed in: “That’s when one of our clients moaned, ‘It’s even worse than I thought.’ ” Spencer, who is 29, possesses the insectlike eyes of a committed programmer.<b> He and Jacobson are alumni of the University of Oregon, where they both worked on the Commentator, a conservative alternative paper whose slogan was, “Free Minds, Free Markets, Free Booze.”</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Then, once people think we’ve gotten them through the worst,” Jacobson said, “we pile on more — just the way Obama did.” He put up Slide 26, titled, “Running Up the Score.” “Obama was the very first candidate to appear on Reddit. We ask our clients, ‘</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Do you know what Reddit is?’ And only one of them did. Then we show them this photo of Obama hugging his wife with the caption ‘Four more years’ — an image no conservative likes. And we tell them, ‘Because of the way the Obama campaign used things like Reddit, that photo is the single-most popular image ever seen on Twitter or Facebook.’ Just to make sure there’s plenty of salt in the wound.”</span></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Back in August 2011, Jacobson wrote an op-ed in Forbes alerting Republicans to Obama’s lead on the digital front. His warnings were disregarded. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Then last summer, he and Spencer approached the conservative super PAC American Crossroads with their digital-tool-building strategies and, they say, were politely ignored.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> It’s understandable, then, that a touch of schadenfreude is evident when Jacobson and Spencer receive the policy-group gurus and trade-association lobbyists who file into Red Edges’s office to receive a comeuppance.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">“Business is booming for us,” Jacobson said. “We’ll double or triple our bottom line this year, easily. But this isn’t about getting new business. We need the entire right side of the aisle to get smart fast. And the only way they can do that is to appreciate how big the chasm was.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Exhibit A is the performance of the Romney brain trust, which has suffered an unusually vigorous postelection thrashing for badly losing a winnable race. Criticism begins with the candidate — a self-described data-driven chief executive who put his trust in alarmingly off-the-mark internal polls and apparently did not think to ask his subordinates why, for example, they were operating on the assumption that fewer black voters would turn out for Obama than in 2008. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Romney’s senior strategist, Stuart Stevens, may well be remembered by historians, as one House Republican senior staff member put it to me, “as the last guy to run a presidential campaign who never tweeted.” (“</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It was raised many times with him,” a senior Romney official told me, “and he was very categorical about not wanting to and not thinking it was worth it.”)</span></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Under the stewardship of Zac Moffatt, whose firm, Targeted Victory, commandeered the 2012 digital operations of the Romney campaign, American Crossroads and the Republican National Committee, Team Romney managed to connect with 12 million Facebook friends, triple that of Obama’s operation in 2008; but Obama in 2012 accrued 33 million friends and deployed them as online ambassadors who in turn contacted their Facebook friends, thereby demonstrably increasing the campaign’s get-out-the-vote efforts in a way that dwarfed the Republicans’.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> While Romney’s much-hyped get-out-the-vote digital tool, Orca, famously crashed on Election Day, Obama’s digital team unveiled Narwhal, a state-of-the-art data platform that gave every member of the campaign instant access to continuously updated information on voters, volunteer availability and phone-bank activity. And despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars, the Romney television-ad-making apparatus proved to be no match for the Obama operation, which enlisted Rentrak, the data corporation for satellite and cable companies, through which it accrued an entirely new layer of information about each and every consumer, giving the campaign the ability to customize cable TV ads.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">“They were playing chess while we were playing checkers,” a senior member of the campaign’s digital team somberly told another top Romney aide shortly after the election. Later, the top aide would participate in a postelection forum with Obama’s campaign manager. He told me (albeit, like a few people I spoke to, under the condition that he not be identified criticizing his party), “I remember thinking, when Jim Messina was going over the specifics of how they broke down and targeted the electorate: ‘I can’t play this game. I have to play a different game, so that I don’t look like an idiot in front of all these people.’ ”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
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</span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But the problem for the G.O.P. extends well beyond its flawed candidate and his flawed operation. The unnerving truth, which the Red Edge team and other younger conservatives worry that their leaders have yet to appreciate, is that the Republican Party’s technological deficiencies barely begin to explain why the G.O.P. has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. The party brand — which is to say, its message and its messengers — has become practically abhorrent to emerging demographic groups like Latinos and African-Americans, not to mention an entire generation of young voters. As one of the party’s most highly respected strategists told me: “</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It ought to concern people that the most Republican part of the electorate under Ronald Reagan were 18-to-29-year-olds. And today, people I know who are under 40 are embarrassed to say they’re Republicans. They’re embarrassed! They get harassed for it, the same way we used to give liberals a hard time.”</span></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">It was not long after the election that elder statesmen of the G.O.P. began offering assurances that all would soon be right. But younger Republicans were not buying it. On Dec. 6, Moffatt addressed an audience of party digital specialists at the R.N.C.’s Capitol Hill Club. Moffatt spoke confidently about how, among other things, the Romney digital team had pretty much all the same tools the Obama campaign possessed. Bret Jacobson was shocked when he read about Moffatt’s claim the next day. “That’s like saying, ‘This Potemkin village will bring us all prosperity!’ ” Jacobson told me. “There’s something to be said for putting on a happy face — except when it makes you sound like Baghdad Bob.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">A few days after the Moffatt gathering, the R.N.C.’s chairman, Reince Priebus, announced that the committee would conduct a wide-ranging investigation — called the Growth and Opportunity Project — into the ways the party was going astray. To guide the investigation were familiar names, like the former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, the longtime Florida operative Sally Bradshaw and the R.N.C. veteran Henry Barbour. Erik Telford, the 28-year-old founder of the RightOnline bloggers’ convention, told me that he found himself wondering aloud: “Do you want an aggressive investigation from people who’ve built their careers on asking skeptical questions? Or do you want a report from people who are symptomatic of what’s gone wrong?”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Equally galling to younger Republicans was the op-ed Stuart Stevens wrote in The Washington Post on Nov. 28. In it, Romney’s top strategist struck an unrepentant tone, proudly noting that the candidate “carried the majority of middle-class voters” and that the party therefore “must be doing something right.” From her office near the Capitol, Kristen Soltis Anderson, a 28-year-old G.O.P. pollster, tried not to come unglued. “But you didn’t win the election,” she told me she thought at the time. “I’m really glad you scored that touchdown in the third quarter, I am — but you lost the game!”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Anderson is a fantasy-football fanatic, with the rat-a-tat argumentative cadence that gives her away as a former high-school debater. Upon graduating from college, she became the lead singer of the Frustrations, a rock-ska group that folded, as only a D.C.-based band could, when one member decided to attend law school and another needed more time to study for the bar exam. Anderson, for her part, is now a pollster and vice president of the Winston Group</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Like the Red Edge partners and virtually every other young Republican with whom I spoke, she regards herself as a socially tolerant, limited-government fiscal conservative. (Today Republicans of all age groups strenuously avoid describing themselves as “moderate,” a term that the far right has made radioactive.) Camera-ready and compulsively perky — she has twice appeared on Bill Maher’s ”Real Time” panel as a token conservative — she nonetheless lapses into despondency when talking about her party’s current state of denial.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> During one of the postelection panels, Anderson heard a journalist talk about his interviews with Romney staff members who had hoped to build a winning coalition of white voters. “That just stunned me,” she told me one afternoon over coffee. “I thought: Did you not see the census? Because there was one! And it had some pretty big news — like that America’s biggest growing population is the Latino community! Surprise, surprise! How have we not grasped that this is going to be really important?”</span></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">One afternoon last month, I flew with Anderson to Columbus, Ohio, to watch her conduct two focus groups. The first consisted of 10 single, middle-class women in their 20s; the second, of 10 20-something men who were either jobless or employed but seeking better work. All of them voted for Obama but did not identify themselves as committed Democrats and were sufficiently ambivalent about the president’s performance that Anderson deemed them within reach of the Republicans. Each group sat around a large conference table with the pollster, while I viewed the proceedings from behind a panel of one-way glass.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">The all-female focus group began with a sobering assessment of the Obama economy. All of the women spoke gloomily about the prospect of paying off student loans, about what they believed to be Social Security’s likely insolvency and about their children’s schooling. A few of them bitterly opined that the Democrats care little about the working class but lavish the poor with federal aid. “You get more off welfare than you would at a minimum-wage job,” observed one of them. Another added, “And if you have a kid, you’re set up for life!”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">About an hour into the session, Anderson walked up to a whiteboard and took out a magic marker. “I’m going to write down a word, and you guys free-associate with whatever comes to mind,” she said. The first word she wrote was “Democrat.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">“Young people,” one woman called out.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">“Liberal,” another said. Followed by: “Diverse.” “Bill Clinton.”“Change.”“Open-minded.”“Spending.”“Handouts.”“Green.”“More science-based.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
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</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">When Anderson then wrote “Republican,” the outburst was immediate and vehement: “Corporate greed.”“Old.”“Middle-aged white men.” “Rich.” “Religious.” “Conservative.” “Hypocritical.” “Military retirees.” “Narrow-minded.” “Rigid.” “Not progressive.” “Polarizing.” “Stuck in their ways.” “Farmers.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Anderson concluded the group on a somewhat beseeching note. “Let’s talk about Republicans,” she said. “What if anything could they do to earn your vote?”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">A self-identified anti-abortion, “very conservative” 27-year-old Obama voter named Gretchen replied: “Don’t be so right wing! You know, on abortion, they’re so out there. That all-or-nothing type of thing, that’s the way Romney came across. And you know, come up with ways to compromise.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">“What would be the sign to you that the Republican Party is moving in the right direction?” Anderson asked them.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">“Maybe actually pass something?” suggested a 28-year-old schoolteacher named Courtney, who also identified herself as conservative.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">The session with the young men was equally jarring. None of them expressed great enthusiasm for Obama. But their depiction of Republicans was even more lacerating than the women’s had been. “Racist,” “out of touch” and “hateful” made the list — “and put ‘1950s’ on there too!” one called out.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Showing a reverence for understatement, Anderson said: “A lot of those words you used to describe Republicans are negative. What could they say or do to make you feel more positive about the Republican Party?”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">“Be more pro-science,” said a 22-year-old moderate named Jack. “Embrace technology and change.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">“Stick to your strong suit,” advised Nick, a 23-year-old African-American. “Clearly social issues aren’t your strong suit. Stop trying to fight the battle that’s already been fought and trying to bring back a movement. Get over it — you lost.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Later that evening at a hotel bar, Anderson pored over her notes. She seemed morbidly entranced, like a homicide detective gazing into a pool of freshly spilled blood. In the previous few days, the pollster interviewed Latino voters in San Diego and young entrepreneurs in Orlando. The findings were virtually unanimous. No one could understand the G.O.P.’s hot-blooded opposition to gay marriage or its perceived affinity for invading foreign countries. Every group believed that the first place to cut spending was the defense budget. During the whiteboard drill, every focus group described Democrats as “open-minded” and Republicans as “rigid.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">“There is a brand,” the 28-year-old pollster concluded of her party with clinical finality. “And it’s that we’re not in the 21st century.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Of course, many conservatives like their brand just the way it is, regardless of what century it seems to belong to. Anderson did not relish a tug of war over the party’s identity between them and more open-minded Republicans. She talked to me about Jon Huntsman, the presidential candidate whose positions on climate change and social issues she admired, and the unseemly spectacle of his denigrating the far right. To prosper, the party should not have to eat its own, she maintained. Still, to hear her focus-group subjects tell it, the voice of today’s G.O.P. is repellent to young voters. Can that voice, belonging to the party’s most fevered members, still be accommodated even as young Republicans seek to bring their party into the modern era?</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">This conundrum has been a frequent postelection topic as youthful conservative dissidents huddle in taverns and homes and — among friends, in the manner of early-20th-century Bolsheviks — proceed to speak the unspeakable about the ruling elite. I sat in on one such gathering on a Saturday evening in early February — convened at a Russian bar in Midtown Manhattan, over Baltika beers. The group of a half-dozen or so conservative pundits and consultants calls itself Proximus, which is Latin for “next,” and they seem to revel in their internal disagreements. One of them argued, “Not all regulation is bad,” while another countered, “I hate all regulations, every single one of them” — including, he cheerfully admitted, minimum-wage and child-labor laws. Nonetheless, the focal point of Proximus’s mission is not policy formulation but salesmanship: how to bring new voters into the fold while remaining true to conservative principles.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">“This is a long-term play,” conceded John Goodwin, a founder of the group and former chief of staff to the outspoken conservative congressman Raúl Labrador. “This isn’t going to happen by 2014. But we want to be able to show voters that we have a diversity of opinion. Right now, Republicans have such a small number of vocal messengers. What we want to do is add more microphones and eventually drown out the others.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">“And we can’t be afraid to call out Rush Limbaugh,” said Goodwin’s fiancée, S. E. Cupp, a New York Daily News columnist and a co-host of ”The Cycle” on MSNBC. “If we can get three Republicans on three different networks saying, ‘What Rush Limbaugh said is crazy and stupid and dangerous,’ maybe that’ll give other Republicans cover” to denounce the talk-show host as well.