Alex Castellanos

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Alejandro "Alex" Castellanos (b. 1954, Havana, Cuba) is a U.S. Republican Party political media consultant who specializes in television advertising, and was a top media adviser to Bush Cheney '04 as well as Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.^[1][2]

He is a partner in National Media, Inc. and has served as a media consultant in numerous presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial elections both for campaigns and for outside political committees.^[3][4] In late 2008 he teamed with veteran Democratic strategist Steve McMahon to form Purple Strategies, a bipartisan public affairs firm. ^[5] Salon.com has referred to Castellanos as the "father of the modern attack ad."^[6]

Castellanos has also worked on issue advocacy campaigns for corporations and national associations. He has been a frequent guest on political shows.^[3]

Contents 1 Personal background 2 1990 "White Hands" advertisement 3 1994 Jeb Bush death penalty advertisement 4 2000 "Rats" advertisement 5 2008 Romney campaign 6 References

[edit] Personal background

Castellanos, a native of Havana, Cuba, is fluent in Spanish and English. His parents, refugees who fled Castro’s Cuba in 1961, came to this country with one suitcase, two children and eleven dollars. He spent the remainder of his childhood growing up with his parents Jose and Olga and his younger sister Laura Castellanos in the small town of Coats, NC. A former Morehead and National Merit Scholar at the University of North Carolina, Castellanos speaks frequently about politics and is a guest commentator on CNN. He has also been a guest on Meet the Press, Hardball, Crossfire as well as at numerous Universities including the United States Army Communication School. Castellanos is currently working with the Harvard Fellowship Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Castellanos served as a key creative member to the Bush-Cheney 2004 election, producing many spots, such as the “Wolves” commercial that acquired much media attention. He has helped elect 9 U.S. Senators, 6 Governors, and enjoys over two decades of political consulting experience, both in the United States and abroad.

Castellanos has served as media consultant to seven U.S. Presidential campaigns, and is currently serving as a volunteer on the John McCain for President Ad Council. He has been credited with the discovery of the political "soccer mom" and called "father of the attack ad.”

Fortune magazine singled out Mr. Castellanos as a “new style media master” and GQ magazine ranked him as one of the "Top 50 most powerful people in Washington."

[edit] 1990 "White Hands" advertisement

Near the end of the 1990 U.S. Senate race in North Carolina, Castellanos produced an advertisement for incumbent Republican Senator Jesse Helms, who was then trailing Democratic challenger and Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt, an African-American.^[7] The ad shows the hands of a white man crumpling a job application rejection notice as a narrator intones, "You needed that job. But they had to give it to a minority."^[7] The ad then references Gantt's supposed support for racial quotas and Helms's opposition.^[7] No other part of the actor's body is shown.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an expert on political communications,^[8] has written on the subliminal messages of racial fear encoded into this advertisement.^[7] She believes that the signals may include a screen transition showing the hand crumpling the image of Gantt's head and a black mark on the rejection notice in the shape of a hand holding a handgun.^[7]

[edit] 1994 Jeb Bush death penalty advertisement

Castellanos produced an ad in 1994 for Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate Jeb Bush, who was seeking to unseat Democratic incumbent governor Lawton Chiles.^[6] The ad contains an interview with the mother of a 10-year-old female murder victim in which she complains that Governor Chiles had refused to sign the death warrant for the convicted killer, "because [Chiles was] too liberal on crime."^[6] The Chiles campaign quickly answered that Chiles had not signed the warrant because the case was still being heard on appeal, which prohibited Chiles from acting, and local newspapers sprang to Chiles's defense and accused Bush of lies and demagoguery.^[6] This backlash may have been key in Chiles's victory, one of the closest such contests in Florida history.^[6]

[edit] 2000 "Rats" advertisement

During the heated 2000 U.S. presidential campaign season, Castellanos produced an ad for the Republican National Committee attempting to discredit the prescription drug plan policy offered by U.S. Democratic Party presidential nominee and then-Vice President Al Gore.^[4] Alongside images of Gore, the ad showed the word "RATS" for a split second, before the complete word "bureaucrats" appeared on-screen.^[4] During the ensuing uproar, Castellanos claimed that the inclusion was "purely accidental."^[4] Psychologists suggest that such brief messages can be processed by the brain but at an unconscious or subliminal level.^[4]

[edit] 2008 Romney campaign

In late February 2007, the Boston Globe obtained a leaked copy of an internal Romney campaign document describing the campaign's plan to win the Republican nomination.^[1] That document, produced by Castellanos, drew attention by implying the campaign's poor view of the sitting president.^[2] Specifically, the document advised that that Romney should create distance between himself and President George W. Bush by focusing on the separating factor of "intelligence."^[1]

Prior to joining the Romney campaign, it had been reported that Castellanos had met with Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson.^[9]

[edit] References