Kavanaugh Confirmation

CRC Public Relations, a powerhouse conservative firm, guided Ed Whelan on a bad Twitter adventure.

It turns out that the Keystone Cops detective work by conservative legal activist Ed Whelan — which set Washington abuzz with the promise of exonerating Brett Kavanaugh, only to be met by mockery and then partially retracted — was not his handiwork alone.

CRC Public Relations, the prominent Alexandria, Virginia-based P.R. firm, guided Whelan through his roller-coaster week of Twitter pronouncements that ended in embarrassment and a potential setback for Kavanaugh’s hopes of landing on the high court, according to three sources familiar with their dealings.

Story Continued Below

After suggesting on Twitter on Tuesday that he had obtained information that would exculpate Kavanaugh from the sexual assault allegation made by Christine Blasey Ford, Whelan worked over the next 48 hours with CRC and its president, Greg Mueller, to stoke the anticipation. A longtime friend of Kavanaugh’s, Whelan teased his reveal — even as he refused to discuss it with other colleagues and close friends, a half dozen of them said. At the same time, he told them he was absolutely confident the information he had obtained would exculpate the judge.

The hype ping-ponged from Republicans on Capitol Hill to Kavanaugh’s team in the White House, evidence of an extraordinarily successful public relations campaign that ultimately backfired when Whelan’s theory — complete with architectural drawings and an alleged Kavanaugh doppelgänger — landed with a thud on Twitter Thursday evening.

The coordinated effort was a testament to the far-reaching but frenzied attempt among conservatives to save Kavanaugh, which appeared to have spun out of the White House’s control. Indeed, Whelan told associates that he had kept his friend Kavanaugh and those working with him in the White House in the dark about his plans.

Thanks in part to the anticipation Whelan ginned up, Republicans who had gotten excited by the prospect that he really did have information that would solve Kavanaugh’s problems drew attention to Whelan. They later insisted they were kept in the dark until he went public, and fled from any association with Whelan’s theory.

CRC, however, was right there with him all along.

On Friday, hours after Whelan called his decision to name and post photographs of Kavanaugh’s high school classmate “an appalling an inexcusable mistake of judgment,” CRC helped organize a news conference featuring an array of women who dismissed Ford’s allegations.

Best known for its work with the Swift Boat Veterans in 2004, CRC bills itself as a full-service communications firm “specializing in media relations, social media and issues management,” according to its website. It has long been the go-to communications firm for conservative organizations in Washington and across the country. Its current clients include the Federalist Society and the Judicial Crisis Network, the chief outside groups working to help confirm Kavanaugh.

After unsuccessful attempts to persuade reporters to chase down a theory he put forward on Twitter — that the high school party described by Ford may have taken place at the home of a particular high school classmate of Kavanaugh’s, and that that classmate may have been the perpetrator of the alleged attack — Whelan worked with CRC’s Mueller to devise a strategy that would draw attention to his theory, according to two sources familiar with his plans. That involved teasing the idea that he would make a big reveal but remaining mysteriously tight-lipped about what he had uncovered.

Neither Whelan nor the CRC’s president responded to a request for comment.

In a series of Twitter posts on Tuesday evening, Whelan strongly suggested he had obtained information that would clear Kavanaugh’s name. “By one week from today, I expect that Judge Kavanaugh will have been clearly vindicated on this matter.” He continued, “Specifically, I expect that compelling evidence will show his categorical denial to be truthful. There will be no cloud over him.”

For 48 hours, he declined to share that “compelling evidence” with close colleagues or Kavanaugh allies. Several have said privately that they regret that decision because they would have advised Whelan against the course of action that CRC advised, and that he eventually took.

Kavanaugh himself, who largely large remained cloistered in the White House preparing for a hearing since Ford went public with the allegations on Sunday, was also ignorant of Whelan’s plans, according to two sources close to him.

But Whelan’s tweets piqued the interest of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee and inside the White House.

It is unclear to what extent Whelan was coordinating with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and other Republicans on Capitol Hill. He was in communication with at least one Republican member of the committee this week, and that member told associates he was aware Whelan’s theory involved the home of a Kavanaugh classmate near the Chevy Chase Country Club.