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Cupp, who is 33, defines her brand of conservatism as “rational — and optimistic!” She is staunchly anti-abortion but also pro-gay-marriage and a “warheads on foreheads” hawk whose heroes are Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley Jr. Like many Republicans today — and indeed like liberal Democrats in the 1980s, before Bill Clinton came along and charted a more centrist course — Cupp finds herself in the unenviable position of maintaining that Americans largely side with her party’s worldview, even if their votes suggest otherwise. “Public polling still puts the country center-right on a host of issues,” she told me.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">The problem is that her party’s loudest voices sound far more right than center. The voters in Kristen Soltis Anderson’s focus groups condemned Republicans for their unchecked hatred of Obama and for threatening to take away financing for Planned Parenthood, ban abortion, outlaw gay marriage and wage war. From where they stood, at the center-right of S. E. Cupp’s domain, the party had been dragged well out of plain view.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Proximus seeks to marginalize the more strident talking heads by offering itself up to — or if necessary, forcing itself upon — the party as a 21st-century mouthpiece. “If I were training a candidate who’s against gay marriage,” Cupp told me, “I’d say: ‘Don’t change your beliefs, just say legislatively this is not a priority, and I’m not going to take away someone’s right. And if abortion or gay marriage is your No. 1 issue, I’m not your guy.’ ”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">I tried to imagine how Cupp’s kinder-gentler message-coaching would go over with the Tea Party, a group that was never mentioned by the young Republicans I spoke with until I broached it. Still, the influence of the far right on the party’s image remains hard to ignore. When I brought up the subject of the Tea Party to Cupp, she said: “People aren’t repelled by the idea of limited government or balancing the budget or lowering taxes. Those Tea Party principles are incredibly popular with the public, even if they don’t know it. Again, that’s a messaging issue, that’s not a principle issue.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">She went on to say, “I don’t think we win by subtraction” — meaning, by casting out the party’s right wing to entice the centrists. Instead, Cupp and her fellow travelers hope to revive Lee Atwater’s bygone “big tent,” under which gay people and Tea Party members and isolationists and neocons would coexist without rancor. But Atwater, the legendary R.N.C. chairman, did not have to worry about freelance voices like Limbaugh and Todd Akin offending whole swaths of emerging demographic groups. Nor during the Atwater era, when Ronald Reagan was president, did the party’s most extreme wing intimidate other Republicans into legislating like extremists themselves, thereby further tarnishing the party’s image. When I mentioned this to the Proximus gathering, Goodwin explained the dilemma faced by Republicans in Congress. “What forces them to vote that way, 9 times out of 10, is a fear of a primary challenge,” he said. “What we hope to accomplish is to bring more voters into Republican primaries, so that it isn’t just the far right that shows up at the polls.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">The dilemma, Goodwin acknowledged, is that the far-right rhetoric may well repel such voters from participating in G.O.P. primaries to begin with. “We recognize that this isn’t something that’s going to happen anytime soon,” he said.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On Nov. 30, more than 2,000 progressives shuffled into the Washington Convention Center to participate in </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">RootsCamp, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">an annual series of seminars hosted by the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">New Organizing Institute, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">where the most cutting-edge digital and grass-roots organizing techniques are discussed. The shaggy and the achingly earnest are well represented at RootsCamp, which makes it an easy target of derision from the right. A reporter from the conservative publication The Daily Caller attended the postelection gathering in 2010 and made great sport of the “unconference,” with its self-conscious inclusiveness, which the reporter termed “multilingual, multicultural and multi-unpurposeful.”</span></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">But the handful of conservatives who attended the conference this past November were in no mood to sneer. One was Patrick Ruffini, a 34-year-old leader of the G.O.P.’s young-and-restless digerati. At RootsCamp, his breathless tweets of the sessions held by top Obama organizers — “In eight years, calling people will be obsolete”; “Digital organizing director and field director will be one and the same” — set off a buzz among Republican techies. Ruffini was plainly impressed by the openness of the experience. “I’m like, Wow, they’re doing this in front of 2,000 people, and the system seems to actually work,” he told me a month later. “The thing I was struck by at RootsCamp was that in many ways, the Democratic technology ecosystem has embraced the free market — whereas the Republican one sort of runs on socialism, with the R.N.C. being the overlord.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The success of the RootsCamp, and its smaller and more intensive offshoot gathering, the New Media Boot Camp, helps explain the yawning digital divide between the two parties. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2006, a few holdovers from the Howard Dean and John Kerry campaigns eschewed lucrative offers from Washington consulting firms in order to devote some of their time to the communal information-sharing ideals of the New Organizing Institute. Since then, numerous Boot Camp alumni have gone on to help run the tech operations of the Obama campaign and throughout the Democratic Party infrastructure, while RootsCamp has served as a crash course in best practices for thousands of lefties.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Young Republicans now lament that no one from their side has stepped up to organize a conservative version of RootsCamp. Michael Turk, a 42-year-old Republican digital guru, suggested that the failure of G.O.P. technologists to do this springs from a uniquely Republican trait. “They all wanted to make money,” he said. “And so as a result, Katie Harbath, who was one of my deputies at the R.N.C., is now at Facebook, and Mindy Finn” — a longtime G.O.P. digital operative — “is at Twitter, and Patrick and I each started our own companies. We all found ways to parlay that into a living for our families, as opposed to just doing it for the cause.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Several G.O.P. digital specialists told me that, in addition, they found it difficult to recruit talent because of the values espoused by the party. “I know a lot of people who do technology for a living,” Turk said. “And almost universally, there’s a libertarian streak that runs through them — information should be free, do your own thing and leave me alone, that sort of mind-set. That’s very much what the Internet is. And almost to a person that I’ve talked to, they say, ‘Yeah, I would probably vote for Republicans, but I can’t get past the gay-marriage ban, the abortion stance, all of these social causes.’ Almost universally, they see a future where you have more options, not less. So questions about whether you can be married to the person you want to be married to just flies in the face of the future. They don’t want to be part of an organization that puts them squarely on the wrong side of history.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Many young conservatives also said that technological innovation runs at cross-purposes with the party’s corporate rigidity. “There’s a feeling that Republican politics are more hierarchical than in the Democratic Party,” Ben Domenech, a 31-year-old blogger and research fellow at the libertarian Heartland Institute, told me. “There are always elders at the top who say, ‘That’s not important.’ And that’s where the left has beaten us, by giving smart people the space and trusting them to have success. It’s a fundamentally anti-entrepreneurial model we’ve embraced.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Erik Telford explained it this way: “I think there’s a very incestuous community of consultants who profit off certain tactics, and that creates bias and inhibits innovation.” Telford was suggesting that many of the party leaders, like Karl Rove and his American Crossroads super PAC, saw no financial advantage to bringing in avant-garde digital specialists, the types who were embraced by the Obama operation. For that matter, Zac Moffatt and his firm, Targeted Victory, enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the G.O.P.’s digital business during the lackluster 2012 cycle, which has made Moffatt an irresistible symbol for all that’s clubby and backward-thinking about the party. As Bret Jacobson said, half-jokingly, “If you have one firm that’s doing the top candidate, plus the R.N.C., plus the top outside group — the Department of Justice, in any other industry, would be actively asking questions.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One of several </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">G.O.P. digital whizzes who went unused by Moffatt’s shop in 2012 was Vincent Harris, a savvy 24-year-old social-media consultant whose efforts in Texas helped catapult Ted Cruz to an upset victory over a better-known candidate in the U.S. Senate primary.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Harris told me he saw the Romney campaign as “a very insular, closed operation,” symptomatic of a partywide affliction. “There’s an old guard in Republican politics, and that old guard is mostly made up of television and direct-mail consultants,” he said. “And you can say that’s generational — but at the same time, David Axelrod has to be the same age as Karl Rove, right? The old guard in the Democratic Party made the adjustment with the Obama digital operation. There hasn’t been a concerted effort among the established G.O.P. folks to figure this stuff out.”</span></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Harris suffers no illusions that the Roves of his party will turn over the keys to young techies like him. “We’re the second rung,” he told me. “The first tier isn’t going away for another 20 years.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">It is Harris’s last point — that the G.O.P. is stuck with its current leadership for the next decade or more — that incites particular angst in young Republicans. With palpable envy, they describe the forward-leaning impulses of the Obama campaign: Axelrod’s tweeting endlessly; the deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter’s becoming a YouTube dynamo with her sassy Web rebuttals to the Romney campaign; Jim Messina’s traveling westward to receive wisdom from Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs and Steven Spielberg. (From Spielberg, about not trying to replicate their 2008 campaign: “You can only be the Rolling Stones from 1965 once. And then you’re a touring band that has to sell tickets each time you come to town.”) One leading G.O.P. digital operative told me: “We’re looking for someone who comes to us and is like: ‘All right, what do we need to do? I’m going to trust you to do it, I’m going to give you a real budget, you’ll have a seat at the table and will be just as important as the communications guy and the field guy. And you know what, those other guys need to be more modern, too, and that’s the campaign we’re going to run. So let’s start plotting out how we’re going to do that.’ ”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Echoing the opinion of nearly every other young Republican with whom I spoke, the operative concluded sadly, “And we haven’t had that person yet.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The person they are seeking is the Republican incarnation of David Plouffe — the seemingly unremarkable Hill staffer and itinerant consultant who, like the Howard Dean strategist Joe Trippi before him, recognized that the only way his relatively unknown and underfinanced candidate could prevail over the front-runner would be to muster a guerrilla operation. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">To accomplish this, in 2007, Plouffe met with a 25-year-old former Dean techie named Joe Rospars and promptly enlisted him to help marshal candidate Obama’s volunteer support through high-tech means. Plouffe, Rospars told me, became the champion of “using digital to build the campaign from the bottom up.” Employing then-nascent social media channels like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, Rospars’s team raised enormous sums of money online while also plugging a nationwide grass-roots network into Obama’s get-out-the-vote efforts. Four years later, Stephanie Cutter said, “Plouffe was a big proponent” of completely reimagining the 2008 effort.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
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</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">A few days before this year’s inauguration — after which he would take leave of the Obama White House and of politics as a profession — Plouffe met with me in his small and uncluttered West Wing office. He wore a blue shirt and a purple tie and, with his work now done, was uncharacteristically expansive. He told me he was surprised by the Romney campaign’s strategic shortcomings. After naming one particular member of Romney’s high command, he said, “We had 15 people more qualified to do that job than him.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Plouffe cut his teeth as the deputy chief of staff of Representative Dick Gephardt, whose impressive farm team also included those who would go on to be White House advisers, like Paul Begala, George Stephanopoulos and Bill Burton. Now it was the Obama operation that, he said, “is going to generate a lot of people who are going to run presidential and Senate campaigns.” They were apt pupils of a campaign that was “a perfect-storm marriage between grass-roots energy and digital technology.” He continued: “Not having that is like Nixon not shaving before his first debate — you’ve got to understand the world you’re competing in. Our thinking always was, We don’t want people when they interact with the Obama campaign to have it be a deficient experience compared to how they shop or how they get their news. People don’t say, ‘Well, you’re a political campaign, so I expect you to be slower and less interesting.’ Right? We wanted it to be like Amazon. And I still don’t think the Republicans are there.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">But, I asked Plouffe, wasn’t the G.O.P. just one postmodern presidential candidate — say, a Senator Marco Rubio — away from getting back into the game?</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Pouncing, he replied: “Let me tell you something. The Hispanic voters in Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico don’t give a damn about Marco Rubio, the Tea Party Cuban-American from Florida. You know what? We won the Cuban vote! And it’s because younger Cubans are behaving differently than their parents. It’s probably my favorite stat of the whole campaign. So this notion that Marco Rubio is going to heal their problems — it’s not even sophomoric; it’s juvenile! And by the way: the bigger problem they’ve got with Latinos isn’t immigration. It’s their economic policies and health care. The group that supported the president’s health care bill the most? Latinos.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Plouffe readily conceded that he and his generation held no iron grip on political wisdom, but then he flashed a grin when I brought up the R.N.C.’s Growth and Opportunity Project, composed of party stalwarts. “If there’s a review board the Democrats put together in 2032, or even 2020, and I’m on it,” he said, “we’re screwed.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">The Republicans did in fact recently have a David Plouffe of their own. As one G.O.P. techie elegantly put it, “We were the smart ones, back in ’04, eons ago.” Referring to the campaign that re-elected George W. Bush, Plouffe told me: “You know how in fantasy baseball you imagine putting up your team against the 1927 Yankees? We would’ve liked to have faced off against the 2004 Republicans. Beating the Clintons” — during the 2008 primaries — “that was, in terms of scale of difficulty, significantly above beating Romney. But going up against the Bushies — that would’ve been something we all would’ve relished.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Continue reading the main story</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Plouffe wasn’t referring to competing against Bush’s oft-described architect, Karl Rove — but rather, against the campaign manager, Ken Mehlman. “Mehlman got technology and organization and the truth is — I think it’s completely misunderstood — it was Ken’s campaign,” Plouffe said. He added that he and Mehlman were friends, and that during the 2012 cycle, Mehlman — who had been informally advising the Romney campaign — was also “very free with advice about structure, how they dealt with an incumbent president, how they dealt with debate prep.” (Similarly, the former Bush senior strategist Matthew Dowd told me that Axelrod reached out to him for advice and they sat down together. “Which never happened with me and Romney-world.”)