nelson, terry

scrape<div>
</div><div><div>Stephen E. Schmidt</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;Partner</div><div>Steve Schmidt is a Partner of Mercury Public Affairs and leads the firm's operation in California.</div><div>
</div><div>Recognized as one of the top political strategists in the country, Mr. Schmidt provides high-level counsel to political candidates, elected officials, and major corporations and organizations, including Fortune 500 companies, Hollywood studios and professional sports teams. He most recently served as a Senior Advisor to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>Prior to joining Mercury, Mr. Schmidt served as Campaign Manager for the re-election of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. Schwarzenegger's landslide victory was described by The New York Times as "particularly remarkable given that the Governor appeared to be all but finished just six months ago." The Los Angeles Times commended Mr. Schmidt as having "ran a nearly flawless campaign" and overseen a re-election that "ran against a political tide that swamped other Republicans across the nation."</div><div>
</div><div>Before the Schwarzenegger campaign, Mr. Schmidt served as a member of the White House senior staff as Deputy Assistant to the President and Counselor to the Vice President. In that position, Mr. Schmidt advised on a wide range of issues and worked at the intersection of public communications, policy development, legislative advocacy and political strategy.</div><div>
</div><div>During his tenure at the White House, Mr. Schmidt played a leading role in the confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. Mr. Schmidt directed strategic communications for the nomination of Chief Justice Roberts and led the nomination team for Justice Alito. Prior to Justice Alito's nomination, Mr. Schmidt served in Baghdad, where he performed a month-long assessment of media relations in the war zone at the behest of U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Schmidt served as one of the top strategists on President Bush's 2004 re-election and was a member of the senior strategic planning group that directed the campaign. Mr. Schmidt was responsible for directing and implementing the campaign's daily tactical and strategic communications effort, overseeing rapid response, regional media, research, e-campaign, and television and radio operations. Mr. Schmidt served as a national spokesman in print, radio and television, appearing on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, as well as national networks and local affiliates across the country.</div><div>
</div><div>Prior to the President's re-election campaign, Mr. Schmidt worked on Capitol Hill as the Communications Director for the National Republican Congressional Committee where he served as chief communications and media strategist for the U.S. House of Representatives Republican majority during the historic 2002 midterm elections. Described as a "damage-control master", Mr. Schmidt has served on dozens of campaigns at the national, state and local levels</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Terry Nelson</b></div><div>
</div><div>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</div><div>
</div><div>Jump to: navigation, search</div><div>For the football player, see Terry Nelson (American football). For the musician, see Terry Nelson (musician).</div><div>
</div><div>Terry A. Nelson is a consultant and Republican strategist in the United States. He was the political director of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign. In early 2006, Nelson was hired as a "senior adviser" to Senator John McCain; in December 2006 McCain's presidential exploratory committee said that Nelson was McCain's pick to be his national campaign manager, should McCain choose to turn his exploring into a full-blown run for the White House.</div><div>
</div><div>Contents</div><div>
</div><div>[hide]</div><div>1 Personal</div><div>2 Politics and political campaigns</div><div>2.1 State and regional</div><div>2.2 National positions at NRCC</div><div>2.3 Presidential campaigns</div><div>3 Consulting</div><div>3.1 Dawson McCarthy Nelson Media</div><div>3.2 Crosslink Strategy Group and Mercury Public Affairs</div><div>3.3 Akerman Senterfitt</div><div>3.4 2006 Tennessee Senate election</div><div>4 References</div><div>5 External links</div><div>[edit] Personal</div><div>
</div><div>Nelson is a native of Marshalltown, Iowa. [1] He graduated in 1994 from the University of Iowa with a B.S. in Political Science.</div><div>
</div><div>Nelson, his wife Marci, and their three children live in Falls Church, Virginia.[2]</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] Politics and political campaigns</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] State and regional</div><div>
</div><div>Nelson managed the 1992 campaign of U.S. Representative Jim Nussle, two years before graduating from college,[3] and Nussle's 1994 campaign. From 1995 to 1996 he was a field representative for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). In 1997, he became the majority staff director of the Republican caucus in the Iowa state senate.</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] National positions at NRCC</div><div>
</div><div>In 2000, Nelson became the political director of the NRCC.[1][4]</div><div>
</div><div>From January 2002 [5] to July 2003, Nelson was deputy chief of staff of the Republican National Committee (RNC). In that position, he has been mentioned in two criminal cases:</div><div>
</div><div>Nelson was the superior of James Tobin, the New England political director for the RNC, who was convicted in late 2005 for his role in a scheme to jam phone lines in New Hampshire in November 2002 to block Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts. Nelson was on the government's witness list to testify at Tobin's trial, [6] but he was never called to testify at the trial.[7]</div><div>As of 2006, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and two others face criminal charges of violating a Texas law that prohibits the use of corporate money to fund candidates. The indictment charges they wrote a check to the RNC from a PAC controlled by DeLay and had the RNC send the same amount of money to the candidates, in order to get around that law. According to the indictment, the request and proposal to do this was made to Nelson in September 2002, and the check and list of candidates to be funded was given to Nelson two days later.[8]</div><div>[edit] Presidential campaigns</div><div>
</div><div>In July 2003, Nelson became the political director of the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign, a position he held for the next year and a half.</div><div>
</div><div>In early 2006, Nelson was hired as a "senior adviser" to John McCain's Straight Talk America political action committee[1]. In late 2005, Nelson had told the National Journal that he wouldn't make a decision about which Republican campaign to join until 2007 at the earliest, saying "I'm currently enjoying my private life and don't have immediate plans to change that." [9]</div><div>
</div><div>In December 2006, McCain's presidential exploratory committee said that Nelson was McCain's pick to be his national campaign manager, should McCain choose to turn his exploring into a full-blown run for the White House.[10]</div><div>
</div><div>On July 10, 2007, Nelson resigned as national campaign manager for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. [1] The sudden departure of both Nelson and longtime McCain adviser John Weaver came after months of increasing campaign problems. McCain, after first insisting that neither man had been fired, called their departure "a consensus decision." [11]</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] Consulting</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] Dawson McCarthy Nelson Media</div><div>
</div><div>In 2001, Nelson co-founded the Republican media shop Dawson McCarthy Nelson Media (DMNM), a communication and advertising firm that develops strategy, messages, and advertising for Republican candidates.[12] One of the firm's clients was Americans for Job Security (AJS), a Virginia-based group that the American Insurance Association helped launch. AJS takes out attack ads against liberal and moderate candidates nationwide without disclosing its political contributions or expenditures.[3]</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] Crosslink Strategy Group and Mercury Public Affairs</div><div>
</div><div>In 2005, Nelson and his partners at DMNM started another firm, Crosslink Strategy Group, to create grassroots campaigns for corporations and interest groups. The firm’s website says it can teach clients how to "increase your PAC fundraising" and ensure "compliance with campaign finance laws." One of the employees of the firm is Chris LaCivita, who helped design Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's anti-Kerry ads.[3]</div><div>
</div><div>Working Families for Wal-Mart, a group with significant funding from Wal-Mart, has employed the Crosslink firm. In April 2006, temporary workers hired by Crosslink were signing up shoppers to become members of the "Working Families" group, a campaign intended to eventually go nationwide. [13]</div><div>
</div><div>In May 2006, Crosslinks Strategy Group became an operating unit of Mercury Public Affairs, with Nelson becoming a partner[14] and running the firm's Washington, D.C. office.[15] The firm describes itself as "a full-service strategic communications firm" whose political division "has been involved in successful political campaigns in over thirty states". It is part of the Omnicom Group, a global advertising, marketing and corporate communications company.[16]</div><div>
</div><div>In October 2006, Wal-Mart publicly ended its contract with Crosslink Strategy, after significant controversy erupted regarding Nelson's involvement with an allegedly racist campaign ad mocking Democrat Harold Ford of Tennessee. [17]</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] Akerman Senterfitt</div><div>
</div><div>In March 2005, the Florida law firm Akerman Senterfitt announced that Nelson had been hired "as a consultant in the firm’s emerging Government Relations Practice".[18] As of September 2006, the firm's website (www.akerman.com) no longer listed him as a member of the firm. [19]</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] 2006 Tennessee Senate election</div><div>
</div><div>In September 2006, the Washington Post reported that the Republican National Committee had hired Nelson to run an ad campaign to attack Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate seats in the November general election, featuring negative information that researchers had or would dig up on Democrats.[20]</div><div>
</div><div>In October 2006, Nelson was revealed as the second producer, with lead producer Scott Howell, of the attack ad used against Democratic candidate Harold Ford Jr. in which a white woman said that she had met Ford at a Playboy party. The ad concluded with the woman speaking to the camera and saying with a wink, "Harold, call me." It was criticized as racist by the NAACP and others.[21]</div><div>
</div><div>Coverage of the controversy characterized Nelson's partner Howell as a "protegé" of Karl Rove. After Jesse Jackson and others called on Walmart to fire Nelson, Walmart asked for and received Nelson's resignation. [22]</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] References</div><div>