Matt Whitlock, deputy chief of staff to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), directed people to Whelan’s Twitter feed on Wednesday in a tweet of his own and later deleted his tweet.

“Keep an eye on Ed’s tweets the next few days,” Whitlock wrote.

After Whelan unveiled his theory Thursday evening, Whitlock deleted the tweet, explaining that he “didn’t want to promote” anything that “dragged an unrelated private citizen into this unfortunate situation.”

“I had no idea,” Whitlock added, “what Ed was planning.”

Elections

7 GOP-held seats move toward Democrats.

Voting in the 2018 midterm election is now underway.

Yes, it’s still September, but voters began casting ballots Friday in Minnesota. It’s the first state to begin in-person early voting — and one reason why the Democratic Party’s position in the battle for the House appears stronger now than at any other point since losing the chamber eight years ago.

Story Continued Below

Two suburban-oriented, Republican-controlled seats are now in serious jeopardy of flipping. The congressman representing one of those seats, Erik Paulsen, has seen notable recent deterioration in his reelection prospects — it’s a far cry from 2016, when he won his suburban Minneapolis district by nearly 14 percentage points.

Donald Trump is a big part of Paulsen’s problem. Paulsen’s constituents have never taken much of a liking to the president. Trump lost the district to Hillary Clinton by 9 percentage points in 2016, a significant shift from four years earlier, when then-President Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by less than a single point — even though Minnesota, as a state, moved toward the GOP between 2012 and 2016.

What’s happening in Paulsen’s district — according to a recent poll, 62 percent of likely voters in the district disapprove of Trump’s job performance — is also playing out, to some extent, in suburban seats across the country.

In the first update to POLITICO’s Race Ratings for House seats, Paulsen’s district is moving from “Toss-Up” to “Lean Democratic.” A demographically similar district in the Chicagoland suburbs — the seat held by GOP Rep. Peter Roskam — is also moving toward Democrats: from “Lean Republican” to “Toss-Up.”

Overall, of the nine districts moving in this first update, 7 are moving toward Democrats. But the news isn’t all bad for Republicans: The GOP’s strategy of hand-to-hand combat has worked in Kentucky’s 6th District — the Lexington-based seat where Republicans have successfully attacked Democrat Amy McGrath, who had a double-digit lead earlier in the summer but now finds herself deadlocked or slightly behind GOP Rep. Andy Barr.

Here are the seats moving toward Democrats:

Florida-15 (from Solid Republican to Likely Republican): Democrat Kristen Carlson has an internal poll showing her neck-and-neck with GOP nominee Ross Spano. The Republican-oriented district hasn’t come completely online for Democrats, but the DCCC has bought airtime for the final week of the campaign just in case.

Illinois-06 (from Lean Republican to Toss-Up): GOP Rep. Peter Roskam faces his toughest race since 2006. A New York Times/Siena College poll showed Roskam essentially tied with Democrat Sean Casten. But this was the jaw-dropping finding: President Trump’s approval rating is just 36 percent, with 57 percent disapproving, meaning Roskam is fighting against fierce political headwinds.

Maine-02 (from Lean Republican to Toss-Up): GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin had a slight lead in a New York Times/Siena College poll — but, notably, his favorable rating was upside-down. Why that matters: Democrat Jared Golden could garner some of the anti-Poliquin vote if neither candidate earns a majority on Election Day and the state is forced to count ranked-choice ballots after Election Day.

Minnesota-03 (from Toss-Up to Lean Democratic): GOP Rep. Erik Paulsen survived 2016, despite President Trump losing his district by a significant margin. But Trump’s numbers there have gotten worse, and Paulsen trailed Democrat Dean Phillips by 9 points in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll.

Missouri-02 (from Solid Republican to Likely Republican): GOP Rep. Ann Wagner’s Democratic challenger, Cort VanOstran, released a late-August internal poll showing him leading Wagner by 2 points. Even though it was an internal poll, the result was an eyebrow raiser — this Republican-oriented district in the St. Louis suburbs should not be competitive. President Trump has been no asset to Wagner in this Missouri seat: His vote share was lower than Mitt Romney’s four years earlier, as some college-educated white voters spurned the GOP ticket.