</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mehlman, according to Bush campaign officials, persuaded Rove to invest heavily in microtargeting (a data-driven means of identifying and reaching select groups of voters), which helped deliver Ohio and thus the election</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. He advocated reaching out to minority voters both as Bush’s campaign manager and later as chairman of the R.N.C., where he also instructed his staff to read “Moneyball.” “I was like, ‘What does a baseball book have to do with politics?’ ” said Michael Turk, who worked for Mehlman at the R.N.C. “Once I actually took the time to digest it, I realized what he was trying to do — which was exactly the kind of thing that the Obama team just did: understanding that not every election is about home runs but instead getting a whole bunch of singles together that eventually add up to a win.”</span></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">I met with Mehlman one morning in his office near the Capitol. He left politics in 2007 and subsequently came out as gay — and after that, became a vigorous if behind-the-scenes supporter of legalizing same-sex marriage in New York and beyond. Mehlman is now a partner at the private-equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, wealthy and free from his party’s fetters. He was nonetheless hesitant to criticize his fellow Republicans, though implicitly his comments were damning.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">“There’s an important book by Ben Wattenberg and Richard Scammon called ‘The Real Majority,’ published in 1970,” Mehlman said as he leaned back in his chair. “The book explains in part how the Republican Party would go on to win five out of six presidential elections through the eyes of the ‘typical’ voter — a working-class couple in Dayton, Ohio. They’re white, worried about crime, feel burdened by taxes and feel like too many Democrats don’t understand these concerns.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Today’s typical voter, he went on to say, could be that same white couple in Dayton. “But here’s the difference,” he said. ‘They worry about economic mobility — can their kids get ahead or even keep up. Their next-door neighbors are Latino whose mom gets concerned when she hears talk about self-deportation or no driver’s licenses. And that couple has a gay niece and an African-American brother-in-law. And too many folks like the couple in Dayton today wonder if some of the G.O.P. understands their lives anymore.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
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</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Continue reading the main story</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">I asked him whether, as even some Republicans have suggested, Ronald Reagan would have trouble building a winning coalition today. “I think he could win, partly because Reagan wouldn’t be the Reagan he was in 1980,” Mehlman replied. “Reagan had an unbelievable intuitive understanding of the electorate, because he’d spent his life as the president of a large union, as an actor who understands his audience, as the governor of the largest state, as a corporate spokesman who traveled — Reagan spent his life listening to people and learning from them and adapting to their concerns. That’s why there were Reagan Democrats — ethnics, working-class voters, Southern voters. So I think a modern Reagan would understand the demography and where the new voters are and would’ve applied his principles accordingly.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">But could a modern-day Reagan, even with Ken Mehlman running his campaign, overcome the party’s angry and antiquated image? To win, a reincarnated Reagan — or a Rubio or a Chris Christie or a Bobby Jindal — would still have to satisfy his base of hard-line conservatives and captivate a new generation of voters at the same time. I ran this quandary by Kristen Soltis Anderson. “It’s a big challenge,” she acknowledged. “But I think that if you can earn the trust of the people, there are ways you can say, ‘Here’s why I take this position.’ I don’t know that someone like Rubio, who may be young and attractive and well spoken, could attract young voters despite his views on gay marriage. I do think that in the absence of a very compelling reason to vote for a candidate, those social issues can be deal-breakers for young voters. The challenge is: Can you make a case that’s so compelling that you can overcome those deal-breaker issues? And I don’t know the answer to that question.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Bret Jacobson, the Red Edge entrepreneur, insisted that the solution was ultimately a simple one. “I think the answer for a vibrant Republican Party is to make our North Star empowering every individual in this country to follow their own dream, free of legislative excesses,” he told me. “There are millions of Americans who take seriously their religious culture as well as traditions that have been handed down for centuries. And the party has to empower them to fight those battles in the social sphere, not in the government sphere. That’s harder work than taking control of the country for four years. But it’s the appropriate battle.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">But, I asked him, don’t social conservatives feel a moral obligation to legislate their beliefs? Did Jacobson really expect the Rick Santorums of his party to let a new generation of Republican leaders tell them what to accept and how to behave?</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Jacobson did not back down. “Even the Republican Party rejected Santorum,” he said. “He got some attention, and he certainly received votes. But he didn’t win.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">In a sense, however, Santorum and his fellow archconservatives did win, by tugging Mitt Romney and his pliable views rightward. Then Romney lost, and so did the Republicans.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Continue reading the main story</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Two days after Obama’s inauguration, Bret Jacobson flew to Charlotte to attend the R.N.C.’s winter conference and sit on a panel devoted to discussing new digital techniques. “Bret’s presentation was one of the best-received of the panel, by far,” the seminar’s organizer, Ryan Cassin, told me. Still, Jacobson was disappointed to see only 30 people in attendance. President Obama, meanwhile, announced the previous week that his campaign juggernaut would be transformed into an advocacy group, Organizing for Action, that would use the vast social network amassed during the 2012 cycle to advance the administration’s policy goals. The Republican panel amounted to a first step — a baby step — while the competition was lapping them.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Jacobson did not stick around the next day to hear Reince Priebus declare to the conferees, “We’re the party of innovation!” Instead, he left his own panel early to catch a plane back to Washington. Calls were continuing to come into Red Edge’s office from establishment Republicans inquiring about Jacobson and Spencer’s cautionary slide presentation.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Jacobson wanted to interpret this interest as a good thing. But I could tell from his voice that the experience at the R.N.C. conference deflated his hopes about Republicans being well on the road to enlightenment. “My primary worry,” he told me without his characteristic levity, “is that I’m going to become the Al Gore of the right” — meaning, a forecaster of doom, appreciated and unheeded as the clever if somewhat lonely guy who told them so.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Robert Draper is a contributing writer for the magazine. His most recent book is “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Editor: Ilena Silverman</span></div><div style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</font></span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></span></div><div><span style="line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Bret Jacobson and </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Ian Spencer a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">re two tech-savvy young Republican graduates of the University of Oregon -- how often do you see all those terms thrown together in one sentence? -- who received some priceless publicity in The New York Times Magazine this weekend.</span></font></span><p style="line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Jacobson and Spencer&nbsp;</span><a href="http://rededge.com/services" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">now run a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> pair</span></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">of</span><a href="http://maverick-strategies.com/about-us/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">conservative digital-advocacy companies</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;in <b>Arlington, Va.</b> and they were</span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/can-the-republicans-be-saved-from-obsolescence.html?pagewanted=all&r=0" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;heavily quoted in a Times magazine piece about how far the Republicans have fallen behind</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;the Democrats in using modern social media and digital marketing.</span></font></p><p style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The article explained how Jacobson, 33, and Spencer, 29, typically work on projects for a Who's Who of the right side of the political spectrum: the Heritage Foundation,&nbsp; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Republican Governors Association.</font></p><blockquote style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lately, however, Jacobson and Spencer have taken up evangelizing — and the sermon, delivered day after day to fellow conservatives in the form of a 61-point presentation, is a pitiless we-told-you-so elucidation of the ways in which Democrats have overwhelmed Republicans with their technological superiority.</font><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They walked me through a series of slides showing the wide discrepancies between the two campaigns. “And just to make them feel really bad,” Jacobson said as he punched another image onto the overhead screen. “We say, ‘Just wait — this is the most important slide.’ And this is what kills them, because conservatives always look at young voters like the hot girl they could never date.” He read aloud from the text: “1.25 million more young people supported Obama in 2012 over 2008.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the light of his Apple monitor, Jacobson’s grin took on a Luciferian glow. He is 33, wiry and well dressed and has the twitchy manner of a highlly caffeinated techie. “And then we continue with the cavalcade of pain,” he said. The next chart showed that while the Romney campaign raised slightly more money from its online ads than it spent on them, Obama’s team more than doubled the return on its online-ad investment.&nbsp;
</font></p></blockquote><span style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The magazine cover piece spins ever onward from there, with plenty of allusions to the Romney campaign's cluelessness about how to milk social media and the increasingly bad brand the Republican Party has among young voters who think the GOP is overly obsessed with social issues.&nbsp; (Perhaps the most brutal section in the piece was set in a focus group run by a young GOP pollster who asked her charges to free-associate to the word Republican; the answers were as harsh as anything Rachel Maddow could dream up).</font></span><p style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spencer and Jacobson both worked on the Oregon Commentator, the conservative opinion journal at the University of Oregon, and they had been getting plenty of attention in D.C. political circles long before the Times piece.</font></p><p style="line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Jacobson, for instance,&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2011/08/25/a-plea-to-the-gop-dont-pull-a-digital-nixon/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">authored an interesting article in 2011 on the Forbes web site&nbsp;</a>entitled: "A Plea To The GOP: Don't Pull A Digital Nixon."</span></font></p><p style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1960, Richard Nixon was that generation's example of technological ineptness for his poor showing in the his televised debate with John F. Kennedy.&nbsp; While Kennedy projected an easy cool that befitted TV, Nixon's five o'clock shadow was all too visible and he looked sweaty and ill-at-ease.</font></p><p style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nixon went on to lose an ever-so-close election and Jacobson warned that Republicans were poised to make the same mistake again.</font></p><p style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That election, wrote Jacobson, "imprinted a lesson about technology and politics that many on the Right side of the aisle have forgotten: You must go beyond simply using a platform; you have to use it&nbsp;<em>well</em>."</font></p><p style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">--<a href="mailto:jmapes@oregonian.com" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Jeff Mapes</a></font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Ivory Atrazine oppos res:</b></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Danielle Ivory (Huffpo) kept asking questions that Syngenta did not want to answer, so they tried to figure out how to do opposition research on her to discover some vulnerabilities that could neutralize her. <b>Maverick Strategies Bret Jacobson sent a dossier to Quinn Thomas Public Affairs</b></span> [former first lady of Gov James] QT had been hired by White House Writers group [actually b1 admin guys] WHWG strategy was to use third party spokesmen and astroturf (half a million budgeted for the latter, overall budget well over a million). Amy Goodman had given Ivory props for breaking the story that EPA had covered up problems with Atrazine. &nbsp; The dossier thus claimed she was driven by ego (and thus was likely to continue?). The dossier also notes she was successful in getting an insurance company to reverse its decision and give at 12 year old boy a prosthetic arm this proves effectiveness, thus confirms she's a threat?)</div><div>
</div><div><b>Maverick Strategies is Berman: NOTE CoC INTERTWINE</b></div><div>
</div><div>Bret Jacobson is founder and president of Maverick Strategies LLC, a research and communications firm serving business and free-market think tanks....Prior to founding<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Maverick Strategies, Bret co-founded the Center for Union Facts,</span></div><div>
</div><div>In short, the Center for Union Facts is the key organization in Big Business efforts to stop the progress of labor in America, most notably through fighting against the Employee Free Choice Act.</div><div>
</div><div>one of suite of front by</div><div>Berman earned his status as one of The Hill’s top lobbyists, along with Jack Abramoff,2 by working on behalf of unpopular clients like the tobacco, alcohol, and fast food industries.&nbsp;</div><div>---</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">wow, wiped wayback?</span></div><div>
</div><div>http://maverick-strategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/RightOnlinePresentation2011.pdf</div><div>
</div><div>--</div><div>main page: focusing on freedom</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Maverick Strategies + Communications vigorously fights for employers, free-market advocacy organizations, and liberty-loving non-profits.</span></div><div>
</div><div>If you represent business, employer associations, or a group focused on economic liberty, we want to help you.</div><div>
</div><div>Just because we focus on freedom doesn’t mean we are softies, though. We play hardball because freedom can’t defend itself. Some of our toughest fights have included:</div><div>
</div><div>Assisting major international companies fight back against defamation and litigation by radical environmental activists</div><div>
</div><div>Battling union “corporate campaigns” that smear small family businesses and successful corporations</div><div>
</div><div>Fighting back against legislative and regulatory efforts to decrease workplace democracy by pushing “card check” and siilar Big Labor schemes in front of the National Labor Relations Board</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Investigating and exposing organizations such as ACORN, which appear to shake down corporate and governmental bodies under threat of negative publicity [NOTE TOMs]</span></div><div>
</div><div>Working against self-titled consumer advocates whose definition of “public interest” is always more government</div><div>We apply our broad base of skills and depth of creativity to all of our free-market clients’ needs. Ask us how we can help you.</div><div>
