After its first major leadership change since 1984, the American Conservative Union is finishing up a staff overhaul and restructuring its outreach. Florida lobbyist and businessman Al Cardenas was elected president in February, succeeding David Keene, who now heads the National Rifle Association.
The union is the oldest membership-based conservative advocacy group in the United States, but is perhaps best-known for being the parent organization of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the largest annual gathering of conservative activists.
Cardenas has restructured top down, bringing on new staff to do work previously farmed out to consultants. In March, he hired executive director Gregg Keller, 34, from the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a group for social conservatives headed by GOP strategist Ralph Reed. In April, Cardenas brought on veteran activist Christopher Malagisi, 30, from the Leadership Institute, a conservative political training group, as lead CPAC coordinator, bumping out Lisa De Pasquale.
Cardenas’ final addition took place earlier this month with the hiring of Kristy Campbell, a longtime Florida political operative who joined as communications director. Cardenas was Florida Republican Party chairman when the state was governed by Republican Jeb Bush, for whom Campbell, 30, worked as a press secretary.
The tea party has been a shot in the arm, the new ACU aides say, and their aim is to keep pushing its current programs into states. The union, for example, rates congressional lawmakers on a handful of key votes each year; awards go to politicians who get at least 80 percent. Plans are in the works to launch regional CPACs that focus on state-specific and local policy issues and to do state ratings. “If you really are serious about partnering with the tea party,” Keller says, “you need to go out to where the tea party is in the states, you need to go out to the local communities.”
But the group isn’t letting up on Washington policy makers. It’s been more active pushing conservative issues this Congress, pressuring House members to drop their support for natural gas subsidies and urging senators to oppose President Obama’s nominee to head the Commerce Department, John Bryson.