</div><div>^ a b c Chris Cillizza and Zachary A. Goldfarb, "McCain Camp Hires 'Best Bricklayer,'", Washington Post, March 19, 2006</div><div>^ "About Us", Crosslink Strategy Group, accessed September 11, 2006</div><div>^ a b c Andrew Wheat, "DeLay’s Beautiful Laundrette', October 21, 2005] Texas Observer</div><div>^ Iowa Caucuses 2008 - Leadership and Supporters, George Washington University Democracy in Action project, accessed September 11, 2006</div><div>^ "RNC Continues Grassroots and Outreach Efforts; Announces New Staff and Initiatives", Republican National Committee press release, January 17, 2002</div><div>^ "Witness List for the Prosecution from the Trial of James Tobin, 11-29-2005", document copy at TPMMuckracker.com</div><div>^ Paul Kiel, Terry Nelson got around", TPMMuckracker.com, March 20, 2006</div><div>^ "Indictment of Tom DeLay on Money Laundering Charges, 10-03-2005", document at TPMMuckraker.com</div><div>^ "Hotline Clip-N-Save: The Bush Team In '08...", National Journal, December 6, 2005</div><div>^ "McCain Picks Campaign Chief", ABC News (blog), December 7, 2006</div><div>^ "McCain Campaign Drops Top Aides; New Doubts Rise". New York Times. 2007-07-11. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/us/politics/11mccain.html?ex=1341806400&en=3ce688a3bc3f3938&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print. Retrieved 2007-07-11.&nbsp;</div><div>^ "http://www.cfboard.state.mn.us/NewsRelease/pawlentyfindings.htm", State of Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, October 10, 2002</div><div>^ Marilyn Geewax, Shoppers Become Unwitting Warriors In PR Battle", Cox News Service, April 4, 2006</div><div>^ "Former Bush-Cheney Political Director Terry Nelson Joins Mercury Public Affairs as Washington, D.C., Partner", press release, May 4, 2006</div><div>^ "Terry Nelson, Partner", Mercury Public Affairs website, accessed September 11, 2006</div><div>^ "Who We Are", Mercury Public Affairs website, accessed September 11, 2006</div><div>^ New York Times, October 28, 2006, "Wal-Mart Dismisses Adviser Who Created G.O.P. Ad"</div><div>^ "Two Major Bush Cheney '04 Advisors Add Significant Presence to Akerman Senterfitt's Washington, D.C. Office: Mark Wallace and Terry Nelson To Strengthen Firm's Government Relations Practice", Akerman Senterfitt press release, March 7, 2005</div><div>^ Search of attorneys and consultants at Akerman Senterfitt, accessed September 11, 2006</div><div>^ Jim VandeHei and Chris Cillizza, "In a Pivotal Year, GOP Plans to Get Personal: Millions to Go to Digging Up Dirt on Democrats", Washington Post, September 10, 2006</div><div>^ "Rove Protégé Behind Racy Tennessee Ad", CBS News, October 26, 2006</div><div>^ "GOP consultant cuts ties with Wal-Mart", AP story, October 28, 2006</div><div>[edit] External links</div><div>
</div><div>Profile in Campaigns & Elections, June, 2002.</div><div>Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Nelson"</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Terry Nelson Got Around</div><div>
</div><div>By Paul Kiel - March 20, 2006, 6:10PM</div><div>Below we noted that John McCain's new "senior aide" Terry Nelson played a central role in the money laundering scheme for which Tom DeLay is being prosecuted in Texas.</div><div>
</div><div>But 2002 was a busy year for Terry Nelson.</div><div>
</div><div>He was deputy chief of staff of the Republican National Committee, where in addition to being in a position to funnel money back to Texas congressional candidates, he was the superior of one James Tobin, the New England political director for the RNC. Tobin, you'll remember, was convicted late last year for his role in a scheme to jam the phone lines for Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts.</div><div>
</div><div>Maybe Nelson had nothing to do with it. But if he didn't, it makes you wonder why he was on the government's witness list to testify at Tobin's trial. He was never called, so it's not clear what he knows, but clearly he knows enough that the government thought he might be helpful for their case.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Wal-Mart Dismisses Adviser Who Created G.O.P. Ad</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>SAVE</div><div>
</div><div>By MICHAEL BARBARO</div><div>
</div><div>Published: October 28, 2006</div><div>
</div><div>After infuriating Canada’s ambassador to the United States and raising the ire of the N.A.A.C.P., a Republican television commercial mocking Representative Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee has become a political liability for an unlikely third party: Wal-Mart Stores.</div><div>
</div><div>Skip to next paragraph</div><div>
</div><div>Multimedia</div><div>
</div><div>Under pressure from black leaders and union groups, Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, said last night that it had cut ties with a prominent Republican strategist who helped create the provocative advertisement.</div><div>
</div><div>The strategist, Terry Nelson, was hired by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in 2005 to help burnish its image after a wave of attacks from organized labor and liberal groups.</div><div>
</div><div>After Mr. Nelson’s affiliation with the Republican commercial became public this week, the Rev. Jesse Jackson demanded that Wal-Mart fire Mr. Nelson and a union group threatened to run advertisements in Tennessee linking the retailer to it.</div><div>
</div><div>In the commercial, which was financed by the Republican National Committee, actors in mock interviews spoke sarcastically about Mr. Ford and his candidacy for the Senate seat in Tennessee.</div><div>
</div><div>In a scene that black leaders say has racist overtones, a white actress says she met Mr. Ford, who is black, at a “Playboy party.”</div><div>
</div><div>“Harold, call me,” she says coyly.</div><div>
</div><div>Canadian officials objected this week to a separate scene in which an actor says, “Canada can take care of North Korea. They’re not busy.”</div><div>
</div><div>The aside is a perceived slight to a country that has troops in Afghanistan as part of NATO forces, and on Wednesday, Michael Wilson, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, contacted the White House to complain.</div><div>
</div><div>A statement from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, distributed by the group WakeUpWal-Mart.com, which is backed by unions, said, “Wal-Mart has the responsibility to dismiss Terry Nelson, with explanation, and apologize to Harold Ford Jr. Even though the Republican Party pulled the ad, if you throw ink on a suit, you leave a stain. They threw ink on Harold Ford Jr., and many people believed it to be true, resulting in a negative impact.”</div><div>
</div><div>Wal-Mart said in a statement that Mr. Nelson’s Washington consulting firm, Crosslink Strategy Group, “sent a letter to Wal-Mart ending its working relationship with our company.”</div><div>
</div><div>“We believe this is the right course of action,” Wal-Mart said.</div><div>
</div><div>A person familiar with the letter said it made clear that the decision to end the relationship was based on requests from Wal-Mart. The person, not authorized to speak publicly, did so on condition of anonymity.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Nelson did not respond to several telephone and e-mail messages.</div><div>
</div><div>Wal-Mart’s relationship with Mr. Nelson threatened to set back the retailer’s extensive efforts to reach out to African-Americans, who account for a large number of its employees and customers.</div><div>
</div><div>Over the past year, H. Lee Scott Jr., the chief executive, has met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and appeared on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio show.</div><div>
</div><div>The commercial has created a public relations problem for Republicans less than two weeks before Election Day.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Nelson has worked for various Republican leaders, including President Bush and Senator John McCain of Arizona.</div><div>
</div><div>As a founder of Crosslink Strategy Group, he also consults for corporations.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;Mr. Nelson has helped recruit Wal-Mart’s suppliers to join an advocacy group that trumpets its accomplishments and has overseen a program to register Wal-Mart employees to vote in Nov. 7 elections in part as a reaction to Democratic attacks against the company.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>NASHVILLE, Tenn., Oct. 26, 2006</div><div>Rove Protégé Behind Racy Tennessee Ad</div><div>
</div><div>Controversial RNC Ad Against Harold Ford Jr. Produced By Rove Consultant</div><div>
</div><div>By Sean Alfano</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>(CBS/AP) &nbsp;A protégé of White House political guru Karl Rove produced the controversial Republican National Committee ad targeting Tennessee Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Harold Ford Jr., that some have called racist, CBS News has learned.</div><div>
</div><div>The ad, in which a white woman with blonde hair and bare shoulders looks into the camera and whispers, "Harold, call me," and then winks, was produced by Scott Howell, the former political director for Rove's consulting firm in Texas.</div><div>
</div><div>The RNC ad doesn't mention that "Harold" is black, but the NAACP and others have complained the commercial makes an implicit appeal to deep-seated racial fears about black men and white women.</div><div>
</div><div>The race between Ford Jr. and Republican Bob Corker is among the most competitive and nasty U.S. Senate races in the nation. But it didn't just happen with a racially-charged ad from Republicans, reports CBS News national correspondent Byron Pitts.</div><div>
</div><div>The Democrats struck first weeks ago by playing the class card in an add which states that Corker's "personal income grew by 40 percent to $11 million."</div><div>
</div><div>Howell is no stranger to controversy. He was media consultant for Sen. Saxby Chambliss when his campaign ran an ad showing a picture of then-Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who lost his legs in the Vietnam War, alongside Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.</div><div>
</div><div>He also produced an ad for Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn that accused Democrat Brad Carson of being soft on welfare while showing two black hands counting cash.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Howell also worked for Republican Jerry Kilgore in last year's Virginia gubernatorial race when Kilgore ran an ad saying that Gov. Tim Kaine wouldn't have used the death penalty against Hitler.</div><div>
</div><div>Race was always an element of the Tennessee contest as Ford seeks to become the first black man elected to the Senate from the South since Reconstruction. The issue slammed into the public consciousness this week with the latest ad.</div><div>"I've not met any observer who didn't immediately say, 'Oh my gosh!' It was a race card," said Vanderbilt University professor John Geer, an expert on political attack ads.</div><div>
</div><div>The goal of the ad is to persuade people who don't like Ford — and who might have been thinking about sitting at home this election — to vote, reports CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger.</div><div>