</div><div>?</div><div>--</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">For decades, the tag line for Hasbro’s GI Joe cautioned that “knowing is half the battle.”</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That’s still true. In today’s public policy fights and <b>reputation-focused warfare, acquiring and guarding valuable information from your adversaries is half the battle, and we specialize in assisting our clients to understand their looming threats.</b></span></div><div>
</div><div>But many firms don’t fully deal with the flip side:<b> discretion.</b> While many of our clients are all too happy to sing our praises, we have applied our creativity to a host of high-impact endeavors — including those that go beyond <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">mere public relations to direct action — that have left our clients as impressed as their situations are improved. At the same time, we take these steps without taking a bow.</span></div><div>
</div><div>What have we done for our satisfied clients? We may not be able to brag about it. And because we value discretion so highly, we can be discreet about our work for you, too.</div><div>=</div><div>
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</div><div><b>The Maverick Strategies + Communications</b> client list includes consumer advocacy non-profits, conservative and libertarian organizations, small and family-owned businesses, major multinational corporations, the nation’s leading trade associations, management-side workforce lawyers and lobbyists, and larger public relations firms serving the needs of America’s businesses. That list continues to grow.</div><div>
</div><div>About Derrek | <b>Derrek Hofrichter </b>brings extensive media relations experience from the White House and federal executive branch appointments, major non-profit charities, and a communications consulting firm to every project he works on. His clients and issues are routinely covered by national cable news networks, print and radio programs.</div><div>
</div><div>Prior to co-founding Maverick Strategies + Communications, Derrek managed communications, including strategy, outreach, and new media efforts, for Scottsdale, Arizona-based Childhelp, one of America’s largest and most successful advocates for the prevention and treatment of child abuse. His time at Childhelp followed five years of intense work in Washington, DC, beginning with three years as a political appointee for the White House and finishing at a major public affairs firm. He also brings national campaign experience, having served in various capacities for Congressional, Senatorial, Gubernatorial and three Presidential campaigns.</div><div>
</div><div>About Bret | <b>Bret Jacobson</b> is a leading communications specialist with extensive experience in devising and executing high-impact, research-based, national advocacy campaigns. His work has been covered by radio, television, and new media, as well as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, and major regional and local news outlets. In January 2008, Bret launched Maverick Strategies LLC to assist businesses and their advocates in improving the effectiveness of their communications capabilities.</div><div>
</div><div>Prior to founding Maverick Strategies, Bret worked at a leading non-profit where he led that organization’s research activities, guiding its communications, launching its new-media capabilities, and helping plan its strategic national advertising and earned-media campaigns. Bret is frequently quoted by media outlets as an expert on the modern labor movement and speaks to free market advocacy organizations on effective opposition and issue research. Bret is a graduate of the University of Oregon.</div><div>
</div><div>About Ian | <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Ian Spencer </span>has over ten years of professional website development experience with a wide variety of corporate and non-profit organizations. He has built advocacy websites targeting every level of audience: from international sites in five languages to city-wide issue campaigns, from projects seeking to have an impact on one or two specific influential decision makers to national informational campaigns intended for individuals of all ages.</div><div>
</div><div>Immediately prior to joining Maverick Strategies + Communications as a Partner, Ian served as Technical Services Director for a Washington, DC-based Public Relations firm, where he led website development efforts, oversaw all IT activities, and played a key role in developing and implementing a company-wide new media strategy. A graduate of the University of Oregon and former Editor-in-Chief of The Oregon Commentator, Ian is a specialist in rapidly executing web strategies for time-sensitive problems and has extensive experience and expertise in nearly every aspect of website development and online communications.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Washington, DC + Phoenix, AZ | info@[our domain] | (855) BUZZ-MSC (289-9672)</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>--</div><div>
</div><div>Maverick Strategies+Communications combines intensive research with creative communications to help our clients change the world in which they operate.</div><div>
</div><div>Communications Strategies That Work | There are a lot of ways to get your message out, but the constraints of limited resources and limited time (and sometimes limited imagination) can hinder efforts to effectively educate your target audiences. We can help identify your key stakeholders and:</div><div>
</div><div>Devise campaigns to maximize our clients’ ability to impact the news and educate opinion leaders in the media and in politics</div><div>Write op-eds and letters to the editor</div><div>Craft high-impact press releases</div><div>Draft Congressional testimony</div><div>Bridge the gap between traditional media and digital media</div><div>Research | Whether it’s quick-turn or long-term, issue research or opposition research, you can’t win a fight without intellectual ammunition. We have years of experience re-framing debates by out-thinking, out-witting, and out-working adversaries. We combine tenacity, know-how, and a serious distaste for losing to assist our clients in researching and messaging their issues and outmaneuvering their opposition.</div><div>
</div><div>Unique Solutions | Since we are in the business of solving problems for our clients, we are not bound by a restrictive off-the-shelf model. We are therefore able to help build and run interest coalitions, help businesses educate their staffs about union activity, assist conservative and free market non-profits promote their research, and more.</div><div>
</div><div>Ask us how we can help you.</div><div></div><div>LI</div><div>
</div><div>Bret Jacobson</div><div>Partner at Red Edge</div><div>Washington D.C. Metro AreaPublic Relations and Communications</div><div>Current<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div>Red Edge, Maverick Strategies + Communications</div><div>Previous<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div>Maverick Strategies LLC, Public Affairs Firm, The Oregon Commentator</div><div>Education<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div>University of Oregon</div><div>500+</div><div>connections</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Contact Info<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div>https://www.linkedin.com/in/bretjacobson</div><div>Background</div><div>Summary</div><div>Bret Jacobson works with the world's leading brands and advocates to craft digital strategies, products, and ads with one goal: make life better for our clients and the world a freer place.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>A veteran of launching new-media tools inside old-school public affairs organizations, Bret applies emerging digital tools to defend and promote classical ideals of liberty, small government, and less regulation for major international corporations, trade associations, think tanks, and political campaigns.</div><div>
</div><div>Bret’s issue advocacy work has been covered by radio, television, and new media, as well as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, and major regional and local news outlets—and pretty much all of the top conservative/libertarian online news outlets.</div><div>
</div><div>Bret is a graduate of the University of Oregon, which finally has a good football team. He can take no credit for this.</div><div>Experience</div><div>
</div><div>Partner</div><div>Red Edge</div><div>June 2011 – Present (4 years 2 months)Arlington, VA</div><div>Red Edge is digital advocacy done right. We help clients build websites, Facebook communities, Facebook apps, mobile apps, and cutting-edge creative to drive their political and issue advocacy campaigns.</div><div>
</div><div>Partner</div><div>Maverick Strategies + Communications</div><div>June 2010 – Present (5 years 2 months)</div><div>Maverick Strategies + Communications combines in-depth research with high-impact communications strategies to assist free-market oriented individuals and groups, as well as some of America’s largest employers, biggest trade associations, and leading non-profits.</div><div>
</div><div>Founder & President</div><div>Maverick Strategies LLC</div><div>January 2008 – October 2010 (2 years 10 months)</div><div>I founded Maverick Strategies LLC in January 2008 to help businesses and their advocates improve the effectiveness of their communications by employing a lot of research, some creativity, and a dash of discreet direct action. We provide a fresh look at old problems.</div><div>
</div><div>(Open)3 recommendations, including:</div><div>Josh Ulman</div><div>Josh Ulman</div><div>Owner, Ulman Public Policy and Federal Relations</div><div>Bret excels at delivering highly effective messaging on difficult and seemingly unpopular issues. He is able to identify...View</div><div>
</div><div>Derrek Hofrichter</div><div>Derrek Hofrichter</div><div>Owner & Chief Instructor at East Valley Krav Maga, Motivational Speaker</div><div>Bret is the ultimate make it happen guy. Extremely resourceful and his creativity is endless. Always the first person I go...View</div><div>
</div><div>1 more recommendation</div><div>
</div><div>Keith Smith</div><div>Advisor to the President at <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">National Association of Manufacturers - NAM</span></div><div>Bret is clearly an expert in his field. His ability to effectively communicate messages through innovative and comprehensive strategies sets him apart from others in his field. I can't recommend Bret enough.</div><div>June 17, 2008, Keith was with another company when working with Bret at Maverick Strategies LLC</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Senior Research Analyst</div><div>Public Affairs Firm</div><div>January 2004 – December 2007 (4 years)</div><div>Issue and opposition research, writing, media strategy, spokesman duties, and creative work in a fast-paced, challenging environment.</div><div>
</div><div>(Open)2 recommendations</div><div>Trice Jacobson</div><div>Trice Jacobson</div><div>Communications Strategist</div><div>Bret applies a unique combination of analytic reasoning and creativity to every project he tackles. His products are not...View</div><div>
</div><div>Alison Southwick</div><div>Alison Southwick</div><div>Grand Poobah of PR</div><div>Extremely hard working and tenacious when it comes to getting to the bottom of issues/organizations/public figures. If it's...View</div><div>
</div><div>Publisher</div><div>The Oregon Commentator</div><div>2001 – 2003 (2 years)</div><div>I led the best publication in the world -- the Oregon Commentator, a political/humor magazine at the University of Oregon. The real success: motivating unpaid volunteers to meet deadlines and exceed their own expectations while impacting campus culture through popular content with a free-market perspective.</div><div>
</div><div>scrape:</div><div>
</div><div>People Also Viewed</div><div>Ian Spencer</div><div>Ian Spencer</div><div>Partner and CTO at Red Edge</div><div>Conor Rogers</div><div>Conor Rogers</div><div>Digital Media + Online Advertising Strategist</div><div>Sarah Grant</div><div>Sarah Grant</div><div>Creative Communicator at Red Edge, LLC</div><div>Briton Bennett</div><div>Briton Bennett</div><div>Assistant Creative Director at Counterpoint Strategies</div><div>Sterling Meyers Emerling</div><div>Sterling Meyers Emerling</div><div>Digital Marketing Manager at International Justice Mission</div><div>Katelyn Sills</div><div>Katelyn Sills</div><div>Software Developer</div><div>AnnaLee Rice</div><div>AnnaLee Rice</div><div>Advertising Associate at Red Edge, LLC</div><div>Gregory Tran</div><div>Gregory Tran</div><div>Realtor ®, CNE</div><div>Benjamin McGeever</div><div>Benjamin McGeever</div><div>Designer at Red Edge, LLC</div><div>Aaron Sanchez</div><div>Aaron Sanchez</div><div>Software Engineer at Intersys Consulting</div><div></div><div>
</div><div>NEWSPAPER ARTICLE</div><div>International Herald Tribune</div><div>Young, Conservative and Afraid Their Party's out of Touch</div><div>By Draper, Robert</div><div>Read preview</div><div>Article excerpt</div><div>
</div><div>Younger conservatives worry that the Republican Party's technological deficiencies barely begin to explain why the party brand has become practically abhorrent to emerging demographic groups.</div><div>
</div><div>One afternoon last month, I paid a visit to two young Republicans named Bret Jacobson and Ian Spencer, who work in a small office in Arlington, Virginia, situated above an antique store and adjacent to a Japanese auto shop. Their five-man company, Red Edge, is a digital- advocacy group for conservative causes, and their days are typically spent designing software applications for groups like the Heritage Foundation, the Republican Governors Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Lately, however, Mr. Jacobson and Mr. Spencer have taken up evangelizing -- and the sermon, delivered day after day to fellow conservatives in the form of a 61-point presentation, is a pitiless we-told-you-so elucidation of the ways in which Democrats have overwhelmed Republicans with their technological superiority.</div><div>
</div><div>They walked me through a series of slides showing the wide discrepancies between the two campaigns. "And just to make them feel really bad," said Mr. Jacobson, 33, as he punched another image onto the overhead screen, "we say, 'Just wait -- this is the most important slide.' And this is what kills them, because conservatives always look at young voters like the hot girl they could never date." He read aloud from the text: "1.25 million more young people supported Obama in 2012 over 2008."</div><div>
</div><div>The next chart showed that while Mitt Romney's presidential campaign raised slightly more money from its online ads than it spent on them, President Barack Obama's team more than doubled the return on its online-ad investment. Mr. Spencer, who is 29, chimed in: "That's when one of our clients moaned, 'It's even worse than I thought."'</div><div>
</div><div>"Then, once people think we've gotten them through the worst," Mr. Jacobson said, "we pile on more -- just the way Obama did." He put up Slide 26, titled, "Running Up the Score." "Obama was the very first candidate to appear on Reddit. We ask our clients, 'Do you know what Reddit is?' And only one of them did. Then we show them this photo of Obama hugging his wife with the caption 'Four more years' -- an image no conservative likes. And we tell them, 'Because of the way the Obama campaign used things like Reddit, that photo is the single-most popular image ever seen on Twitter or Facebook.' Just to make sure there's plenty of salt in the wound."</div><div>
</div><div>Back in August 2011, Mr. Jacobson wrote an op-ed in Forbes alerting Republicans to Mr. Obama's lead on the digital front. His warnings were disregarded. Then last summer, he and Mr. Spencer approached the conservative "super PAC" American Crossroads with their digital-tool-building strategies and, they say, were politely ignored. It is understandable, then, that a touch of schadenfreude is evident when Mr. Jacobson and Mr. Spencer receive the policy- group gurus and trade-association lobbyists who file into Red Edge's office to receive a comeuppance.</div><div>
</div><div>"Business is booming for us," Mr. Jacobson said. "We'll double or triple our bottom line this year, easily. But this isn't about getting new business. We need the entire right side of the aisle to get smart fast. And the only way they can do that is to appreciate how big the chasm was."</div><div>
</div><div>But the unnerving truth, which the Red Edge team and other younger conservatives worry that their leaders have yet to appreciate, is that the Republican Party's technological deficiencies barely begin to explain why the party has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. The party brand -- which is to say, its message and its messengers -- has become practically abhorrent to emerging demographic groups like Latinos and African-Americans, not to mention an entire generation of young voters. As one of the party's most highly respected strategists told me: "It ought to concern people that the most Republican part of the electorate under Ronald Reagan were 18-to-29- year-olds. …</div><div>
</div><div>SHOW MORE</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.questia.com/newspaper/1P2-36298470/young-conservative-and-afraid-their-party-s-out-of</div><div>
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<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">LA Times: Disclosure Failure</font></h2>