North Carolina-02 (from Lean Republican to Toss-Up): We have three polls in recent weeks: an internal from GOP Rep. George Holding, an internal from Democrat Linda Coleman and a third survey from a conservative nonprofit group. All three show a neck-and-neck race.

Ohio-10 (from Solid Republican to Likely Republican): Another GOP district that’s no longer safe. Democrat Theresa Gasper had the airwaves to herself in the weeks immediately following Labor Day, before GOP Rep. Mike Turner answered back.

And the two seats moving toward Republicans:

Florida-27 (from Lean Democratic to Toss-Up): This was once Democrats’ most-promising pick-up opportunity: an open-seat race in a district Hillary Clinton carried by nearly 20 points. But GOP nominee Maria Elvira Salazar has an internal poll showing her 7 points ahead of Democrat Donna Shalala. The Shalala camp’s response? Their own weeks-old internal showing the Clinton-era HHS secretary up by just 4 points.

Kentucky-06 (from Lean Democratic to Toss-Up): Earlier in the summer, McGrath led this race by double-digits, even in internal GOP polls. But an onslaught of ads from Barr and Congressional Leadership Fund have taken a significant toll on her image.

White House

Trump set off a renewed firestorm with his direct challenge to the woman who accused his Supreme Court nominee of a high school sexual assault

President Donald Trump for the first time directly challenged the woman who made sexual assault allegations against his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, part of a strategic shift designed to reframe the scandal as a partisan attack on his administration.

The president, still in Las Vegas for a fundraiser before heading to Missouri for a rally, asserted on Twitter that Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, or her family would have reported the episode to law enforcement at the time it happened – when she was still in high school – if it was “was as bad as she says.” He also openly tied her claims to Senate Democrats, who he accused of trying to “Obstruct & Resist & Delay.”

Story Continued Below

One Republican close to the confirmation process said Trump, who has briefly commented on Ford’s allegations but had avoided directly questioning her credibility, led the decision to engage directly, in part in an effort to turn the crisis into a lever for motivating his conservative base with less than two months before November’s midterms.

The allegations against Kavanaugh have turned an otherwise uneventful confirmation process into the ultimate wedge issue for Trump, giving the president and his allies an opportunity to amplify conservative perceptions of liberal political correctness run amok by framing the issue as a smear on Trump’s pick for the nation’s highest court – a man who is expected to cement a conservative majority, achieving a longstanding goal of many Republicans.

“Judge Brett Kavanaugh is a fine man, with an impeccable reputation, who is under assault by radical left-wing politicians who don’t want to know the answers, they just want to destroy and delay. Facts don’t matter. I go through this with them every single day in D.C.,” Trump tweeted on Friday.

Trump’s comments represented a shift in tone to put the administration back on offense, according to the Republican close to the confirmation process. “This is getting ridiculous,” this person said. “The president had to step in.”

The strategy carries huge risks. Some Republicans fear the president and other critics of Kavanaugh’s accuser could ostracize and enrage women of both parties heading into the mid-terms. On Friday afternoon, Maine Sen. Susan Collins – a Republican whose vote will be crucial for Kavanaugh’s chances of getting confirmed – said she was “appalled” by Trump’s tweet, according to the Associated Press.

Trump’s tweet also spawned a Twitter hashtag, #WhyIDidntReport, with women sharing their stories of sexual assault.

Soon after Trump tweeted, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway went on television to reinforce the message. “Let’s not conflate the larger MeToo movement with whatever did or did not happen in the summer of 1982, 36 years ago, that was not spoken about for the first time ever until 30 years later, that judge Brett Kavanaugh has completely denied,” Conway said in an interview on CNN.

In interviews, more than a half-dozen Republican operatives and others with ties to the White House, said they believe the Kavanaugh drama will help energize conservative voters, many of whom are furious over what they view as a politically motivated attack on the nominee.

“This finally gets the coalition that beat Hillary Clinton into the ground awakened,” said Shawn Steele, the Republican National Committeeman in Orange County, Calif., a key battleground for control of the House. “It’s a godsend for Republicans and really hurts the Democrats. Just from a purely cynical political perspective, it’s a godsend.”