</div><div>The RNC has taken the ad off the air after a five-day run. However it was still appearing on at least one TV station in Chattanooga — WRCB-TV — as of Wednesday. The station was still airing the ad because it did not want to run the GOP's replacement commercial. The new ad says Ford "voted to recognize gay marriage" and "wants to give the abortion pill to our schoolchildren," reports the Nashville Tennessean.</div><div>
</div><div>Hilary Shelton, director of Washington bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the ad plays off fears some people still have about interracial couples.</div><div>
</div><div>"In a Southern state like Tennessee, some stereotypes still exist," he said. "There's very clearly some racial subtext in an ad like that."</div><div>
</div><div>The RNC, which paid for the ad, denied that it had any racial subtext. Party chairman Ken Mehlman said it was produced by an independent organization, in accordance with campaign finance law, "without the knowledge, the participation, the advice, the approval or the involvement of either the national party or the campaign."</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; "We essentially write a check to an independent entity and they do what they want with it," Mehlman said in an interview with The Associated Press.</div><div>
</div><div>Independent expenditure groups, Borger explains, spend their own money at the end of a campaign and place these ads.</div><div>
</div><div>Mehlman's dismissal of claims the GOP is playing the race card comes as the party chairman pushes the candidacy of three black Republicans in contests farther north — gubernatorial candidates Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio and Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania, and Senate candidate Michael Steele in Maryland.</div><div>
</div><div>Mehlman also has made an effort in this election cycle to attract African-Americans to the GOP, speaking to various black groups around the country.</div><div>
</div><div>In the ad, the woman brags, "I met Harold at the Playboy party!" — an apparent reference to Ford's attendance at a Playboy Super Bowl party in Jacksonville, Fla., last year.</div><div>
</div><div>"I was there. I like football, and I like girls," Ford said Tuesday.</div><div>
</div><div>"When I saw it after it had been up, my reaction was not that I thought that this ad was racist," Mehlman said. But he added: "I have heard from people who I respect who raised concerns about it from that perspective."</div><div>
</div><div>Corker called the ad tacky and said it should be taken off the air.</div><div>
</div><div>Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act passed by Congress in 2002, political parties can pay for "independent expenditure" advertisements against opponents that do not count against legal spending limits on campaigns. But the party is not allowed to play any role in creating the ad or deciding how and when it will be used.</div><div>
</div><div>Democratic National Committee general counsel Joe Sandler said that Mehlman did have power to pull the ad from the airwaves, even if he had no control over the content, because the RNC is responsible for the advertisement.</div><div>
</div><div>"He could take it down with a phone call," Sandler said.</div><div>
</div><div>Ford has clashed with Republicans over ads earlier this year.</div><div>
</div><div>Ford has accused the RNC of using a "dark, shadowy figure" to represent him in a TV ad. He told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that the ad "injects a little race in this thing, the way they have me pictured."</div><div>
</div><div>He also suggested that the Tennessee Republican Party used a darkened black-and-white image of him on a fundraising letter. Ford is light-skinned.</div><div>
</div><div>An independent group briefly aired a radio ad that had the most explicit attack.</div><div>
</div><div>The ad, paid for a group identified as Tennesseans for Truth and aired on a small station near Nashville, criticized Ford's membership in the Congressional Black Caucus, which the ad said "represents the interests of black people above all others."</div><div>
</div><div>Both Republican and Democratic officials have said they did not know who was behind Tennesseans for Truth.</div><div>
</div><div>The RNC ad is "breaking new ground and, frankly, breaking new lows," Geer said. It makes the 1988 "Willie Horton" ad — a good example of using implicit racial messages — look tame by comparison, Geer said.</div><div>
</div><div>The "Willie Horton" ad aired during the presidential campaign and accused Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis of being soft on crime. The ad showed a photo of convicted criminal Willie Horton, a black man. George H.W. Bush defeated Dukakis.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Nelson - wilkinson</div><div>
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</div><div>fromDennis Delaney <dwdelaney gmail.com="gmail.com" /></div><div>
</div><div>todwdelaney@gmail.com</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>dateSat, Apr 5, 2008 at 3:00 PM</div><div>
</div><div>subjectJIM WILKINSON - TERRY NELSON</div><div>
</div><div>mailed-bygmail.com</div><div>
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</div><div>show details 4/5/08</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>CLIENT PROFILE: The NRCC does battle for the life of the party - With its slim majority threatened on the Hill, the National Republican Congressional Committee is shifting into high gear. Steve Lilienthal reports on the people behind the attacks</div><div>
</div><div>STEVE LILIENTHAL</div><div>
</div><div>October 16, 2000</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>The vitriolic tone that marked the impeachment process on Capitol Hill is alive and well. And the National Republican Congressional Committee's communications division, under the leadership of Jim Wilkinson, the alternately confident and self-effacing 30-year-old director of marketing and communications, has done its part to keep it that way. It is Wilkinson's mission to communicate the GOP message as his party fights to maintain its majority status.</div><div>
</div><div>The vitriolic tone that marked the impeachment process on Capitol Hill is alive and well. And the National Republican Congressional Committee's communications division, under the leadership of Jim Wilkinson, the alternately confident and self-effacing 30-year-old director of marketing and communications, has done its part to keep it that way. It is Wilkinson's mission to communicate the GOP message as his party fights to maintain its majority status.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div></div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>2x &nbsp;some</div><div>
</div><div><div>Terry Nelson</div><div>
</div><div>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</div><div>
</div><div>Jump to: navigation, search</div><div>For the football player, see Terry Nelson (American football). For the musician, see Terry Nelson (musician).</div><div>
</div><div>Terry A. Nelson is a consultant and Republican strategist in the United States. He was the political director of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign. In early 2006, Nelson was hired as a "senior adviser" to Senator John McCain; in December 2006 McCain's presidential exploratory committee said that Nelson was McCain's pick to be his national campaign manager, should McCain choose to turn his exploring into a full-blown run for the White House.</div><div>
</div><div>Contents</div><div>
</div><div>[hide]</div><div>1 Personal</div><div>2 Politics and political campaigns</div><div>2.1 State and regional</div><div>2.2 National positions at NRCC</div><div>2.3 Presidential campaigns</div><div>3 Consulting</div><div>3.1 Dawson McCarthy Nelson Media</div><div>3.2 Crosslink Strategy Group and Mercury Public Affairs</div><div>3.3 Akerman Senterfitt</div><div>3.4 2006 Tennessee Senate election</div><div>4 References</div><div>5 External links</div><div>[edit] Personal</div><div>
</div><div>Nelson is a native of Marshalltown, Iowa. [1] He graduated in 1994 from the University of Iowa with a B.S. in Political Science.</div><div>
</div><div>Nelson, his wife Marci, and their three children live in Falls Church, Virginia.[2]</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] Politics and political campaigns</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] State and regional</div><div>
</div><div>Nelson managed the 1992 campaign of U.S. Representative Jim Nussle, two years before graduating from college,[3] and Nussle's 1994 campaign. From 1995 to 1996 he was a field representative for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). In 1997, he became the majority staff director of the Republican caucus in the Iowa state senate.</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] National positions at NRCC</div><div>
</div><div>In 2000, Nelson became the political director of the NRCC.[1][4]</div><div>
</div><div>From January 2002 [5] to July 2003, Nelson was deputy chief of staff of the Republican National Committee (RNC). In that position, he has been mentioned in two criminal cases:</div><div>
</div><div>Nelson was the superior of James Tobin, the New England political director for the RNC, who was convicted in late 2005 for his role in a scheme to jam phone lines in New Hampshire in November 2002 to block Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts. Nelson was on the government's witness list to testify at Tobin's trial, [6] but he was never called to testify at the trial.[7]</div><div>As of 2006, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and two others face criminal charges of violating a Texas law that prohibits the use of corporate money to fund candidates. The indictment charges they wrote a check to the RNC from a PAC controlled by DeLay and had the RNC send the same amount of money to the candidates, in order to get around that law. According to the indictment, the request and proposal to do this was made to Nelson in September 2002, and the check and list of candidates to be funded was given to Nelson two days later.[8]</div><div>[edit] Presidential campaigns</div><div>
</div><div>In July 2003, Nelson became the political director of the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign, a position he held for the next year and a half.</div><div>
</div><div>In early 2006, Nelson was hired as a "senior adviser" to John McCain's Straight Talk America political action committee[1]. In late 2005, Nelson had told the National Journal that he wouldn't make a decision about which Republican campaign to join until 2007 at the earliest, saying "I'm currently enjoying my private life and don't have immediate plans to change that." [9]</div><div>
</div><div>In December 2006, McCain's presidential exploratory committee said that Nelson was McCain's pick to be his national campaign manager, should McCain choose to turn his exploring into a full-blown run for the White House.[10]</div><div>
