Reince ‘Shovel Ready’ Priebus Is Not Ready for Prime Time

I don’t really have a particular dog in the fight for RNC Chair. After twenty years in politics, I think well-run individual campaigns are more important to victory than the machinations of a national party organization. The RNC should mostly just raise lots of money, get out the vote and then…get out of the way. Its really kind of a political Hippocratic oath; first, do no harm…to the party’s brand or its candidates.

Still, I’ve been fascinated by Dan Riehl’s coverage of the race and, specifically, the problems swirling around the frontrunner (!?), Reince Priebus. Priebus is GOP Chair in Wisconsin and, along with about three dozen other state chairs, had a pretty good election cycle this November. (Of course, also along with three dozen other state chairs, he had a pretty disastrous cycle in 2008.) Until very recently, he was also on staff at the RNC, serving as General Counsel after steering Michael Steele into the Chairmanship.

On the side, it seems, he also used his legal skills and government and political contacts to secure federal stimulus money for clients. Redstate thinks there is nothing unusual in this, just another lawyer-helping-his-clients situation. Although, as Dan Riehl points out today, his work went quite a bit further than simply advising clients on the stimulus’ impact. And keep in mind, Priebus was the state GOP Chair at this exact time. At the very least, that obvious conflict sets up some pretty funny juxtapositions.

On March 5, 2009, Priebus co-authored a client alert heralding the awarding of $500 million to Wisconsin and noted:

The $529 million in stimulus funds allocated for Wisconsin state and local transportation projects is likely to result in increased opportunities for Wisconsin road, bridge and other transportation contractors, subcontractors and suppliers.

Of course, a little less than a year later he told this to the Stevens Point Journal:

“The stimulus, the jobs bill, all of them — they all create a very small amount of government jobs, but they cost us our future,” Priebus said. “We get very little in return for the massive amount of money that we’re putting toward these government programs.”

I doubt the media would ever do anything with those two quotes. Doubtless, they will also overlook this quote from a pitch also co-authored by Priebus:

If you are interested in learning about other provisions included in The Act, the Michael Best Stimulus and Economic Recovery Team is prepared to assist you in understanding the implications and in developing and implementing a strategy to secure the benefits of this unprecedented legislation. Specifically, we will assist you to identify opportunities, prepare appropriate proposals and make targeted contacts to secure funds.

Well, isn’t that precious.

Within minutes of this story breaking, Priebus or someone at his law firm, began furiously scrubbing all traces of him from the firm’s stimulus work. (Scrubbing…really? Is this 1999? Does Priebus even know about Google cache or WayBack?) He also said the whole thing was a terrible misunderstanding. One of his supporters explained to National Review:

“Some element of the firm must have put out some marketing thing. They’re a general corporation firm. Somehow that erroneously got hooked up to Reince’s personal thing. But he has never been involved in terms of the group that was trying to do that. He hasn’t and won’t. End of story.”

Priebus himself explained it this way:

I’m co chair of the Government Practice Group, so my guess is that I was simply listed

Tight ship they’re running at the Michael Best law firm.

But, nevermind. Let’s take Priebus at his word. Let’s assume he really wasn’t involved in any of this. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt that his name was mistakenly listed as a co-author on at least 4 stimulus client alerts, that his bio mentioned his work in this area and that he was listed as a point of contact for the overall stimulus practice. Fine, it was all a whole series of multiple mistakes. But, if so, what does that mean?

Well, for starters, it means that for well over a year, neither Priebus nor any of his colleagues noticed that he was mistakenly listed on the firm’s website. Clients received alerts listing him as a co-author. Clients thought he was a point of contact. Remember, he wasn’t some junior associate. He was a leading partner in the firm and the freakin chair of the GOP in the state. That would carry quite a bit of weight, enough, even, to convince a client to use the firm’s services. To assert that he was a prominent player in this practice area when he wasn’t is pretty close to misrepresentation. Did any client sign on with the firm thinking that Priebus, a powerful political operative, was working their case?

Again. No. One. Noticed. This? The law firm doesn’t ask partners listed as a co-author of an alert to review it? None of the other partners ever said, “Whoa, you’ve got Priebus listed here…that’s a mistake, I’m the one handling this”? Neither Priebus nor any of the other partners working on the stimulus front ever bothered to look at the firm’s website? (That could explain why Priebus thinks you can “scrub” a website.)

Besides the Apple-Dumpling-Gang humor in all this, there is something more troubling here and it is highly relevant to the RNC race. A while back, Priebus resigned his staff position at the RNC to prepare for this campaign. He has been working at this for at least a couple months. And yet, he didn’t notice this glaring mistake until it came out in the press.

I always advise candidates running for office to first research themselves. Find out what information is out there about them, what is wrong and what could be damaging. Only then do you research your opponents. You always want to minimize surprises in a campaign. Know what you are dealing with.

Priebus not only doesn’t seem to have done a thorough job of this campaign basic, it doesn’t appear that he did it at all. I mean, the man didn’t even look at his own bio before he threw his hat into the ring for national political office? Really? This is the kind of operative who is the “frontrunner” to be chair of the RNC? I know the GOP is often jokingly called the “stupid” party, but in this case, that would be really unfair to stupid people.

Remember, the chief duty of the RNC chair is to “do no harm” to the party or its candidates. One of the more unfortunate aspects of Steele’s tenure is that he too often became the story. His misstatements, gaffes and mistakes often dominated news coverage of the party. Whole news cycles were wasted trying to explain away his actions. Does the RNC really want to go through that all over again?

Priebus has already been featured on MSNBC saying repeatedly that the US should execute Obama, when he meant to say Osama. Now we learn that for well over a year, according to him, his law firm has been publicly crediting him for work he never did. Learning of this mistake, he then tried to cover his tracks by scrubbing the website.

The harm has already been done.