Steel added that the escalating fight over the nomination “has stimulated our lazy, armchair conservatives.” He said the allegations against Kavanaugh “got people that barely pay attention really riled up. It’s got our side on fire.”

Conservative Iowa radio host Steve Deace said the allegations have even rallied social conservatives who had been pushing Trump to pick a more hardline nominee like appeals court judge Amy Coney Barrett.

“His hearings and his testimony generated no buzz” in conservative circles, Deace said. “Now, the base is even more united behind this guy because they view it as a character assassination.”

Two Republicans close to the White House said that while many in the GOP view stocking the federal judiciary with conservative judges as one of their top priorities, the matter hasn’t so far animated the president’s base as much as the wedge issues that Trump has repeatedly hammered on Twitter and at his rallies, from NFL players kneeling during the national anthem to his attacks on tech companies allegedly suppressing conservative voices on social media. But they said they’ve seen early indications that the sexual assault allegations have changed that, inspiring conservatives to engage.

Trump’s tweets followed a misstep by White House ally Ed Whelan, a conservative activist and legal commentator, who laid out a theory on Thursday night that Ford – who says Kavanaugh forcefully groped her in a bedroom at a suburban Maryland house party while they were in high school – had mistaken Kavanaugh for another former Georgetown Prep classmate, which Ford denied through her lawyer. Whelan apologized on Friday for naming the classmate.

Ford’s lawyer continues to negotiate the terms of her potential appearance at a public hearing, holding a drawn-out back and forth over an event that risks replaying the Anita Hill hearings during Justice Clarence Thomas’ confirmation in 1991, which catapulted discussions about workplace harassment into the forefront of the 1992 presidential election.

In the hours after Ford’s allegations were published in the Washington Post last weekend, Republicans close to the White House came to the conclusion that Trump needed to stand by Kavanaugh, with one arguing to POLITICO that the president abandoning his choice “would depress GOP voters instead of motivating them.”

Until Friday, the president mostly followed a carefully planned strategy the White House devised to respond to Kavanaugh’s accuser mostly by reiterating support for his Supreme Court nominee and casting the blame on Democrats, specifically Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for sitting on Ford’s letter until after confirmation hearings were complete.

But there were signs that Trump’s patience was waning. In an interview with The Hill this week, he attacked Democrats for not coming forward sooner with the allegations. “This is no different than the Russian witch hunt, what they’ve done is they make up a lot of stuff and try and obstruct and resist,” he said.

Ford’s accusations have energized liberals who believe Trump and his allies have consistently dismissed women’s allegations against powerful men, meaning the issue could have the simultaneous effect of driving Democrats to the polls.

Despite Republicans’ message discipline, some in the GOP have begun attacking Ford personally, which could further alienate women voters of both parties. “She’s a tool. She barely knows what’s going on. She is just the latest incarnation of Anita Hill,” Steele told POLITICO. “She’s the one that’s trying to castrate Kavanaugh.”

Yet other Republicans close to the Trump campaign believe that the entire episode will blend into the barrage of daily controversies that have assaulted voters over the last 20 months, only to fall off their radar as they move on the next scandal of the moment.

“I suspect that it will be a forgotten issue by the time November rolls around. Everyone makes proclamations that, ‘This is going to do X in the midterm elections.’ But there are very few things that stay in the zeitgeist that long,” said Matt Braynard, a former Trump campaign data scientist who is now running an outside group that is working to register rural and working class voters.

Trump’s nomination of Kavanagh this summer was viewed as a virtual lock, particularly after Democrats in the confirmation hearings failed to dredge up damaging information that would stick to the judge. But for Republicans, the relatively boring process never required them to pay too close attention.

That changed when Ford came forward with her allegations, which many conservatives have come to view not just as an untrue and unfair assault on a decent judge, but as a purely partisan effort to stall the nomination and drag out the process.

Republicans have struggled in special elections over the last two years to match the Democratic Party’s intensity – with GOP leaders relying heavily on Trump and his allies to make their case to voters.

While Trump’s ability to appoint a conservative to the Supreme Court was a top issue for voters in the 2016 election, Kavanaugh is deeply unpopular. He has suffered from low poll numbers, with just 31 percent of American adults saying in a poll this month that they supported Trump’s decision to nominate him.