Bachmann adds lobbyist to her campaign, known for promising federal faith-based funding
Michele Bachmann announced Monday that she was adding staff to her campaigns in Iowa and South Carolina.
Ron Thomas will be Senior Advisor for South Carolina and Guy Short will become National Political Director based in Des Moines. Short has a reputation as an aggressive lobbyist to such a degree that Republicans in Colorado considered giving him the boot, and Thomas’ stint as a staffer for the South Carolina Republican Party involved promises of federal faith-based funds to churches for electoral support.
According to a release by the Bachmann campaign, Thomas served as President George W. Bush’s appointee as deputy assistant secretary for policy in the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and as the designated federal official for the Secretary’s Advisory Committee of Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom Veterans and Families.
Thomas has also worked for the Republican Party of South Carolina, including during a contentious gubernatorial and senatorial campaign in 2002, where the GOP and Thomas hosted pastors from about 100 African-American churches at a “seminar on faith-based and community initiatives” which was assisted by the Bush Administration’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.
Steve Benen, writing for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, described the situation as “the first and most blatant example of mixing White House faith-based efforts and partisan politics.”
“„The seminar was sponsored by the state Republican Party as part of its self-described “outreach program.” The main topic of the event, according to The State newspaper in Columbia, was information on how pastors could “get their part of $30 million in federal money” through the Compassion Capital Fund.
“„After the event, clergy participants were contacted, not by the White House office, but the state Republican Party. Ron Thomas, political director of the South Carolina GOP, sent acknowledgements to participants on party letterhead with additional information about how religious groups can apply for federal grants through the president’s faith-based initiative. In other words, any lines that may have existed between official White House educational efforts and state GOP political outreach to African-American voters were blurred to the point of non-existence.
Bachmann has also hired Guy Short as her national political director.
Short has a history of down and dirty politics. In Colorado, he was a lobbyist for anti-union efforts, and was so voracious in his attacks on unions that Republican legislators considered having him banned from the Capitol last decade.
Short is a veteran of Bachmann’s campaigns and even her Congressional office. He’s been an advisor to her presidential and congressional campaigns, and as Roll Call reported earlier this year, Short was inexplicably paid out of Bachmann’s congressional office starting in June 2010. Short dropped off Bachmann’s congressional payroll when he formed C&M Strategies, which received about $150,000 in payment from MICHELEPAC and her campaign.
“„Asked about Short’s duties in the Congressional office, Bachmann spokesman Doug Sachtleben said in an email, “With six years of hill experience as a Chief of Staff, Guy Short worked with every member of the Congresswoman’s staff to ensure that they worked as effectively as possible to serve the constituents of Minnesota’s sixth district.”
Short should be a good asset for Bachmann’s lagging campaign, which has been trying to shore up the conservative Christian base. He’s worked with the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, and he’s on the board of the Colorado Family Institute, a group that opposed rights for LGBT Coloradans.
