By Greg Hazley
Fitzpatrick & Lewis PR, the Atlanta firm led by former Carter White House press aide Randy Lewis, is working with the Tea Party Patriots, an umbrella organization of hundreds of so-called Tea Party movements around the country.
Lewis put together the group’s Sept. 20 event at the National Press Club last week announcing an anonymous $1M donation and is providing ongoing counsel on a pro bono basis.
Two officials of the group said the money will be distributed among its 2,800 local chapters ahead of the mid-term congressional elections Nov. 4.
The group does not have to disclose its donors under its tax code status as a “social welfare” organization.
Meanwhile, Russo Marsh & Rogers, a conservative leaning PR firm that worked with groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (anti-John Kerry) and Our Country Deserves Better (an anti-Obama), is counseling a rival Tea Party organization, Tea Party Express, which has a more formidable political operation under the OCDB banner with $5M in the bank.
Sal Russo, a former Reagan aide in California politics who started a consultancy in 1976, is serving as the lead strategist for the Tea Party Express, which scored a major victory in toppling incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the Alaska GOP senate primary this month.
The Center for Responsive Politics reported that Russo’s firm has been paid about $479K by the group.
This website reported last week that another traditionally conservative PR shop, Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, is working with Delaware Republican senate nominee Christine O’Donnell.
|