<h4><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">December 23rd, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">2008&nbsp;</span></font></h4>

<div class="entry">

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In today’s <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oew-jacobson22-2008dec22,0,146187.story">Los Angeles Times</a> a man named <b><span style=" color: #ED1C24;">Bret Jacobson</span></b> writes a virulently anti-union screed<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> attacking Labor Secretary nominee, Congresswoman<b> Hilda Solis</b>.</span>&nbsp; Here’s how the LA Times describes Jacobson at the bottom of his op-ed:</font></p>

<blockquote>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Bret Jacobson is founder and president of <b>Maverick <span style=" color: #ED1C24;">Strategies</span></b> LLC, a research and communications firm <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">serving business and free-market think tanks.</span></font></p>

</blockquote>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">We’ve seen a lot of anti-union, anti-Obama, anti-worker, and anti-Free Choice op-eds penned by business consultants and “free-market think tank” types of late, so this isn’t a terribly shocking biography for drivel like this. Of course, this isn’t all Jacobson is. Here’s what the highly-informative <a href="http://bretjacobson.com/index.html">BretJacobson.com</a> has to say:</font></p>

<blockquote>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Prior to founding Maverick Strategies, Bret co-founded the<b> Center for Union Facts,</b> overseeing that organization’s research activities, guiding its communications, launching its new-media capabilities, and helping plan its strategic national advertising and earned-media campaigns.</font></p>

</blockquote>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">And just for those not paying attention at home, here’s <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Union_Facts">Sourcewatch</a>:</font></p>

<blockquote>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><strong>The Center for Union Facts</strong> is a secretive <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Front_group" title="Front group">front group</a> for individuals and industries opposed to union activities. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It is part of lobbyist <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman" title="Rick Berman">Rick Berman</a>‘s family of front groups including the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Employment_Policies_Institute" title="Employment Policies Institute">Employment Policies Institute</a></span>. The domain name www.unionfacts.com was registered to<b> </b><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Berman_%26_Co." title="Berman & Co."><b><font color="#ff0000">Berman</font></b> & Co.</a> in May 2005.</font></p>

</blockquote>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/?gclid=CMPz6er_1pcCFQwuHgod11lWDQ">American Rights At Work</a> is a bit more hard hitting in their assessment of the Center for Union Facts:</font></p>

<blockquote>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Center is the latest public relations campaign and <a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/bermans-front-groups.html" target="_self">front group</a> devised by “<strong>notorious D.C. lobbyist”</strong>^{<a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/sources-20051220-491-212-212.html#1">1</a>} <strong>and veteran spin doctor Richard “Rick” Berman</strong> with his firm, Berman and Company.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Center for Union Facts is a front group focused on damaging the public image of unions, depressing workers’ rights, pushing legislation that would make it more difficult for workers to join unions, and furthering an anti-union business climate.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><strong>Berman earned his status as one of <em>The Hill’s</em></strong> <strong>top lobbyists, along with Jack Abramoff</strong>,</span>^{<a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/sources-20051220-491-212-212.html#2">2</a>} <strong>by</strong> <strong>working on behalf of <a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/bermans-front-groups.html" target="_self">unpopular clients</a> like the tobacco, alcohol, and fast food industries.&nbsp;</strong> Berman’s campaigns have attempted to relax drunk driving laws, argue obesity is not a public health issue, prevent increases in the federal or state minimum wage, and attack advocacy groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> (MADD).</span></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">…</font></p>

<ul>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Center for Union Facts’ legislative agenda is strikingly similar to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s.&nbsp;<strong>&nbsp;</strong> The <a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/chamber-of-commerce/" target="_self">big business lobbying group</a> both adamantly opposes the Employee Free Choice Act, and is in strong support of the Secret Ballot Protection Act.<strong>&nbsp;</strong> Berman formerly devised union avoidance strategies for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,^{<a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/sources-20051220-491-212-212.html#18">18</a>} and he still <strong>has strong ties to the Chamber</strong> through Randel Johnson, Vice President for Labor at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.^{<a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/sources-20051220-491-212-212.html#19">19</a>}&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> <strong>Berman told <em>The New York Times</em> that he asked <span style=" color: #ED1C24;">Chamber of Commerce </span>officials at a state conference to recommend that businesses in their states donate to his anti-union campaign</strong>.</span>^{<a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/sources-20051220-491-212-212.html#20">20</a>} &nbsp;Randel Johnson has repeatedly denied any Chamber funding of the Center, yet admitted “he had served as an adviser to the Center.”^{<a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/sources-20051220-491-212-212.html#21">21</a>}</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">On its website, the Center claims it is “supported by foundations, businesses, union members, and the general public.”^{<a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/sources-20051220-491-212-212.html#22">22</a>}&nbsp; <strong>Berman will only divulge that several companies and a foundation fund the Center, but will not release the names of his donors</strong>.^{<a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/sources-20051220-491-212-212.html#23">23</a>}</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">No individuals, foundations, or corporations have come forward to admit any sponsorship of the Center.&nbsp; Why wouldn’t they want to distance themselves from Berman’s hyperbolic and unsupported rhetoric?&nbsp; <strong>Berman gets paid to say what responsible business leaders don’t want attributed to them.</strong>&nbsp; <em>The</em> <em>Washington Post</em> reported that food industry officials, who would only be interviewed about Berman, “on the condition that they not be identified by name or by where they work, said that by keeping the sponsors anonymous, Berman’s group can be more vociferous, provocative and irreverent in its criticisms.^{<a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/sources-20051220-491-212-212.html#24">24</a>}</font></li>

</ul>

</blockquote>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In short, the Center for Union Facts is the key organization in Big Business efforts to stop the progress of labor in America, most notably through fighting against the <a href="http://seiu.org/employeefreechoice/">Employee Free Choice Act</a>.</span> One of their co-founders, Bret Jacobson, was given license to push the Center’s anti-union, anti-worker agenda in an op-ed against the nominee for Labor Secretary, while the Times failed to disclose the only informative part of his biography. He’s the founder of a research firm? What is that supposed to tell the Times’ readers? Pretty much every person I know who works in politics does some level of consulting. The most important piece of Jacobson’s biography – his professional connection to one of the biggest anti-union groups in America – is left out of a column that specifically pushes the Center’s agenda. In an <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jEtOI8ay_-XoZrKX9qFZBXsDQb7wD955SDF80">AP article</a> three days ago, a spokesman for the Center attacked President-elect Obama’s pick of Solis for Labor Secretary (though, amazingly, the AP cited the Center as “a group critical of organized labor”).</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">There has been a heavy, persistent trend in the mainstream press of anti-union articles and op-eds. The business lobby has been very good about getting their surrogates’ op-eds placed in big papers like the LA Times, NY Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. There is a major fight going on between big business and America’s workers about the future of organizing to increase worker rights in America. The fight is centered around the Employee Free Choice Act, but clearly the Secretary of Labor is now another front in this fight.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">As frustrating as it is to repeatedly read columns, like Jacobson’s,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> which include outright lies about what the Employee Free Choice Act is and does</span>, I am 100% willing to take part in a national debate about how our country relates to working families. There are obviously different sides in this debate and there is nothing wrong with the debate being played out in the press. But in this atmosphere of daily volleys back and forth between big business front groups like the Center for Union Facts and the Obama administration and the American labor movement, it behooves the press to be honest about who is taking part in the debate. The LA Times was brutally negligent to not disclose Bret Jacobson’s employment at the Center for Union Facts, the only piece of his biography that had any bearing on his column. By not disclosing Jacobson’s ties to this anti-worker group, the LA Times succeeded in giving their pages over to a press release from a big business front group, with no means for their reader to discern it from a non-partisan piece on President-elect Obama’s pick to chair the Department of Labor.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">So editors of the Los Angeles Times, let me show you how this is done:</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<em><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Disclosure: I’m proud to work for the Service Employees International Union…so proud that I disclose it when I write about issues that relate to my employer. That said, this post was not approved by nor written with the knowledge of SEIU. It is representative of my views alone.</font></em></p>