</div><div>On July 10, 2007, Nelson resigned as national campaign manager for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. [1] The sudden departure of both Nelson and longtime McCain adviser John Weaver came after months of increasing campaign problems. McCain, after first insisting that neither man had been fired, called their departure "a consensus decision." [11]</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] Consulting</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] Dawson McCarthy Nelson Media</div><div>
</div><div>In 2001, Nelson co-founded the Republican media shop Dawson McCarthy Nelson Media (DMNM), a communication and advertising firm that develops strategy, messages, and advertising for Republican candidates.[12] One of the firm's clients was Americans for Job Security (AJS), a Virginia-based group that the American Insurance Association helped launch. AJS takes out attack ads against liberal and moderate candidates nationwide without disclosing its political contributions or expenditures.[3]</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] Crosslink Strategy Group and Mercury Public Affairs</div><div>
</div><div>In 2005, Nelson and his partners at DMNM started another firm, Crosslink Strategy Group, to create grassroots campaigns for corporations and interest groups. The firm’s website says it can teach clients how to "increase your PAC fundraising" and ensure "compliance with campaign finance laws." One of the employees of the firm is Chris LaCivita, who helped design Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's anti-Kerry ads.[3]</div><div>
</div><div>Working Families for Wal-Mart, a group with significant funding from Wal-Mart, has employed the Crosslink firm. In April 2006, temporary workers hired by Crosslink were signing up shoppers to become members of the "Working Families" group, a campaign intended to eventually go nationwide. [13]</div><div>
</div><div>In May 2006, Crosslinks Strategy Group became an operating unit of Mercury Public Affairs, with Nelson becoming a partner[14] and running the firm's Washington, D.C. office.[15] The firm describes itself as "a full-service strategic communications firm" whose political division "has been involved in successful political campaigns in over thirty states". It is part of the Omnicom Group, a global advertising, marketing and corporate communications company.[16]</div><div>
</div><div>In October 2006, Wal-Mart publicly ended its contract with Crosslink Strategy, after significant controversy erupted regarding Nelson's involvement with an allegedly racist campaign ad mocking Democrat Harold Ford of Tennessee. [17]</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] Akerman Senterfitt</div><div>
</div><div>In March 2005, the Florida law firm Akerman Senterfitt announced that Nelson had been hired "as a consultant in the firm’s emerging Government Relations Practice".[18] As of September 2006, the firm's website (www.akerman.com) no longer listed him as a member of the firm. [19]</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] 2006 Tennessee Senate election</div><div>
</div><div>In September 2006, the Washington Post reported that the Republican National Committee had hired Nelson to run an ad campaign to attack Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate seats in the November general election, featuring negative information that researchers had or would dig up on Democrats.[20]</div><div>
</div><div>In October 2006, Nelson was revealed as the second producer, with lead producer Scott Howell, of the attack ad used against Democratic candidate Harold Ford Jr. in which a white woman said that she had met Ford at a Playboy party. The ad concluded with the woman speaking to the camera and saying with a wink, "Harold, call me." It was criticized as racist by the NAACP and others.[21]</div><div>
</div><div>Coverage of the controversy characterized Nelson's partner Howell as a "protegé" of Karl Rove. After Jesse Jackson and others called on Walmart to fire Nelson, Walmart asked for and received Nelson's resignation. [22]</div><div>
</div><div>[edit] References</div><div>
</div><div>^ a b c Chris Cillizza and Zachary A. Goldfarb, "McCain Camp Hires 'Best Bricklayer,'", Washington Post, March 19, 2006</div><div>^ "About Us", Crosslink Strategy Group, accessed September 11, 2006</div><div>^ a b c Andrew Wheat, "DeLay’s Beautiful Laundrette', October 21, 2005] Texas Observer</div><div>^ Iowa Caucuses 2008 - Leadership and Supporters, George Washington University Democracy in Action project, accessed September 11, 2006</div><div>^ "RNC Continues Grassroots and Outreach Efforts; Announces New Staff and Initiatives", Republican National Committee press release, January 17, 2002</div><div>^ "Witness List for the Prosecution from the Trial of James Tobin, 11-29-2005", document copy at TPMMuckracker.com</div><div>^ Paul Kiel, Terry Nelson got around", TPMMuckracker.com, March 20, 2006</div><div>^ "Indictment of Tom DeLay on Money Laundering Charges, 10-03-2005", document at TPMMuckraker.com</div><div>^ "Hotline Clip-N-Save: The Bush Team In '08...", National Journal, December 6, 2005</div><div>^ "McCain Picks Campaign Chief", ABC News (blog), December 7, 2006</div><div>^ "McCain Campaign Drops Top Aides; New Doubts Rise". New York Times. 2007-07-11. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/us/politics/11mccain.html?ex=1341806400&en=3ce688a3bc3f3938&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print. Retrieved 2007-07-11.&nbsp;</div><div>^ "http://www.cfboard.state.mn.us/NewsRelease/pawlentyfindings.htm", State of Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, October 10, 2002</div><div>^ Marilyn Geewax, Shoppers Become Unwitting Warriors In PR Battle", Cox News Service, April 4, 2006</div><div>^ "Former Bush-Cheney Political Director Terry Nelson Joins Mercury Public Affairs as Washington, D.C., Partner", press release, May 4, 2006</div><div>^ "Terry Nelson, Partner", Mercury Public Affairs website, accessed September 11, 2006</div><div>^ "Who We Are", Mercury Public Affairs website, accessed September 11, 2006</div><div>^ New York Times, October 28, 2006, "Wal-Mart Dismisses Adviser Who Created G.O.P. Ad"</div><div>^ "Two Major Bush Cheney '04 Advisors Add Significant Presence to Akerman Senterfitt's Washington, D.C. Office: Mark Wallace and Terry Nelson To Strengthen Firm's Government Relations Practice", Akerman Senterfitt press release, March 7, 2005</div><div>^ Search of attorneys and consultants at Akerman Senterfitt, accessed September 11, 2006</div><div>^ Jim VandeHei and Chris Cillizza, "In a Pivotal Year, GOP Plans to Get Personal: Millions to Go to Digging Up Dirt on Democrats", Washington Post, September 10, 2006</div><div>^ "Rove Protégé Behind Racy Tennessee Ad", CBS News, October 26, 2006</div><div>^ "GOP consultant cuts ties with Wal-Mart", AP story, October 28, 2006</div><div>[edit] External links</div><div>
</div><div>Profile in Campaigns & Elections, June, 2002.</div><div>Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Nelson"</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Terry Nelson Got Around</div><div>
</div><div>By Paul Kiel - March 20, 2006, 6:10PM</div><div>Below we noted that John McCain's new "senior aide" Terry Nelson played a central role in the money laundering scheme for which Tom DeLay is being prosecuted in Texas.</div><div>
</div><div>But 2002 was a busy year for Terry Nelson.</div><div>
</div><div>He was deputy chief of staff of the Republican National Committee, where in addition to being in a position to funnel money back to Texas congressional candidates, he was the superior of one James Tobin, the New England political director for the RNC. Tobin, you'll remember, was convicted late last year for his role in a scheme to jam the phone lines for Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts.</div><div>
</div><div>Maybe Nelson had nothing to do with it. But if he didn't, it makes you wonder why he was on the government's witness list to testify at Tobin's trial. He was never called, so it's not clear what he knows, but clearly he knows enough that the government thought he might be helpful for their case.</div><div>
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</div><div>Wal-Mart Dismisses Adviser Who Created G.O.P. Ad</div><div>
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</div><div>SAVE</div><div>
</div><div>By MICHAEL BARBARO</div><div>
</div><div>Published: October 28, 2006</div><div>
</div><div>After infuriating Canada’s ambassador to the United States and raising the ire of the N.A.A.C.P., a Republican television commercial mocking Representative Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee has become a political liability for an unlikely third party: Wal-Mart Stores.</div><div>
</div><div>Skip to next paragraph</div><div>
</div><div>Multimedia</div><div>
</div><div>Under pressure from black leaders and union groups, Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, said last night that it had cut ties with a prominent Republican strategist who helped create the provocative advertisement.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The strategist, Terry Nelson, was hired by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. </span>in 2005 to help burnish its image after a wave of attacks from organized labor and liberal groups.</div><div>
</div><div>After Mr. Nelson’s affiliation with the Republican commercial became public this week, the Rev. Jesse Jackson demanded that Wal-Mart fire Mr. Nelson and a union group threatened to run advertisements in Tennessee linking the retailer to it.</div><div>
</div><div>In the commercial, which was financed by the Republican National Committee, actors in mock interviews spoke sarcastically about Mr. Ford and his candidacy for the Senate seat in Tennessee.</div><div>
</div><div>In a scene that black leaders say has racist overtones, a white actress says she met Mr. Ford, who is black, at a “Playboy party.”</div><div>
</div><div>“Harold, call me,” she says coyly.</div><div>
</div><div>Canadian officials objected this week to a separate scene in which an actor says, “Canada can take care of North Korea. They’re not busy.”</div><div>
</div><div>The aside is a perceived slight to a country that has troops in Afghanistan as part of NATO forces, and on Wednesday, Michael Wilson, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, contacted the White House to complain.</div><div>
</div><div>A statement from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, distributed by the group WakeUpWal-Mart.com, which is backed by unions, said, “Wal-Mart has the responsibility to dismiss Terry Nelson, with explanation, and apologize to Harold Ford Jr. Even though the Republican Party pulled the ad, if you throw ink on a suit, you leave a stain. They threw ink on Harold Ford Jr., and many people believed it to be true, resulting in a negative impact.”</div><div>
</div><div>Wal-Mart said in a statement that Mr. Nelson’s Washington consulting firm, Crosslink Strategy Group, “sent a letter to Wal-Mart ending its working relationship with our company.”</div><div>
</div><div>“We believe this is the right course of action,” Wal-Mart said.</div><div>
</div><div>A person familiar with the letter said it made clear that the decision to end the relationship was based on requests from Wal-Mart. The person, not authorized to speak publicly, did so on condition of anonymity.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Nelson did not respond to several telephone and e-mail messages.</div><div>
</div><div>Wal-Mart’s relationship with Mr. Nelson threatened to set back the retailer’s extensive efforts to reach out to African-Americans, who account for a large number of its employees and customers.</div><div>
