Texas GOP Staffers Love Nathan Fletcher

Now that the Republican presidential race has been pretty much decided in Mitt Romney’s favor, staffers for the long roster of losing candidates are once again back on the job market. Those who might have a chance with Nathan Fletcher, the newly self-proclaimed independent state assemblyman and San Diego mayoral candidate, are former staff members of the presidential campaign of Texas governor Rick Perry. Campaign disclosure records reveal that Janan G. Grissom, Perry’s director of operations, and Raymond C. Sullivan, the campaign’s communications director, kicked in $250 and $500 respectively to Fletcher, who in 2002 served as political director of the California Republican Party. Other $250 Texas donors to Fletcher included Karen Hughes, the political intimate of ex–GOP president George W. Bush. She is now working for the big public relations and lobbying outfit of Burson-Marsteller in West Lake Hills.

Another Fletcher contributor is James Bognet of Austin, listed as a self-employed “campaign, strategy & communications consultant.” Bognet has had a hand in past campaigns of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mitt Romney, and failed California GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner. Joe Allbaugh, another Bush insider, who once ran the Federal Emergency Management Agency and is now working in “communications/governmental relations” at Austin’s Procurement Strategy, Inc., also backed the Fletcher cause. Fletcher’s wife Mindy was once a top Bush administration press aide.