</div>

<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">===</font></h2>

<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">What to Do about a Persistent Reporter?</font></h2>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">According to court records, Minehart then fired off a very interesting internal email, seeking guidance from others on Syngenta's team about how to further field Ivory's queries.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"Danielle is persistent: I just spoke with her. She said I did not respond to her questions!" the Minehart wrote.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The recipients of this email were Syngenta CP's director of communications, <b>Sherry Ford</b>, and three other Syngenta employees.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Also included on the email delivery chain were two public relations consultants: Josh Gilder, of White House Writers Group (WHWG), and Chris Robling, of Jayne Thompson and Associates (JTA), an Illinois public relations firm, hired as part of the company's PR strategy to deal with litigation in Illinois, among other things. WHWG had been part of Syngenta's PR team for about six months, coming on board after the New York Times story and NRDC report came out. (The litigation has opened a window on some of communications among the Syngenta PR team.)</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<span class="image-caption-container image-caption-container-" style=" display: block; float: right; margin: 5px; border: 1px solid black; width: 400px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><img src="/7c2deb7d-4ece-5956-9d02-68238103c573.jpg"/></font><span class="image-caption" style=" display: block;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">PR Hierarchy Chart</font></span></span><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Before that day, March 5, Ivory had been on the radar screen of the Syngenta spin team, and someone decided to do more than just react to her stories.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The day before, on March 4,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> <b><font color="#ff0000">Bret Jacobson,</font> the founder and president of Maverick Strategies and Communications</b>, a public relations/consulting firm specializing in "opposition research," submitted a dossier on Ivory to the firm "Quinn Thomas Public Affairs."</span></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Quinn Thomas had been hired by Syngenta CP in October 2009, as part of an expanded PR operation led by WHWG, which the watchdog group Media Transparency has called "an umbrella firm of former ghostwriters for Republican presidents and bureaucrats now at the service of anyone willing to pay."</font></p>

<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A<span style=" background-color: #FFF200;"> "First-Strike"</span> PR Team</font></h2>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Around the time of the <em>New York Times</em> investigation of atrazine levels and growing health concerns, according to e-mails discovered in the Holiday Shores suit, Syngenta CP had put out a request for proposals for a new PR effort.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">According to the solicitation, Syngenta was seeking firms experienced with a "first strike" mentality and with managing "third party" spokespeople to carry Syngenta's message when it did not want those messages to be seen as coming from the corporation. It <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/1/10/Syn_2009_PR_Request_for_Proposal.pdf" title="reference on also listed" target="_blank">also listed</a> (PDF) its top two primary audiences as "media" and "potential jurors." (The Holiday Shores case was pending in Illinois; the Jayne Thompson firm had been hired a few years earlier and would continue to be part of Syngenta's PR operation along with the new PR team being solicited.)</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>WHWG responded with a $498,000 base proposal that included funding for the "grassroots mobilization" firm DDC Advocacy, </b>which has been described as a big player in the "astroturf" world of making corporate initiatives look like they are the result of wide and deep grassroots support.</font></p>

<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A PR Team Known for Attacking Trial Lawyers</font></h2>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;">DDC reportedly has also co-chaired an astroturfing "roundtable" with the </span><font color="#ff0000"><b><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=U.S.Chamber_of_Commerce" title="reference on U.S. Chamber of Commerce" target="self"><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;">U.S. Chamber of </span>Commerce</a>,</b></font> which is funded by the biggest global corporations in the world (<b>WHWG has also spearheaded PR campaigns for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce). </b>DDC has also worked on astroturf campaigns in the cyber-world against lawyers who represent injured Americans and in support of so-called "tort reform" that would limit the rights of Americans harmed or killed through corporate neglect or greed.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">WHWG's proposal to Syngenta on atrazine also included Quinn Thomas Public Affairs, which was specifically touted for its success in "engaging" lawyers who represent American consumers and in fighting public interest groups through "aggressive third party activity." WHWG said Quinn Thomas' tactics had succesfully slowed or reversed "activist momentum."</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"Third party activity" means using seemingly independent third parties that do not appear to be acting in concert with or at the behest of the corporation in a dispute. Aggressive, here, is undefined.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In documents uncovered through the Illinois state suit [BY ?] against Syngenta, </span>a <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/d/d5/Syn_Ivory_Dossier_and_NRC_PANNA_Tides_all.pdf" title="reference on dossier on HuffPo reporter Danielle Ivory" target="_blank">dossier on HuffPo reporter Danielle Ivory</a> (PDF) has surfaced. Ivory had contacted Syngenta on March 2nd.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The March 4, 2010 dossier was prepared quickly by "Maverick Strategies" partner Bret Jacobsen as a memo to Quinn Thomas, who was working with WHWG, part of Syngenta CP's six-month old, expanded PR efforts.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">From late 2009 through 2010, according to spreadsheets discovered in the litigation, WHWG's operations resulted in payments of over $1.2 million by Syngenta for "message management" and "campaign management." Its total to date is unknown.</font></p>

<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Assessing a Reporter's "Motives"</font></h2>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">As stated in the dossier, Quinn Thomas had sought an investigation into Ivory's history for "the purpose of assessing her motivations regarding her coverage of [a]trazine."</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The dossier lists <span style=" color: #ED1C24;">Ivory's </span>work history as including a stint with Bill Moyers at the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy (which is distinct from the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy), and a job at National Public Radio's award winning <em>Weekend Edition</em>. It also noted her writing for <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><em>Democracy Now!</em>, <em>Alternet</em>, <em>Truthout</em>, and <em>HuffPo</em>.</span></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The dossier calls these respected organizations a "who's who of anti-employer employers."</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Furthermore, wrote Jacobson, "[Ivory] has successfully used journalism to pressure an insurance company to reverse its decision not to cover a 12-year-old boy's prosthetic arm."</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Aside from the purportedly unsavory nature of Ivory's past employers and her use of journalism to benefit a disabled child, he claimed the primary driver behind Ivory's atrazine reporting was egotism.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Noting that <em>Democracy Now!</em> host <b>Amy Goodman</b> had credited Ivory as the reporter who "broke the story on the EPA's [a]trazine cover-up," Jacobson concluded that Ivory's "professional reputation and ego are tied to the effectiveness of the attack on the chemical."</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">...</font></p>

<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Targeting the Tides Foundation</font></h2>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The dossier on Ivory also revealed that <b><span style=" color: #ED1C24;">Maverick </span>had given a dossier to Quinn Thomas on NRDC, the Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA), the Land Stewardship Project (LSP), and the Tides Foundation</b>. That dossier was not in the documents unsealed by the court in the Holiday Shores litigation.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">According to the Ivory dossier, Maverick had previously provided a more thorough report on these organizations than was summarized there. Its summary claimed that the listed environmental groups "share one very powerful, controversial funding source: The Tides Foundation, an uber-wealthy and far-left philanthropy...."</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The March 4, 2010 dossier goes on to channel a Glenn Beck-like tone in linking the groups to Tides and its management in a guilt-by-association manner.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The dossier on Ivory notes that the<b> Tides Center provided funding for a 1999 report on pesticides and herbicides, including atrazine.</b> And, it notes that the Tides' donors gave NRDC between $64,000 and $96,000 a year for three years.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The amount of funding Maverick received from Quinn Thomas or the amount Quinn Thomas received from the Syngenta contract is not known; what is known is that WHWG received over one million dollar in fees for its work on the atrazine PR efforts.</font></p>

<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Science Under Siege</font></h2>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">NRDC and Syngenta have a long, contentious relationship.</font>

<span class="image-caption-container image-caption-container-" style=" display: block; float: left; margin: 5px; width: 200px;"><span class="image-caption" style=" display: block;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">NRDC recommends atrazine be filtered out of drinking water.</font></span></span><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Due to an array of health concerns, NRDC has recommended that atrazine use be phased out and that the weed-killer be filtered out of Americans' contaminated drinking water. Its investigations and lawsuits in the public interest have resulted in judicial decrees requiring more monitoring of water and have spurred the EPA to subject the herbicide to additional reviews by the EPA Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) -- including an EPA SAP atrazine review launched in October, 2009 -- based on emerging science and growing concerns.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The dossier on Ivory also expressed the view that NRDC's "Poisoning the Well" report was in essence part of a conspiracy funded by Tides, which might include Ivory's work for <em>HuffPo</em>.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The dossier writer had also contacted <em>HuffPo</em> "to inquire about additional information about their funding model, sources and ties to the Tides family of organizations." Jacobson reported that he had not yet received a reply and that he did not expect further details.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">As for Ivory, the dossier reported that its opposition research was based on "publicly" available information and was the best that could be prepared under the short deadline provided by Quinn Thomas.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">On June 9, 2011, as part of a sworn deposition given in the Illinois suit, Syngenta's PR rep, Sherry Ford, denied that Syngenta or anyone acting on its behalf had "investigated" anyone except one person.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">That person was not Danielle Ivory, according to Ford.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Yet, the March 4, 2010, dossier on Ivory was requisitioned by Syngenta's hired PR team following Ivory's query to Syngenta about the coming federal lawsuit. It was produced for a PR team known for its aggressive tactics. The term "investigated" was not specifically defined in the deposition or by the opposition research firm tapped by the PR team.</font></p>

<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Syngenta Admits It Investigated Dr. Tyrone Hayes</font></h2>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">No, the person Ford admitted had been investigated by Syngenta was not Ivory.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">He's a U.C.-Berkeley scientist whose extensive studies suggest that atrazine causes sex mutations in frogs. (A detailed story of how Syngenta has attacked this scientist's reputation is reported in January's <em>Mother Jones</em> magazine. The deposition of Syngenta's head of PR is not discussed in that story.)</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<span class="image-caption-container image-caption-container-" style=" display: block; float: right; margin: 5px; width: 200px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><img src="/eca27987-7f02-5188-97b4-946c90e5bce8.jpg"/></font><span class="image-caption" style=" display: block;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Hayes studies atrazine in frogs.</font></span></span><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Ford claimed under oath that she herself no longer has the opposition research on Dr. Hayes.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">She also claimed under oath that Syngenta's expanded first-strike PR team had been assembled in late 2009 in direct response to a tip they had received from a reporter indicating that a new federal lawsuit against the company was in the offing. At the time of Ivory's e-mail exchange with Syngenta's Paul Minehart starting March 2, 2010, the company claimed it had no knowledge of any pending federal litigation or of the allegations of the plaintiffs about atrazine.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">On March 5th, <em>HuffPo</em> ran a story about atrazine contamination in Iowa, but it was not by Ivory.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The piece by Kerry Trueman, titled "Our Toxic Waterways: Flushing Away Our Future," discussed a new documentary called "Big River," by Ian Cheney and Kurt Ellis whose previous piece "King Corn," won critical acclaim. The new documentary traced how the atrazine they used to grow corn had contaminated their local creek.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Trueman noted that recent news stories had reported concerns that atrazine might chemically castrate or "feminize" male frogs, according to Dr. Hayes' research, and that the EPA had recently announced it would re-assess the weed-killer.</font></p>

<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Searching for a Defender of Atrazine on <em>HuffPo</em></font></h2>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In response, Syngenta CP's Steven Goldsmith sent an email to Josh Gilder of WHWG and Mike Burita at Quinn Thomas <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/b/b8/Syn_email_Need_Someone_at_HuffPo.pdf" title="reference on asking an interesting question" target="_blank">asking an interesting question</a> (PDF).</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"Is there anyone at HP [<em>HuffPo</em>] who we could cultivate on this issue rather than continuing to get bashed by everyone on their payroll?"</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">WHWG and Quinn Thomas had already been hard at work for six months on an array of tactics to advance Syngenta PR's third party strategy on atrazine.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">One was to have Syngenta's chief scientist, Dr. Mike Bushell, ghostwrite a chapter for a book challenging the idea of regulating atrazine by applying the "precautionary principle."</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">This standard, which is embedded in U.S. and EU consumer law, places the burden of proof on manufacturers to establish that their products are not harmful if science points to significant risks to human health or the environment. WHWG <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/1/18/Syn_email_Ghostwrite_Atrazine_Chapter_for_AEI.pdf" title="reference on said" target="_blank">said</a> (PDF) it would <b>"find someone else willing to put their name" on Syngenta's "Ghost Author" story </b>about atrazine and challenge the potential embrace of the precautionary principle by the Obama Administration's EPA.[ENTINE? at aei]</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The ghostwritten chapter was for a book to be published in conjunction with <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">someone at the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute" title="reference on American Enterprise Institute" target="_self">American Enterprise Institute</a>,</span> a DC think tank that is funded in part by large donations from corporations. It is not known whether Syngenta has funded this think tank or any of its "fellows," directly or indirectly.</font></p>