</div><div>Over the past year, H. Lee Scott Jr., the chief executive, has met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and appeared on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio show.</div><div>
</div><div>The commercial has created a public relations problem for Republicans less than two weeks before Election Day.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Nelson has worked for various Republican leaders, including President Bush and Senator John McCain of Arizona.</div><div>
</div><div>As a founder of Crosslink Strategy Group, he also consults for corporations.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;Mr. Nelson has helped recruit Wal-Mart’s suppliers to join an advocacy group that trumpets its accomplishments and has overseen a program to register Wal-Mart employees to vote in Nov. 7 elections in part as a reaction to Democratic attacks against the company.</div><div>
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</div><div>
</div><div>NASHVILLE, Tenn., Oct. 26, 2006</div><div>Rove Protégé Behind Racy Tennessee Ad</div><div>
</div><div>Controversial RNC Ad Against Harold Ford Jr. Produced By Rove Consultant</div><div>
</div><div>By Sean Alfano</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>(CBS/AP) &nbsp;A protégé of White House political guru Karl Rove produced the controversial Republican National Committee ad targeting Tennessee Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Harold Ford Jr., that some have called racist, CBS News has learned.</div><div>
</div><div>The ad, in which a white woman with blonde hair and bare shoulders looks into the camera and whispers, "Harold, call me," and then winks, was produced by Scott Howell, the former political director for Rove's consulting firm in Texas.</div><div>
</div><div>The RNC ad doesn't mention that "Harold" is black, but the NAACP and others have complained the commercial makes an implicit appeal to deep-seated racial fears about black men and white women.</div><div>
</div><div>The race between Ford Jr. and Republican Bob Corker is among the most competitive and nasty U.S. Senate races in the nation. But it didn't just happen with a racially-charged ad from Republicans, reports CBS News national correspondent Byron Pitts.</div><div>
</div><div>The Democrats struck first weeks ago by playing the class card in an add which states that Corker's "personal income grew by 40 percent to $11 million."</div><div>
</div><div>Howell is no stranger to controversy. He was media consultant for Sen. Saxby Chambliss when his campaign ran an ad showing a picture of then-Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who lost his legs in the Vietnam War, alongside Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.</div><div>
</div><div>He also produced an ad for Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn that accused Democrat Brad Carson of being soft on welfare while showing two black hands counting cash.&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Howell also worked for Republican Jerry Kilgore in last year's Virginia gubernatorial race when Kilgore ran an ad saying that Gov. Tim Kaine wouldn't have used the death penalty against Hitler.</div><div>
</div><div>Race was always an element of the Tennessee contest as Ford seeks to become the first black man elected to the Senate from the South since Reconstruction. The issue slammed into the public consciousness this week with the latest ad.</div><div>"I've not met any observer who didn't immediately say, 'Oh my gosh!' It was a race card," said Vanderbilt University professor John Geer, an expert on political attack ads.</div><div>
</div><div>The goal of the ad is to persuade people who don't like Ford — and who might have been thinking about sitting at home this election — to vote, reports CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger.</div><div>
</div><div>The RNC has taken the ad off the air after a five-day run. However it was still appearing on at least one TV station in Chattanooga — WRCB-TV — as of Wednesday. The station was still airing the ad because it did not want to run the GOP's replacement commercial. The new ad says Ford "voted to recognize gay marriage" and "wants to give the abortion pill to our schoolchildren," reports the Nashville Tennessean.</div><div>
</div><div>Hilary Shelton, director of Washington bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the ad plays off fears some people still have about interracial couples.</div><div>
</div><div>"In a Southern state like Tennessee, some stereotypes still exist," he said. "There's very clearly some racial subtext in an ad like that."</div><div>
</div><div>The RNC, which paid for the ad, denied that it had any racial subtext. Party chairman Ken Mehlman said it was produced by an independent organization, in accordance with campaign finance law, "without the knowledge, the participation, the advice, the approval or the involvement of either the national party or the campaign."</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; "We essentially write a check to an independent entity and they do what they want with it," Mehlman said in an interview with The Associated Press.</div><div>
</div><div>Independent expenditure groups, Borger explains, spend their own money at the end of a campaign and place these ads.</div><div>
</div><div>Mehlman's dismissal of claims the GOP is playing the race card comes as the party chairman pushes the candidacy of three black Republicans in contests farther north — gubernatorial candidates Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio and Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania, and Senate candidate Michael Steele in Maryland.</div><div>
</div><div>Mehlman also has made an effort in this election cycle to attract African-Americans to the GOP, speaking to various black groups around the country.</div><div>
</div><div>In the ad, the woman brags, "I met Harold at the Playboy party!" — an apparent reference to Ford's attendance at a Playboy Super Bowl party in Jacksonville, Fla., last year.</div><div>
</div><div>"I was there. I like football, and I like girls," Ford said Tuesday.</div><div>
</div><div>"When I saw it after it had been up, my reaction was not that I thought that this ad was racist," Mehlman said. But he added: "I have heard from people who I respect who raised concerns about it from that perspective."</div><div>
</div><div>Corker called the ad tacky and said it should be taken off the air.</div><div>
</div><div>Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act passed by Congress in 2002, political parties can pay for "independent expenditure" advertisements against opponents that do not count against legal spending limits on campaigns. But the party is not allowed to play any role in creating the ad or deciding how and when it will be used.</div><div>
</div><div>Democratic National Committee general counsel Joe Sandler said that Mehlman did have power to pull the ad from the airwaves, even if he had no control over the content, because the RNC is responsible for the advertisement.</div><div>
</div><div>"He could take it down with a phone call," Sandler said.</div><div>
</div><div>Ford has clashed with Republicans over ads earlier this year.</div><div>
</div><div>Ford has accused the RNC of using a "dark, shadowy figure" to represent him in a TV ad. He told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that the ad "injects a little race in this thing, the way they have me pictured."</div><div>
</div><div>He also suggested that the Tennessee Republican Party used a darkened black-and-white image of him on a fundraising letter. Ford is light-skinned.</div><div>
</div><div>An independent group briefly aired a radio ad that had the most explicit attack.</div><div>
</div><div>The ad, paid for a group identified as Tennesseans for Truth and aired on a small station near Nashville, criticized Ford's membership in the Congressional Black Caucus, which the ad said "represents the interests of black people above all others."</div><div>
</div><div>Both Republican and Democratic officials have said they did not know who was behind Tennesseans for Truth.</div><div>
</div><div>The RNC ad is "breaking new ground and, frankly, breaking new lows," Geer said. It makes the 1988 "Willie Horton" ad — a good example of using implicit racial messages — look tame by comparison, Geer said.</div><div>
</div><div>The "Willie Horton" ad aired during the presidential campaign and accused Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis of being soft on crime. The ad showed a photo of convicted criminal Willie Horton, a black man. George H.W. Bush defeated Dukakis.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Nelson - wilkinson</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>fromDennis Delaney <dwdelaney@gmail.com></div><div>
</div><div>todwdelaney@gmail.com</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>dateSat, Apr 5, 2008 at 3:00 PM</div><div>
</div><div>subjectJIM WILKINSON - TERRY NELSON</div><div>
</div><div>mailed-bygmail.com</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>show details 4/5/08</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>CLIENT PROFILE: The NRCC does battle for the life of the party - With its slim majority threatened on the Hill, the National Republican Congressional Committee is shifting into high gear. Steve Lilienthal reports on the people behind the attacks</div><div>
</div><div>STEVE LILIENTHAL</div><div>
</div><div>October 16, 2000</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>The vitriolic tone that marked the impeachment process on Capitol Hill is alive and well. And the National Republican Congressional Committee's communications division, under the leadership of Jim Wilkinson, the alternately confident and self-effacing 30-year-old director of marketing and communications, has done its part to keep it that way. It is Wilkinson's mission to communicate the GOP message as his party fights to maintain its majority status.</div><div>
</div><div>The vitriolic tone that marked the impeachment process on Capitol Hill is alive and well. And the National Republican Congressional Committee's communications division, under the leadership of Jim Wilkinson, the alternately confident and self-effacing 30-year-old director of marketing and communications, has done its part to keep it that way. It is Wilkinson's mission to communicate the GOP message as his party fights to maintain its majority status.</div><div>
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</div><div>Wilkinson, a Naval Reserve public affairs officer, does his job with such intensity, it sometimes sounds as if North Vietnam's Gen. Giap, not House Majority Leader Dick Armey, was his former boss.</div><div>
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</div><div>'When fighting the opponent, it's about wearing them down. The objective is not to beat your opponent but to make your opponent quit,' says Wilkinson.</div><div>
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</div><div>When he took over in January, the GOP's chances of holding its majority in the House were generally discounted. But by mid-October, conventional wisdom held that the Republicans at least had a fighting chance.</div><div>
