PAY DIRT

GOP Consultants Plotted ‘Nuclear’ Strategy Against Deadbeat Client

Court documents describe the extraordinary lengths to which the firm was prepared to go to ensure that the former California lieutenant governor candidate ponied up the funds.

A prominent political-consulting firm plotted to send letters to a former client’s neighbors, donors, and political supporters if the former client didn’t repay a seven-figure campaign debt, court records show.

The firm, Republican powerhouse Majority Strategies, effectively ran Cole Harris’ unsuccessful 2018 campaign for California lieutenant governor, according to copies of its contract filed as part of a lawsuit in that state. Majority Strategies sued Harris last year in an effort to recoup more than $1 million that the firm says it is still owed from its work on Harris’ behalf.

Prior to the lawsuit, Majority Strategies tried a more unorthodox approach. It locked Harris out of his own campaign’s website and social-media accounts, and used them to attempt to shame the candidate into paying the debt. “Cole Harris owes his campaign vendors and employees at least $1.1 million in unpaid bills,” the website blared.

According to documents produced in the lawsuit between Harris and his former vendor, the website-shaming tactic was just the tip of the iceberg. Privately, Majority Strategies plotted an even more aggressive campaign to pressure its deadbeat client into repayment. It crafted three potential strategies for doing so, and dubbed them “shot over the bow,” “Pearl Harbor,” and “nuclear.”

The tamest of the options would involve a direct-mail campaign targeting Harris’ neighbors and broadcasting the same allegations as the hijacked website. It might also involve mail pieces targeting his donors and Republican members of the state legislature, who, though Harris finished third in the lieutenant governor’s race, might be crucial to future political pursuits.

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Internal ideas for the mail pieces included mock “neighborhood watch” and “debt collection” flyers. According to an internal brainstorming document, language might include something to the effect of “He lives in $X house, drives $x car, whatever else from his Instagram but left $x unpaid debts to people with small business, families, student loans, kids, etc.”

The “Pearl Harbor” option envisioned those mail pieces, supplemented by digital ads targeting Harris’ neighborhood. The “nuclear” option involved all of the above, plus a standalone website devoted to calling out Harris’ failure to pay his campaign debts. 

It’s not clear how much of that plan, or what level of it, was brought to bear on behalf of Majority Strategies’ debt-collection efforts. But the documents show the lengths to which the firm was prepared to go to ensure that Harris ponied up the funds—and how the firm was prepared to use its very areas of expertise to elicit payment.

Harris, for his part, describes the scheme as attempted extortion in a cross-complaint filed this week against Majority Strategies and one of its executives, Chris Faulkner. But according to a June filing with California campaign-finance regulators, Harris’ campaign still has more than $1 million in unpaid bills. And Majority Strategies is still its largest creditor.

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Lachlan MarkayReporter

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