<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Also Needed: An Investigative Reporter to Rattle the EPA's Cages</font></h2>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">On December 3, 2009, Syngenta's in-house PR staff held a planning meeting to deal with the fallout from the <em>New York Times</em> investigation, the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/2/26/Syn_email_plan_get_investigative_reporter_rattle_cages_at_EPA.pdf" title="reference on agenda" target="_blank">agenda</a> (PDF) was to "[o]btain the services of a well know (sic) investigative reporter to probe around the EPA" and, at a minimum get advice "on what buttons to push and cages to rattle."</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">As part of the effort to influence EPA's review, another tactic was to identify long-term needs for published materials and which third parties "should be approached/retained."</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Unsealed e-mails <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/c/c2/Syn_email_WHWG_Roundup_memo.pdf" title="reference on reveal" target="_blank">reveal</a> (PDF) that earlier that same week WHWG had reported to Syngenta that a third party the PR team was in communication with was Jon Entine of the American Enterprise Institute. Entine is a former producer with NBC and ABC News, whose books attacked the idea of socially responsible investing and the precautionary principle (<em>Let Them Eat Precaution</em>).</font></p>

<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The "Third Party" Technique in Action</font></h2>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">While WHWG worked to cultivate new third party voices for Syngenta, some old mainstays of the company continued to defend it in the press.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">For example, Elizabeth Whelan had long been on the short-list of people Syngenta's PR team considered when shopping corporate op-eds to publish under someone else's byline.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Whelan is the president of the "American Council for Science and Health" (</b>ACSH). ACSH has been called "a receptacle for payments from pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology, food and other companies who appreciate the convenience of having their grantees and former employees serve on government science panels," by <b>Michael </b>Jacobsen, the Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Jacobs<font color="#ff0000">e</font>n <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/apr/14/letters-to-the-editor-19-5933" title="reference on told the Washington Times" target="_blank">told the Washington Times</a> that ACSH had "stopped disclosing its donors in the 1990s,</span> presumably out of embarrassment." ACSH's list of leaders, scientists, and co-collaborators include other names of third party advocates that pop up in the e-mails unsealed in the litigation.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ACSH had <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/b/bd/Syn_email_NYT_Toxic_Waters.pdf" title="reference on already been enlisted" target="blank">already been enlisted</a> (PDF) by the Syngenta PR team to attack the <em>New York Times</em> article by Charles Duhigg, "Debating How Much Weed Killer Is Safe in Your Water Glass," before the story was even published on August 22, 2009, and she <a href="http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.1230/news_detail.asp" title="reference on responded" target="blank">responded</a> right away.</font></p>

<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">ACSH's Beth Whelan</span> Defends Atrazine, Without Disclosing Big Bucks</font></h2>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">...</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">===</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<a href="http://maverick-strategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/ACORNs-Troubling-Ties-to-Labor-Maverick-Strategies.pdf"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://maverick-strategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/ACORNs-Troubling-Ties-to-Labor-Maverick-Strategies.pdf</font></a>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">----</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">anti union<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, voter suppression?</span></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="http://maverick-strategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/RightOnlinePresentation2011.pdf">http://maverick-strategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/RightOnlinePresentation2011.pdf</a>&nbsp;404 NO WAYACK</font></p><p>cf bs&nbsp;<a href="http://capitalresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/FW1211.pdf">http://capitalresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/FW1211.pdf</a>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">===</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">leadership inst faculty bio</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b><font color="#ff0000">Bret Jacobson</font></b> is a leading communications specialist with extensive experience in devising and executing high-impact, research-based national advocacy campaigns. His work has been covered by radio, television, and new media, as well as the <b>New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, </b>and major regional and local news outlets. In January 2008, Bret launched <b><span style=" color: #ED1C24;">Maverick Strategies </span></b>LLC to assist businesses and their advocates in improving the effectiveness of their communications capabilities. Prior to founding Maverick Strategies, Bret co-founded the Center for Union Facts, overseeing that organization's research activities, guiding its communications, launching its new-media capabilities, and helping plan its strategic national advertising and earned-media campaigns. Bret is frequently quoted by media outlets as an <b>expert on the modern labor movement</b> and speaks to free market advocacy organizations on effective <font color="#ff0000">opposition and issue research. </font>Bret is a graduate of the<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> University of Oregon.</span></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">===</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="http://holdfastblog.com/2008/12/23/somone-call-a-blogger-ethics-panel" target="_blank">http://holdfastblog.com/2008/12/23/somone-call-a-blogge...</a> /

December 23rd, 2008 · 2 Comments

In today’s Los Angeles Times a man named<b><span style=" color: #ED1C24;"> Bret Jacobson writes a virulently anti-union screed attacking Labor Secretary nominee, Congresswoman Hilda Solis.</span></b> Here’s how the LA Times describes Jacobson at the bottom of his op-ed:

Bret Jacobson is founder and president of Maverick Strategies LLC, a research and communications firm serving business and free-market think tanks.

We’ve seen a lot of anti-union, anti-Obama, anti-worker, and anti-Free Choice op-eds penned by business consultants and “free-market think tank” types of late, so this isn’t a terribly shocking biography for drivel like this. Of course, this isn’t all Jacobson is. Here’s what the highly-informative <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">BretJacobson.com </span>has to say:

Prior to founding Maverick Strategies, Bret co-founded the Center for Union Facts, overseeing that organization’s research activities, guiding its communications, launching its new-media capabilities, and helping plan its strategic national advertising and earned-media campaigns.

And just for those not paying attention at home, here’s Sourcewatch:

The Center for Union Facts is a secretive front group for individuals and industries opposed to union activities. It is part of lobbyist Rick Berman’s family of front groups including the Employment Policies Institute. The domain name <a href="http://www.unionfacts.com" target="_blank">www.unionfacts.com</a> was registered to Berman & Co. in May 2005.

American Rights At Work is a bit more hard hitting in their assessment of the Center for Union Facts:

The Center is the latest public relations campaign and front group devised by “notorious D.C. lobbyist”1 and veteran spin doctor Richard “Rick” Berman with his firm, Berman and Company.

The Center for Union Facts is a front group focused on damaging the public image of unions, depressing workers’ rights, pushing legislation that would make it more difficult for workers to join unions, and furthering an anti-union business climate.

FULL story at link.
&nbsp;&nbsp;</font>

<a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4710059"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4710059</font></a>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b><span style=" color: #ED1C24;">The Center for Union Facts</span></b><span style=" color: #ED1C24;"> </span>is a secretive <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Front_group" title="Front group" class="mw-redirect">front group</a> for individuals and industries opposed to union activities. It is part of lobbyist <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman" title="Rick Berman">Rick Berman</a>'s family of front groups including the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Employment_Policies_Institute" title="Employment Policies Institute">Employment Policies Institute</a>. The domain name www.unionfacts.com was registered to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Berman_%26_Co." title="Berman & Co.">Berman & Co.</a> in May 2005.</font></p>

<table id="toc" class="toc" summary="Contents"><tbody><tr><td>

<div id="toctitle">

<h2><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Contents</font></h2>

<span class="toctoggle"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">[<a href="javascript:toggleToc()" class="internal" id="togglelink">hide</a>]</font></span></div>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Union_Facts#Campaigns"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="tocnumber">1</span> <span class="toctext">Campaigns</span></font></a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Union_Facts#Personnel"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="tocnumber">2</span> <span class="toctext">Personnel</span></font></a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Union_Facts#Funding"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="tocnumber">3</span> <span class="toctext">Funding</span></font></a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Union_Facts#Contact_details"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="tocnumber">4</span> <span class="toctext">Contact details</span></font></a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Union_Facts#Articles_and_resources"><span class="tocnumber">5</span> <span class="toctext">Articles and resources</span></a>

</font><ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Union_Facts#Related_SourceWatch_articles"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="tocnumber">5.1</span> <span class="toctext">Related SourceWatch articles</span></font></a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Union_Facts#References"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="tocnumber">5.2</span> <span class="toctext">References</span></font></a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Union_Facts#External_resources"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="tocnumber">5.3</span> <span class="toctext">External resources</span></font></a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Union_Facts#External_articles"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span class="tocnumber">5.4</span> <span class="toctext">External articles</span></font></a></li>

</ul>

</li>

</ul>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<p><a name="Campaigns" id="Campaigns"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font></a></p>

<h2><span class="mw-headline"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Campaigns</font></span></h2>

<div class="thumb tright">

<div class="thumbinner" style=" width: 990px;">

<div class="thumbcaption">

<div class="thumbcaption">

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Video ads</b> by the Center for Union Facts portray union organizers as thugs who invade workers' homes to intimida</span>te them into joining.</font></p>

</div>

</div>

</div>

</div>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In May 2006 the Center for Union Facts, launched its first TV ad campaign. The <a href="http://www.unionfacts.com/ads/downloads/tv_unionBosses.wmv" class="external text" title="http://www.unionfacts.com/ads/downloads/tv_unionBosses.wmv" rel="nofollow">30-second spot</a>, running on <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fox_News" title="Fox News">Fox News</a> and local markets, has "actors posing as workers" saying "sarcastically what they 'love' about unions," like paying dues, union leaders' "fat-cat lifestyles," and discrimination against minorities.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> The ad campaign cost $3 million, which was raised "from companies, foundations and individuals that Mr. Berman won't identify.</span>" <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114799623004157251.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace" class="external autonumber" title="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114799623004157251.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace" rel="nofollow">[1]</a></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The group planned to film another TV <b><span style=" color: #ED1C24;">ad</span></b> in June 2006. Labor and economics professor Harley Shaiken said the effort "to create an anti-union atmosphere" more generally, as opposed to business-funded ads against a particular union organizing drive or strike, "is a new wrinkle." An <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=AFL-CIO" title="AFL-CIO">AFL-CIO</a> spokesperson called the ad's accusations "unfounded and outrageous." <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114799623004157251.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace" class="external autonumber" title="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114799623004157251.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace" rel="nofollow">[2]</a></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In June 2007, the group campaigned heavily against the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Employee_Free_Choice_Act" title="Employee Free Choice Act">Employee Free Choice Act</a>, legislation which "would give employees at a workplace the right to unionize as soon as a <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">majority signed cards </span>saying they wanted to do so." <font color="#ff0000">The Center for Union Facts has spent "$500,000 on <a href="http://www.unionfacts.com/ads.cfm" class="external text" title="http://www.unionfacts.com/ads.cfm" rel="nofollow">newspaper and broadcast advertisements</a> this week alone," reported the <i>New York Times</i> on June 20, 2007. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/washington/20labor.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/washington/20labor.html" rel="nofollow">[3]</a> The group's print ads for the campaign compared union leaders to Ugandan dictator <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Idi_Amin&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Idi Amin (page does not exist)">Idi Amin</a> and Iranian president <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (page does not exist)">Mahmoud Ahmadinejad</a>, calling the bill a "scheme to eliminate workers' right to a secret ballot.</font>" <a href="http://www.unionfacts.com/ads/laborElections2.cfm" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.unionfacts.com/ads/laborElections2.cfm" rel="nofollow">[4]</a></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Center for Union Facts is behind the billboards with the web site TeachersUnionExposed.com which have been put up around Newark, New Jersey<a href="http://www.teachersunionexposed.com/about.cfm" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.teachersunionexposed.com/about.cfm" rel="nofollow">[5]</a>.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">In August <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">2008</span>, the group's "political arm," the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Employee_Freedom_Action_Committee" title="Employee Freedom Action Committee">Employee Freedom Action Committee</a>, ramped up its campaign agains the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). It launched a <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">$30 million campaign, including radio, television, print and online ads and "a substantial grassroots organizing effort.</span>" The group's anti-EFCA ads were slated to run in Maine, New Hampshire, Mississippi, Kentucky, Louisiana, Colorado, Oregon and Minnesota. At the same time, the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coalition_for_a_Democratic_Workplace" title="Coalition for a Democratic Workplace">Coalition for a Democratic Workplace</a>, which is comprised of "virtually hundreds of businesses, chambers of commerce and trade associations," was also spending millions to defeat the bill. "The <b>folks behind the ad campaign fear that if Sen. Barack Obama, an Employee Free Choice Act sponsor, is elected president and power shifts to the Democrats in the Senate, the bill will become law," according to a New Hampshire paper</b>. <sup id="cite_ref-0" class="reference"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Union_Facts#cite_note-0" title="">[1]</a></sup></font>

