Kudoes to recently departed Republican Party of Wisconsin executive director Rick Wiley. Wiley left to become Deputy National Political Director of the Rudy Giuliani for President campaign.
Wiley is the only member of the Giuliani national political office to have his experience exclusively concentrated in one state. He’s senior over regional political directors with pretty vast resumes, so he must have impressed somebody. See the full list of Giuliani political staff here.
Also of interest to those who follow insider baseball:
Jake Menges has joined the Committee as a Senior Advisor to the Political Department. Menges has experience consulting on political campaigns across the country. Menges ran Bill Simon’s gubernatorial primary campaign in California and was the Political Director of Solutions America Political Action Committee. Most recently he worked for National Media in Alexandria, VA, one of the largest republican media firms in the nation.
National Media in Alexandria, why does that name sound familiar?
Oh, right, because National Media’s president is Alex Castellanos, who is the chief ad man for presidential candidate and former Massachussetts Governor Mitt Romney.
Also, again playing insider baseball, and this is of particular interest for any lawyers in the reading audience, particularly you wonderful Federalist Society folks, we now have a good idea of who the Attorney General would be in a Giuliani Administration:
Theodore Olson, the stalwart conservative lawyer and former solicitor general for the Bush administration, told the Spectator he will be supporting Rudy Giuliani’s presidential bid.
“I admire his character, his capacity for leadership, his instincts, and his principles,” Olson said over the phone this afternoon. He said he will help Giuliani raise money as well as offer advice on legal issues and domestic policy matters that involve constitutional questions.
Olson and Giuliani have been longtime friends since serving in the Reagan Justice Department from 1981-1983, when Olson was assistant attorney general in charge of the office of legal counsel and Giuliani was associate attorney general. Olson said they met with Attorney General William French Smith every morning and worked closely on a number of issues.
The support of Olson should help Giuliani in his quest to win over social conservatives who remain skeptical of his pledge to appoint strict constructionist judges.
“I’ve known him for 26 years and we’ve talked about this many times,” Olson said. “He feels very strongly that people like Justice Scalia, Chief Justice Roberts, Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas, are the type of people that he would put on the court…I’m quite convinced that this is a genuine viewpoint that he has.”
It’s not enough to reassure me as a social conservative, but as I’ve said I’ll support Rudy in a general election, just not in a primary.
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I’m sure Rudy’s campaign will be able to capitalize on Wiley’s vast, vast success in the political arena here in Wisconsin. Good grab for his campaign.
I thought I mention Rudy signed the Tarrance Group to be his polling firm. I only know this because I had an interview the day after they signed him which was two weeks ago.
Its good for our state to get new leadership… Who is left on the exec board of the RPW? Seems like we lost quite a bit in 2006, we need someone with new ideas to get it back.