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</div><div>Undoubtedly, two Democratic House members crossing ranks to join the GOP and the surprise defeat of Democratic New York Rep. Michael Forbes by an unknown in the primary have helped to drive that perception. But Wilkinson and the NRCC gets some credit too.</div><div>
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</div><div>Former US Rep. Bill Paxon, who chaired the NRCC when the party seized control of the House back from the Democrats in 1994, speaks highly of the plan that Wilkinson put together: 'It was the most impressive communications plan for a committee that I've ever seen.'</div><div>
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</div><div>Wilkinson says the plan was distinguished by its objectives for both the department and its staff members. Speaking of his staff, Wilkinson says 'they have to understand how their small part of the mission fits into the larger one.'</div><div>
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</div><div>The front lines</div><div>
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</div><div>The division does the usual dissemination of information to the DC press corps and the political press in congressional districts, concentrating on those three dozen or so that the NRCC considers crucial to determining control.</div><div>
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</div><div>But Wilkinson is determined to beat the Democrats - and his nemesis, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) - to the punch.</div><div>
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</div><div>'Wilkinson's team monitors what's said in the districts and figures out what needs to be seen and how it accrues to the benefit of the campaign in DC,' Paxon says. 'They also watch what the Democrats are doing and how they need to translate it to the district.' News analyst John Holly regularly monitors the news in key campaigns so he can report about it before the daily morning staff meeting.</div><div>
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</div><div>Wilkinson handles some press calls, but press secretary Marit Babin estimates she spends three-quarters of her time on the phone talking to reporters both in DC and the congressional districts.</div><div>
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</div><div>Other key team members include policy analyst Brad Bennett, who communicates the latest line on issues and how candidates should handle them. Carl Forti books GOP legislators on talk radio and updates the Web site. Recently his time has been spent serving as the liaison between NRCC researchers and media producers.</div><div>
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</div><div>The attention paid to individual districts is important because the NRCC does not see this as a year in which there is a 'nationalization' of issues as in 1994. Each race is a contest unto itself, with its own set of issues.</div><div>
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</div><div>Repairing internal rifts</div><div>
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</div><div>There were two areas Wilkinson thought were important when he joined the NRCC after running the 'War Room' as Armey's press secretary during the 1999 budget negotiations: morale and internal communications.</div><div>
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</div><div>Wilkinson takes pride in following the lead set forth by another newcomer, NRCC executive director Dan Matoon, in fostering a cooperative spirit.</div><div>
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</div><div>He cites Eisenhower's leadership during World War II as a model, based on the former president's ability to get 'type A' personalities, such as General Patton and British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, to work together.</div><div>
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</div><div>Wilkinson says the communications division and the political division 'did not speak to each other' outside formal meetings. 'It was like the Italians and Germans in World War II - allies but non-communicative.' So Wilkinson forged a closer working relationship with<b> Terry Nelson, the NRCC's political director.</b></div><div>
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</div><div>'I see our role as selling success and <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Terry Nelson </span>is the one who creates that success,' says Wilkinson. 'I went to Terry Nelson, closed the door and said, 'Let's start over and build up.''</div><div>
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</div><div>Now he and Nelson meet three or four times a week and have a regular morning briefing of through the political division to learn the latest goings on in campaigns.</div><div>
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</div><div>Thus, NRCC political aide Dan Flynn came to Wilkinson when he wanted to draw attention to the 'desperation' in Democratic tactics. Wilkinson aide Tracy Young came up with the title for a series of e-mails called 'Desperate Democrats Do Desperate Things.'</div><div>
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</div><div>The communications director e-mails these messages not just to the press but also to key Democrats and allies on K Street. So when the DCCC criticized former New Jersey Rep. Dick Zimmer for his record on breast cancer research, the NRCC took off. Zimmer's three sisters all had breast cancer and the DCCC singled out votes that were either procedural or involved larger issues, according to The Newark Star-Ledger.</div><div>
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</div><div>The NRCC made sure the e-mail missive was sent out on a Sunday night announcing 'the desperate Dems are at it again' and including the Star-Ledger article in which Zimmer called the mailer 'A cheap shot.' The e-mail also recited past DCCC blunders in the district.</div><div>
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</div><div>'We wanted Democrats to wake every day and get a reason why they would lose. Through the history of warfare, people under pressure are more likely to make bad decisions,' Wilkinson says.</div><div>
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</div><div>Wilkinson's visualizations of demoralized Democratic Party officials and lobbyists may be driving himself and his division forward. He sees the angry e-mails he has received as proof that his missives are taking their toll. But whether the NRCC's work is breaking the Democratic will to fight is debatable.</div><div>
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</div><div>Democratic fund-raiser Mike Fraioli says, 'I think they're wasting their time. I can't imagine what it is that they would possibly be sending that would change people's minds. I'd say the same thing if the Democrats were doing it.'</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Roll Call political columnist Dr. Stuart Rothenberg says both the NRCC and its rival can be 'so intent on getting the message out that they both sound dopey at times.' Rothenberg insists the K Street crowd is smart enough to separate the spin from the realpolitik. Washington Post national political reporter Mike Allen does credit the NRCC with trying to be straight-shooters. 'Even if a story is not what they might dream of, they give you the facts that you need and don't dodge anything.'</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Despite his warlike tactics, Wilkinson becomes guarded when it comes to predicting the results of the election this fall. 'If we lose, it won't be because we didn't get our message out,' he insists.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>NRCC</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>PR staff: Director of marketing and comms, Jim Wilkinson; assistant to the director of marketing and comms, Tracy Young; deputy director of comms, Carl Forti; press secretary, Marit Babin; assistant to the press secretary, Lori Martin; policy analyst, Brad Bennett; videographer, Kevin Barbour; director of news analysis, Josh Holly; comms staff assistant, Ryika Hooshangi Comms division budget: over dollars 1 million</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>fromDennis Delaney <dwdelaney@gmail.com></div><div>
</div><div>todwdelaney@gmail.com</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>dateMon, Feb 5, 2007 at 12:35 PM</div><div>
</div><div>subjectmccain hires swiftboaters - kent on il finance</div><div>
</div><div>mailed-bygmail.com</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>hide details 2/5/07</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>terry nelson – swift boats</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>February 4, 2007</div><div>
</div><div>McCain's Advisers Once Made Ads That Drew His Ire</div><div>
</div><div>By JIM RUTENBERG</div><div>
</div><div>WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 — Senator John McCain , intent on succeeding where his freewheeling presidential campaign of 2000 failed, is assembling a team of political bruisers for 2008. And it includes advisers who once sought to skewer him and whose work he has criticized as stepping over the line in the past.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2000, Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, said the advertisements run against him by George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, distorted his record. But he has hired three members of the team that made those commercials — Mark McKinnon, Russell Schriefer and Stuart Stevens — to work on his presidential campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2004, Mr. McCain said the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advertisement asserting that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts had not properly earned his medals from the Vietnam War was "dishonest and dishonorable." Nonetheless, he has hired the firm that made the spots, Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, which worked on his 2000 campaign, to work for him again this year.</div><div>
</div><div>In October, Mr. McCain's top adviser expressed public displeasure with an advertisement against former Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., Democrat of Tennessee, that some saw as having racist overtones for suggesting a flirtation between Mr. Ford, who is black, and a young, bare-shouldered white woman, played by a blond actress.</div><div>
</div><div>The Republican committee that sponsored the spot had as its leader Terry Nelson, a former Bush campaign strategist whom Mr. McCain hired as an adviser last spring. In December, just weeks after the Ford controversy broke, Mr. McCain elevated Mr. Nelson to the position of national campaign manager.</div><div>
</div><div>Taken together, the moves provide the strongest indication yet that Mr. McCain intends to run a far tougher campaign than the one he ran in the 2000 primary. And they come as he transitions from being a onetime maverick to a candidate seeking to gather his party around him and create an air of inevitability about his prospects for winning nomination.</div><div>
</div><div>As Mr. McCain assembles his team, he is also making it that much harder for his Republican challengers by scooping up a significant circle of the party's top talent.</div><div>