<a name="Personnel" id="Personnel"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font></a></p>

<h2><span class="mw-headline"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Personnel</font></span></h2>

<ul>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman" title="Rick Berman">Rick Berman</a>, Executive Director. <a href="http://www.unionfacts.com/news.cfm?id=10" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.unionfacts.com/news.cfm?id=10" rel="nofollow">[6]</a></font></li>

</ul>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The contact person on the initial media release is <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sarah_Longwell" title="Sarah Longwell">Sarah Longwell</a> </span>who has worked in public relations for <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Berman" title="Rick Berman">Rick Berman</a> at his <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Employment_Policies_Institute" title="Employment Policies Institute">Employment Policies Institute</a> as well as for the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Intercollegiate_Studies_Institute" title="Intercollegiate Studies Institute">Intercollegiate Studies Institute</a> and its <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Collegiate_Network" title="Collegiate Network">Collegiate Network</a>.</font>

<a name="Funding" id="Funding"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font></a></p>

<h2><span class="mw-headline"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Funding</font></span></h2>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">United Press International noted that "the group's spokesman refused to release the names of its donors or say where its funding came from." <a href="http://news.monstersandcritics.com/business/article_1097299.php" class="external autonumber" title="http://news.monstersandcritics.com/business/article_1097299.php" rel="nofollow">[7]</a></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Berman told Bloomberg reporter Kim Bowman that he had <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">raised "about $2.5 million from companies, trade organizations and individuals, whom he declined to identify</span>." <a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/259366_antiunion14.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/259366_antiunion14.html" rel="nofollow">[8]</a></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sarah_Longwell" title="Sarah Longwell">Sarah Longwell</a>, a spokeswoman for the Center for Union Facts, echoed Berman's groups standard claim for secrecy on who funds their front groups<b>. "The reason we don't disclose supporters is because unions have a long history of targeting anyone who opposes them, whether it be in a threatening way or by lodging campaigns against them," she told <i>Detroit Free Press</i>.</b> <a href="http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060524/BUSINESS07/605240414" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060524/BUSINESS07/605240414" rel="nofollow">[9]</a></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The paper reported that while<span style=" background-color: #FFF200;"> </span><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Wal-Mart_Stores" title="Wal-Mart Stores"><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;">Wal-Mart Stores</span></a><span style=" background-color: #FFF200;"> </span>denied funding the group it state<b>d that "it has a relationship in which it exchanges union information with Berman, the group's head</b>." <a href="http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060524/BUSINESS07/605240414" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060524/BUSINESS07/605240414" rel="nofollow">[10]</a></font>

<a name="Contact_details" id="Contact_details"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font></a></p>

<h2><span class="mw-headline"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Contact details</font></span></h2>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Center for Union Facts

PO Box 27455

Washington, DC 20038

Phone: 202-463-7106

Email: <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sarah_Longwell" title="Sarah Longwell">Sarah Longwell</a> (longwell AT unionfacts.com)

Web: <a href="http://www.unionfacts.com" class="external free" title="http://www.unionfacts.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.unionfacts.com</a></font>

<a name="Articles_and_resources" id="Articles_and_resources"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font></a></p>

<h2><span class="mw-headline"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Articles and resources</font></span></h2>

<p><a name="Related_SourceWatch_articles" id="Related_SourceWatch_articles"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font></a></p>

<h3><span class="mw-headline"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Related SourceWatch articles</font></span></h3>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bob_McAdam" title="Bob McAdam"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Bob McAdam</font></a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Lee_Culpepper" title="Lee Culpepper"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Lee Culpepper</font></a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ActivistCash.com" title="ActivistCash.com"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ActivistCash.com</font></a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Beverage_Institute" title="American Beverage Institute"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">American Beverage Institute</font></a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=A_Visit_to_the_ActivistCash.Com_Web_Site" title="A Visit to the ActivistCash.Com Web Site" class="mw-redirect"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A Visit to the ActivistCash.Com Web Site</font></a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Berman_%26_Co." title="Berman & Co."><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Berman & Co.</font></a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Consumer_Freedom" title="Center for Consumer Freedom"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Center for Consumer Freedom</font></a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Employee_Free_Choice_Act" title="Employee Free Choice Act"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Employee Free Choice Act</font></a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Employment_Policies_Institute" title="Employment Policies Institute"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Employment Policies Institute</font></a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Employment_Roundtable" title="Employment Roundtable"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Employment Roundtable</font></a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=FishScam.com" title="FishScam.com"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">FishScam.com</font></a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=LaborPains.org" title="LaborPains.org"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">LaborPains.org</font></a></li>

</ul>

<p><a name="References" id="References"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font></a></p>

<h3><span class="mw-headline"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">References</font></span></h3>

<ol class="references">

<li id="cite_note-0"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Union_Facts#cite_ref-0" title="">↑</a> Deborah Mcdermott, "<a href="http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080817/NEWS/808170357/-1/NEWS01&sfad=1" class="external text" title="http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080817/NEWS/808170357/-1/NEWS01&sfad=1" rel="nofollow">Groups lodge anti-union campaign: Employee Free Choice Act the subject of ads</a>," <i>Seacoast Online</i> (New Hampshire), August 17, 2008.</font></li>

</ol>

<p><a name="External_resources" id="External_resources"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font></a></p>

<h3><span class="mw-headline"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">External resources</font></span></h3>

<ul>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"<a href="http://www.unionfacts.com/news.cfm?id=10" class="external text" title="http://www.unionfacts.com/news.cfm?id=10" rel="nofollow">The Center for Union Facts Launches Multimillion-Dollar Campaign and Comprehensive Website to Expose</a>", Media Release, January 10, 2006.</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Center for Union Facts, "<a href="http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=60890" class="external text" title="http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=60890" rel="nofollow">The Center for Union Facts Positions Huge Dinosaur Outside AFL-CIO</a>", News Release, February 13, 2006.</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"<a href="http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=66563" class="external text" title="http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=66563" rel="nofollow">Union Facts Calls on Wal-Mart to Begin Funding Education Campaign</a>", Media Release, May 27, 2006.</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)'s web site, <a href="http://www.bermanexposed.org/" class="external text" title="http://www.bermanexposed.org/" rel="nofollow">www.BermanExposed.org</a></font></li>

</ul>

<p><a name="External_articles" id="External_articles"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font></a></p>

<h3><span class="mw-headline"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">External articles</font></span></h3>

<ul>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"<a href="http://news.monstersandcritics.com/business/article_1097299.php" class="external text" title="http://news.monstersandcritics.com/business/article_1097299.php" rel="nofollow">Anti-union group launches media campaign</a>",<i>United Press International</i>, February 13, 2006</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Amy Joyce, "<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/02/13/AR2006021301913.html" class="external text" title="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/02/13/AR2006021301913.html" rel="nofollow">Full-Page Ads Launch Anti-Union Drive - Lobbyist Aims to Show Labor Groups to be 'Duplicitous'</a>", <i>Washington Post</i>, February 14, 2006.</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Steven Greenhouse, "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/business/14labor.html" class="external text" title="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/business/14labor.html" rel="nofollow">Group Starts Anti-Union Campaign</a>", <i>New York Times</i>, February 14, 2006.</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Kim Chapman, "<a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/259366_antiunion14.html" class="external text" title="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/259366_antiunion14.html" rel="nofollow">New group launches anti-union drive</a>", <i>Seattle Post Intelligencer</i>, February 14, 2006. (This is a syndicated Bloomberg story).</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Kris Maher, "<a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113803860071853820-VdTeMQG0x5M_9SOFLy455VbL0xk_20070214.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top" class="external text" title="http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113803860071853820-VdTeMQG0x5M_9SOFLy455VbL0xk_20070214.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top" rel="nofollow">Taking on the AFL-CIO</a>", "Incident Report", <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, February 13, 2006.</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Kortney Stringer, "<a href="http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060524/BUSINESS07/605240414" class="external text" title="http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060524/BUSINESS07/605240414" rel="nofollow">Antiunion ad campaign in Detroit's face today</a>", <i>Detroit Free Press</i>, May 24, 2006.</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">WakeUpWalMart.com, "<a href="http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=66532" class="external text" title="http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=66532" rel="nofollow">New Evidence Shows Wal-Mart Working Closely With Right Wing Attack Group, Says WakeUpWalMart.com</a>", Media Release, May 26, 2006.</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Marcus Kabel, "<a href="http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8HRKGKO0.htm?campaign_id=apn_home_down&chan=db" class="external text" title="http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8HRKGKO0.htm?campaign_id=apn_home_down&chan=db" rel="nofollow">Wal-Mart denies funding anti-union ads</a>", <i>Businessweek</i>, May 26, 2006. (This is an Associated Press story).</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">American Rights at Work, "<a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/" class="external text" title="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/" rel="nofollow">Center for Union Facts</a>", Profile, accessed June 2011.</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">American Rights at Work, "<a href="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/lifting-the-veil-on-richard-berman.html" class="external text" title="http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/center-for-union-facts/lifting-the-veil-on-richard-berman.html" rel="nofollow">Who Is Rick Berman?</a>", accessed June 2011.</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Steven Greenhouse, "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/washington/20labor.html" class="external text" title="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/washington/20labor.html" rel="nofollow">Clash Nears in the Senate on Legislation Helping Unions Organize</a>," <i>New York Times</i>, June 20, 2007.</font></li>

<li><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Michael P., "<a href="http://www.infosnack.org/2008/09/metro-center-advertising-front-groups.html" class="external text" title="http://www.infosnack.org/2008/09/metro-center-advertising-front-groups.html" rel="nofollow">Metro Center Advertising - Front Groups</a> ," blog "Infosnack Headquarters," September 24, 2008.</font></li>

</ul>

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<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font></p><h2 class="date-header" style="margin: 0px; position: relative; font-size: 11px; min-height: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="padding: inherit; letter-spacing: inherit; margin: inherit; background-color: transparent;">Sunday, December 02, 2007</span></h2><div class="date-posts" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16.7999992370605px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="post-outer"><div class="post hentry" itemprop="blogPost" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting" style="position: relative; min-height: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 25px;"><a name="6174513472972831933" /><h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="margin: 0.75em 0px 0px; position: relative; font-weight: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 22px; line-height: normal;"><a name="6174513472972831933" /><a name="6174513472972831933" /><a name="6174513472972831933">Divided Loyalties Divide House Republicans</a></h3><div class="post-header" style="line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-size: 10.8000001907349px;"><div class="post-header-line-1"><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-6174513472972831933" itemprop="description articleBody" style="width: 480px; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 1.4; position: relative;">House Republican critics of Brian Bosma in the past have complained that he has wielded the power of his leadership position to enrich his own law firm. They point to the tens of thousands of dollars he paid to his own law firm, Kroger, Gardis and Regas, out of taxpayer funds to fight the House prayer case in the courts. They also complain that Bosma paid his law firm over $26,000 last year to provide legal work for the <b>House Republican Campaign Committee (HRCC</b>) over which he is the titular head as the caucus' leader. Now, the critics are concerned that Bosma has given his blessing to staff workers for HRCC to pursue other political consulting clients at the expense of the HRCC's efforts next year to recapture the House.</div></div></div></div>

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">At issue is <b><span style=" color: #ED1C24;">Maverick Strategies</span>,</b> a <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Franklin-based</span> political consulting firm founded by HRCC staffers of past campaigns. The firm represented a number of mayoral campaigns this year and has been retained by<b> U.S. Rep. Dan Burton</b>'s re-election effort against a strong primary challenge from Dr. John McGoff, a former Marion County Coroner and emergency room physician. FEC campaign disclosure statements show Burton's campaign has paid Maverick Strategies $54,452 during the past year. A source tells <em>Advance Indiana</em> that the HRCC staffers have been doing <b>opposition research on McGoff</b>, which has included searching his medical license records with the State of Indiana and a couple of old medical malpractice claims against his practice group. No pay dirt there I'm told.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;...</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">http://advanceindiana.blogspot.com/2007/12/divided-loyalties-divide-house.html</font></p>

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