Rove

New York Times

By Jim Rutenberg

WASHINGTON In 2004, Republican master strategist Karl Rove led weekly sessions at his Washington townhouse where, over big plates of "eggies" and bacon slabs, he planned the re-election of President George W. Bush - and what he hoped would be lasting Republican dominion over Democrats.

In April, Rove summoned several of the key players behind Bush's ascendance to his house again, this time to draw up plans to push a Republican resurgence.

Over takeout chicken pot pies, the group - longtime Republican fundraiser Fred V. Malek, former lobbyist and Bush White House counselor Ed Gillespie, and former Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Mary Cheney, among others - agreed on plans for an ambitious new political machine that would marshal the resources of disparate business, nonprofit and interest groups to bring Republicans back to power this fall.

When he left the White House in 2007, Democrats rejoiced at what they believed would be the end of Rove's political career and the brand of Republicanism he espoused. This election season is proving that he is back - if he ever really left at all.

The landscape has changed, however. Rove sometimes clashes with potent new tea party-style activists, some of whom view him as a face of the old party establishment they want to upend.

Already a prominent presence as an analyst on Fox News Channel and a columnist at the Wall Street Journal, Rove is also playing a leading role in building what amounts to a shadow Republican Party, a network of donors and operatives that is among the most aggressive players in the Republican effort to capture control of the House and Senate.

He has taken a major role in helping to summon the old coalition of millionaires and billionaires who supported Bush and have huge financial stakes in regulatory and tax policy - such as Harold Simmons, the leveraged buyout magnate in Texas whose holdings include a major waste management firm that handles some radioactive materials; Carl Lindner Jr., the Cincinnati businessman whose American Financial Group includes several property and casualty insurance concerns; and Robert Rowling, whose TRT Holdings owns Omni Hotels and Gold's Gym.

Their personal and corporate money - as well as that of other donors who have not been identified - has gone to a collection of outside groups Rove helped form with Gillespie. These include American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which in turn are loosely affiliated with similar groups staffed or backed by other operatives and donors with ties to Rove. With $32 million and counting, they are now filling the void created by the diminished condition of the Republican National Committee, which has faced fundraising difficulties under its embattled chairman, Michael Steele.

"A lot of what we're doing would normally be done with the RNC," said Cheney, who is part of a group working with the organizations Rove helped start on encouraging early voting in House races this fall. "There's no money there."

Crossroads officials say they are seeking to supplement party activities, not replace them.

Already, plans at American Crossroads include an anti-Democratic barrage of attack ads that will be seen tens of thousands of times, a final get-out-the-vote push with some 40 million negative mail pieces, and 20 million automated phone calls, officials there say.

"They're running a very proficient party operation funded by millions of dollars of undisclosed, special-interest dollars," said David Axelrod, a special adviser to President Barack Obama.

Referring to Rove and Gillespie, he added, "These guys are great political operatives, and they will have an impact in this election."

But if Rove and his colleagues remain masters of the Republican establishment, it is less clear that their influence extends into - and will not be diminished by - the grass-roots conservative movement that has energized and somewhat reordered the party this year.

Stoking tension within party

Throughout the year, Rove has not shied away from criticizing insurgent candidates who in his view would reduce Republican chances of winning a seat. And as the embodiment of the inside-Washington power structure, he and his associates are viewed with some suspicion by the new forces driving the party, in particular former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska and the tea party activists who eschew the sort of big-tent, top-down party order that Rove stands for.

Tensions boiled over recently when Rove publicly criticized as unelectable the tea party-backed candidate who won the Republican Senate primary in Delaware, Christine O'Donnell. His stance prompted blistering criticism from activists and Palin, who, in a "woodshed moment" clearly directed at Rove during a recent speech in Iowa, called for party unity, asking, "Did you ever lose a big game growing up?"

Richard Viguerie, a longtime Republican strategist who has allied with tea party activists, said, "We're all on the same page until the polls close Nov.2."

But, referring to Rove and Gillespie as part of the "ruling class," he added, "Then a massive, almost historic battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party begins."

The longstanding descriptions of Rove as an all-powerful Republican puppeteer exaggerate and oversimplify his role. And he has no paid, official position with the Crossroads groups, serving instead as an informal adviser alongside Gillespie.

Operations are overseen by the chairman, the former Republican National Committee chairman - and 40-year Rove associate - Robert Duncan, and the chief executive, Steven Law, a former general counsel to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a onetime chief of staff to the Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

About American Crossroads

American Crossroads formally registered with the Internal Revenue Service in March with an initial donation of $250,000 from B. Wayne Hughes of Kentucky, the chairman of Public Storage Inc. That was followed by a donation of $1 million in April from Trevor Rees-Jones of Texas, the chief executive of Chief Oil and Gas.

Around the same time, Rove came up with the idea of gathering other like-minded outside groups at his home on Weaver Terrace in Northwest Washington. Calling themselves the Weaver Terrace group in honor of that first meeting, the participants now regularly reconvene at the Crossroads offices downtown to ensure they work in tandem and avoid overlap.

Central to the effort is the development of a sophisticated list of voters that several of the groups share and contribute to, helping organizations like Cheney's, for instance, to identify people likely to vote by early absentee ballot in House races.

Officials at American Crossroads later started a new entity, Crossroads GPS. Registered under section 501(4) of the tax code - a designation that in theory requires it to focus primarily on issues rather than candidates - it has raised roughly half of the $32 million the Crossroads groups have reported raising between them.

At least until recently, Crossroads GPS had served as the dominant conduit for advertisements. It has not shied away from running spots helpful to tea party-backed Senate candidates like Rand Paul of Kentucky, whose primary race Rove once described as causing "squeamishness" in the party - and Sharron Angle in Nevada.

(Several of its spots have been criticized for "badly misleading claims" by FactCheck.org, the political advertising monitoring service of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.)

Whatever battle Viguerie predicts, Duncan said the group had no plans to go away.

"We're going to be involved in 2012," he said. "That's what we're gearing for."

It seems Rove has no plans to go anywhere, either.