</div><div>In recent years, Mr. McCain has made a concerted effort to mend fences with Mr. Bush and reassure the Republican base that he is a reliable conservative. But his moves have focused new attention on the extent to which he may risk sacrificing the image he has long cultivated of being his own man, driven by principle rather than partisan politics.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. McCain's advisers said he was not changing. But they were unapologetic about putting together a group dedicated to doing what it takes to reach the White House and employing lessons from his defeat at the hands of Mr. Bush in 2000.</div><div>
</div><div>"This is about winning at the end of the day," said John Weaver, Mr. McCain's longtime senior strategist. "I don't want to be in a knife fight ever again, but if I am, we're going to win it."</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. McCain's representatives said he would not provide an interview.</div><div>
</div><div>Seven years ago, Mr. McCain charmed the news media and the public with his Straight Talk Express bus tour. He had a lean operation befitting an upstart candidacy, and he regularly spoke out against attack advertising, a quaint notion in retrospect.</div><div>
</div><div>In the end, he ran his share of confrontational advertisements, once even leveling the ultimate Republican-to-Republican insult: that Mr. Bush was as dishonest as Bill Clinton. But he was perceived as having been knocked back on his heels by the rougher, tougher Bush campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>Now Mr. McCain is building a larger organization, bringing together the heart of the bare-knuckled Bush crew once overseen by Karl Rove while keeping most of the advisers who ran his shoestring effort of 2000.</div><div>
</div><div>"It's like an all-star World Wrestling Federation cage match, except that instead of fighting one another, all of the brawlers are on the same team," said Steve McMahon, a strategist for the Democratic National Committee. "There are very few people who play this game at the highest level, and on the Republican side these guys are among the best."</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. McCain has also hired Brian Jones, an adviser to Mr. Bush's 2004 campaign; Fred Davis, a media consultant for Mr. Bush in 2004; and Steve Schmidt, who oversaw Mr. Bush's 2004 war room, exploiting any tidbit that could help paint Mr. Kerry as a "flip-flopper."</div><div>
</div><div>The hires are another signal that the 2008 primary campaign could be a combative one all around.</div><div>
</div><div>On the Democratic side, John Edwards , the former senator from North Carolina, has wasted no time attacking Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's position on Iraq. And Mrs. Clinton's team includes strategists who invented the concept of the modern campaign war room for her husband 15 years ago. But Senator Barack Obama of Illinois drew cheers at a party gathering on Friday when he warned his fellow candidates against attacking one another.</div><div>
</div><div>Mitt Romney, a Republican and the former governor of Massachusetts, has hired Alex Castellanos, a onetime Bush strategist who also famously produced the 1990 commercial for Jesse Helms, the former North Carolina senator, in which a pair of white hands crumpled a rejection letter as a narrator said, "You needed that job and you were the best qualified, but it had to go to a minority because of a racial quota."</div><div>
</div><div>Given Mr. McCain's history with some of the people on his team, the evolution of his staff may present an early challenge: How does he stay true to the "Straight Talk" spirit of his 2000 campaign, which helped him win the stature he has now, while also engaging in the political brinkmanship it can take to win?</div><div>
</div><div>The Democratic National Committee is already criticizing Mr. McCain for his hires, issuing a statement this week calling them "a testament to how far he's gone down the do-anything-to-win path."</div><div>
</div><div>Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster who is not yet allied with a candidate, said Mr. McCain was running the risk of looking "politically expedient" and of blunting his brand as "Senator Straight Talk." He said the risk was highlighted by Mr. McCain's recent suggestions that he may not use the campaign finance system he has long championed.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2000, Mr. McCain received money from the system, which gives public financing to candidates who agree to strict spending limits. Mr. Weaver, the senior strategist, said Mr. McCain was keeping his options open because others, including Mrs. Clinton, were planning to work around the system.</div><div>
</div><div>As Mr. McCain's aides often point out, for all its appeal, the McCain 2000 campaign was a losing one. And they said it would be unfair to suggest that because Mr. McCain was augmenting his team he was somehow preparing to change who he was.</div><div>
</div><div>"There are no negotiations regarding his principles," Mr. Weaver said.</div><div>
</div><div>In an interview on Friday, Mr. Jones, the campaign communications director, said Mr. McCain was not allowing his distaste over the Swift Boat commercials to interfere with his relationship with Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, with whom Mr. McCain has his own decade-long association. In addition, he said, Mr. McCain hired Mr. Nelson because of his breadth of experience in national campaigns. "The campaign," Mr. Jones said, "is not going to let past contests on the battlefield limit how it's going to go after talent."</div><div>
</div><div>Presidential politics are rich in fungible allegiances. James A. Baker III ran the primary campaigns of Gerald Ford and the elder George Bush against Ronald Reagan, only to become Mr. Reagan's chief of staff. This year, David Axelrod is serving as a senior strategist for Mr. Obama; he was a senior strategist to Mr. Edwards in his 2004 campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>"You could dissect any campaign this way: this guy did this ad this one time," said Mr. Schriefer, the former Bush media strategist, who will run Mr. McCain's advertising team. "There's a tremendous history of foes becoming allies."</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. McKinnon, who led Mr. Bush's advertising group in 2004, said he saw no inconsistency in working for Mr. McCain. Mr. Bush was right for 2000, he said, and Mr. McCain is right for 2008. "At the end of the day, the campaign will be won or lost on the character of the candidate and his or her core message," Mr. McKinnon said. "Of course, I believe that will be John McCain."</div><div>
</div><div>Asked if the senator would avoid the attacks he criticized in 2000, Mr. Jones said that while Mr. McCain had yet to declare his candidacy, any campaign he ran would be "consistent with his beliefs and values."</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>By admin - Posted on March 8th, 2005</div><div>Tagged: Republican Party</div><div>Two Major Bush-Cheney '04 Advisors Add Significant Presence to Akerman Senterfitt's Washington, D.C. Office</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Mark Wallace and Terry Nelson to Strengthen Firm's Government</div><div>
</div><div>Relations Practice</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>WASHINGTON, March 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Mark Wallace, National Deputy Campaign Manager of the Bush-Cheney '04 Presidential Campaign</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>, and Terry Nelson, the campaign's National Political Director,</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>both have joined the Akerman Senterfitt law firm's Washington, D.C. office, underscoring the firm's stated goal of becoming the full-service law firm of choice for its Florida and national clients. Wallace, who focuses his practice on federal and state government relations and legislative affairs, defending civil and criminal investigations, and commercial litigation, will serve as Of Counsel while Nelson, regarded as one of the top political advisors in the Republican Party, will join as a consultant in the firm's emerging Government Relations Practice."Mark and Terry's arrival adds significantly to our Washington presence," said J. Thomas Cardwell, Chairman of Akerman Senterfitt. "Mark is a highly skilled attorney who has developed strong government experience and Bush administration relationships.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>During Terry's career, he has earned a number of senior level roles in Republican politics throughout the country. Their outstanding credentials put Akerman Senterfitt in a unique position to serve the specific needs of our national as well as our Florida clients."</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>As the Bush-Cheney '04 Deputy Campaign Manager and in addition to his day- to-day responsibilities in the management of the national campaign,</div><div>
</div><div>Wallace was the campaign's lead liaison to the Republican National Convention in New York City. He further served as the campaign's representative on the Bush- Cheney '04 Debate Negotiations Team, and at each of the three Presidential and one Vice-Presidential debates. Wallace also oversaw and managed the extensive team of lawyers representing Bush-Cheney '04 nationwide in the run-up and including Election Day. Also, he was an advisor to the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida and served on Florida Governor Jeb Bush's 1994 campaign, and as an advisor to his 1998 and 2002 campaigns.</div><div>
</div><div>Wallace's Bush administration experience includes serving as the United States</div><div>
</div><div>Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) first Principal Legal</div><div>
</div><div>Advisor to the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and as the first Principal Legal Advisor to the Bureau of Immigration and Citizenship Services. Prior to his service with DHS, Mark was the General Counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization</div><div>
</div><div>Service as it transitioned into the DHS. Wallace previously served as the General Counsel of the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), where he was the principal attorney that oversaw the FEMA-led New York/World Trade Center recovery effort in the aftermath of September 11th.</div><div>Wallace has strong ties to Florida. He was a longtime partner in the Miami commercial litigation law firm of Stack Fernandez Anderson Harris & Wallace P.A. He served as general counsel to several Florida community organizations, including Florida's first charter school, The Liberty City Charter School. Wallace graduated, with honors, from the University of Miami School of Law in 1992, and earned a bachelor's degree, with honors, from the University of Miami in 1989.</div><div>
</div><div>In addition to joining Akerman Senterfitt, Nelson has founded and is the managing partner of Crosslink Strategy Group, a firm that specializes in strategic public affairs campaigns for corporations, coalition groups and grassroots leaders. As National Political Director of Bush-Cheney '04, Nelson is widely credited with designing and building the largest, most effective Republican grassroots campaign ever devised. In addition, he directed the campaign's coalition activities and its paid mail and phone voter contact programs.</div><div>
</div><div>Cited twice by Roll Call newspaper as one of the "50 Most Influential Operatives in Politics,"</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>Nelson served as Deputy Chief of Staff and Executive Director of Political Operations at the Republican National Committee. In that role he worked with candidates and party organizations across the county to help elect a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate and retain a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>During the 2000 presidential campaign, Nelson was the National Political Director of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). His work included candidate recruitment, support, research, strategy and tactics.</div><div>
</div><div>With more than 375 attorneys, Akerman Senterfitt has offices in Orlando, Miami, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, West Palm Beach, Tallahassee and Washington, D.C. The firm represents private and public companies, governmental entities, educational establishments and high net-worth individuals in a wide range of practice areas. Please visit our website at http://www.akerman.com/ .</div><div>
</div><div>Source: Akerman Senterfitt</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>terry nelson – swift boats – bob perry - delay</div><div>
</div><div>fromDennis Delaney <dwdelaney@gmail.com></div><div>
</div><div>todwdelaney@gmail.com</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>dateMon, Feb 5, 2007 at 12:35 PM</div><div>
</div><div>subjectmccain hires swiftboaters - kent on il finance</div><div>
</div><div>mailed-bygmail.com</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>hide details 2/5/07</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>February 4, 2007</div><div>
</div><div>McCain's Advisers Once Made Ads That Drew His Ire</div><div>
</div><div>By JIM RUTENBERG</div><div>
</div><div>WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 — Senator John McCain , intent on succeeding where his freewheeling presidential campaign of 2000 failed, is assembling a team of political bruisers for 2008. And it includes advisers who once sought to skewer him and whose work he has criticized as stepping over the line in the past.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2000, Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, said the advertisements run against him by George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, distorted his record. But he has hired three members of the team that made those commercials — Mark McKinnon, Russell Schriefer and Stuart Stevens — to work on his presidential campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2004, Mr. McCain said the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advertisement asserting that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts had not properly earned his medals from the Vietnam War was "dishonest and dishonorable." Nonetheless, he has hired the firm that made the spots, Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, which worked on his 2000 campaign, to work for him again this year.</div><div>
</div><div>In October, Mr. McCain's top adviser expressed public displeasure with an advertisement against former Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., Democrat of Tennessee, that some saw as having racist overtones for suggesting a flirtation between Mr. Ford, who is black, and a young, bare-shouldered white woman, played by a blond actress.</div><div>
</div><div>The Republican committee that sponsored the spot had as its leader <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Terry Nelson,</span> a former Bush campaign strategist whom Mr. McCain hired as an adviser last spring. In December, just weeks after the Ford controversy broke, Mr. McCain elevated Mr. Nelson to the position of national campaign manager.</div><div>
</div><div>Taken together, the moves provide the strongest indication yet that Mr. McCain intends to run a far tougher campaign than the one he ran in the 2000 primary. And they come as he transitions from being a onetime maverick to a candidate seeking to gather his party around him and create an air of inevitability about his prospects for winning nomination.</div><div>
</div><div>As Mr. McCain assembles his team, he is also making it that much harder for his Republican challengers by scooping up a significant circle of the party's top talent.</div><div>
</div><div>In recent years, Mr. McCain has made a concerted effort to mend fences with Mr. Bush and reassure the Republican base that he is a reliable conservative. But his moves have focused new attention on the extent to which he may risk sacrificing the image he has long cultivated of being his own man, driven by principle rather than partisan politics.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. McCain's advisers said he was not changing. But they were unapologetic about putting together a group dedicated to doing what it takes to reach the White House and employing lessons from his defeat at the hands of Mr. Bush in 2000.</div><div>
</div><div>"This is about winning at the end of the day," said John Weaver, Mr. McCain's longtime senior strategist. "I don't want to be in a knife fight ever again, but if I am, we're going to win it."</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. McCain's representatives said he would not provide an interview.</div><div>
</div><div>Seven years ago, Mr. McCain charmed the news media and the public with his Straight Talk Express bus tour. He had a lean operation befitting an upstart candidacy, and he regularly spoke out against attack advertising, a quaint notion in retrospect.</div><div>
</div><div>In the end, he ran his share of confrontational advertisements, once even leveling the ultimate Republican-to-Republican insult: that Mr. Bush was as dishonest as Bill Clinton. But he was perceived as having been knocked back on his heels by the rougher, tougher Bush campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>Now Mr. McCain is building a larger organization, bringing together the heart of the bare-knuckled Bush crew once overseen by Karl Rove while keeping most of the advisers who ran his shoestring effort of 2000.</div><div>
</div><div>"It's like an all-star World Wrestling Federation cage match, except that instead of fighting one another, all of the brawlers are on the same team," said Steve McMahon, a strategist for the Democratic National Committee. "There are very few people who play this game at the highest level, and on the Republican side these guys are among the best."</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. McCain has also hired Brian Jones, an adviser to Mr. Bush's 2004 campaign; Fred Davis, a media consultant for Mr. Bush in 2004; and Steve Schmidt, who oversaw Mr. Bush's 2004 war room, exploiting any tidbit that could help paint Mr. Kerry as a "flip-flopper."</div><div>
</div><div>The hires are another signal that the 2008 primary campaign could be a combative one all around.</div><div>
</div><div>On the Democratic side, John Edwards , the former senator from North Carolina, has wasted no time attacking Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's position on Iraq. And Mrs. Clinton's team includes strategists who invented the concept of the modern campaign war room for her husband 15 years ago. But Senator Barack Obama of Illinois drew cheers at a party gathering on Friday when he warned his fellow candidates against attacking one another.</div><div>
</div><div>Mitt Romney, a Republican and the former governor of Massachusetts, has hired Alex Castellanos, a onetime Bush strategist who also famously produced the 1990 commercial for Jesse Helms, the former North Carolina senator, in which a pair of white hands crumpled a rejection letter as a narrator said, "You needed that job and you were the best qualified, but it had to go to a minority because of a racial quota."</div><div>
</div><div>Given Mr. McCain's history with some of the people on his team, the evolution of his staff may present an early challenge: How does he stay true to the "Straight Talk" spirit of his 2000 campaign, which helped him win the stature he has now, while also engaging in the political brinkmanship it can take to win?</div><div>
</div><div>The Democratic National Committee is already criticizing Mr. McCain for his hires, issuing a statement this week calling them "a testament to how far he's gone down the do-anything-to-win path."</div><div>
</div><div>Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster who is not yet allied with a candidate, said Mr. McCain was running the risk of looking "politically expedient" and of blunting his brand as "Senator Straight Talk." He said the risk was highlighted by Mr. McCain's recent suggestions that he may not use the campaign finance system he has long championed.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2000, Mr. McCain received money from the system, which gives public financing to candidates who agree to strict spending limits. Mr. Weaver, the senior strategist, said Mr. McCain was keeping his options open because others, including Mrs. Clinton, were planning to work around the system.</div><div>
</div><div>As Mr. McCain's aides often point out, for all its appeal, the McCain 2000 campaign was a losing one. And they said it would be unfair to suggest that because Mr. McCain was augmenting his team he was somehow preparing to change who he was.</div><div>
</div><div>"There are no negotiations regarding his principles," Mr. Weaver said.</div><div>
</div><div>In an interview on Friday, Mr. Jones, the campaign communications director, said Mr. McCain was not allowing his distaste over the Swift Boat commercials to interfere with his relationship with Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, with whom Mr. McCain has his own decade-long association. In addition, he said, Mr. McCain hired Mr. Nelson because of his breadth of experience in national campaigns. "The campaign," Mr. Jones said, "is not going to let past contests on the battlefield limit how it's going to go after talent."</div><div>
</div><div>Presidential politics are rich in fungible allegiances. James A. Baker III ran the primary campaigns of Gerald Ford and the elder George Bush against Ronald Reagan, only to become Mr. Reagan's chief of staff. This year, David Axelrod is serving as a senior strategist for Mr. Obama; he was a senior strategist to Mr. Edwards in his 2004 campaign.</div><div>
</div><div>"You could dissect any campaign this way: this guy did this ad this one time," said Mr. Schriefer, the former Bush media strategist, who will run Mr. McCain's advertising team. "There's a tremendous history of foes becoming allies."</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. McKinnon, who led Mr. Bush's advertising group in 2004, said he saw no inconsistency in working for Mr. McCain. Mr. Bush was right for 2000, he said, and Mr. McCain is right for 2008. "At the end of the day, the campaign will be won or lost on the character of the candidate and his or her core message," Mr. McKinnon said. "Of course, I believe that will be John McCain."</div><div>
</div><div>Asked if the senator would avoid the attacks he criticized in 2000, Mr. Jones said that while Mr. McCain had yet to declare his candidacy, any campaign he ran would be "consistent with his beliefs and values."</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;</div></div>