Paul Manafort has a history of working for strong men.
Over a 40-year career as a lobbyist and political consultant, Manafort and his firms have advised, in no particular order, a business group tied to Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator of the Philippines; Viktor Yanukovych, the ousted Ukrainian president and ally of Vladimir Putin; and Lynden Pindling, the former Bahamian prime minister who was accused of ties to drug traffickers.
Now, he works for Donald Trump.
.. Manafort comes with the right calling card: He fiercely protected Gerald Ford’s delegates at the last contested convention in 1976, in what Bay Buchanan, national treasurer for Ronald Reagan’s insurgent campaign, called “hand to hand” combat.
.. “You’re down to the number of people you can count and meet,” Buchanan said, noting that Manafort didn’t lose a single Ford delegate. “If you’re not tough, you will lose. To suggest he’s tough is saying he’s competent.”
.. “They’re close in age, so Trump doesn’t look to him like he’s some kid. He brings a level of professionalism to the Trump operation at an important time because they have to pivot
.. He made a name for himself working for leading Republican figures, including Ford, Reagan, Dole and George H.W. Bush.
The controversial clients Manafort has represented have paid him and his firms millions of dollars and form a who’s who of authoritarian leaders and scandal-plagued businessmen in Ukraine, Russia, the Philippines and more.
.. In 1985, Manafort and his first lobbying firm, Black Manafort Stone & Kelly, signed a $1m contract with a Philippine business group to promote dictator Ferdinand Marcos just a few months before his regime was overthrown and he fled the country.
.. And in 2010, Manafort helped pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych remake his tarnished image and win a presidential election in Ukraine.
.. The financial dividends that the globetrotting 67-year-old Manafort reaped from these clients and others are palpable: he has homes in Alexandria, Virginia, Palm Beach, Florida, and the Hamptons, in New York, where his house is valued at almost $5.3m, according to property records. For good measure, Manafort has a condo in Trump Tower.
.. Similar issues about Manafort have arisen before: his work in Ukraine sparked a decision not to bring him on board as John McCain’s convention manager in 2008, according to people close to the McCain campaign.
.. Ed Rollins, who managed Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign, told the Guardian that Manafort did a “good job” working for him as convention manager. “He’s a good operative and will help Trump.”
.. “Paul has become the public face of the campaign in addition to Trump and has the authority to speak for Trump, which nobody has really had before,” said Charlie Black, his lobbying partner for almost 15 years at Black Manafort Stone & Kelly.
.. irritated Trump, whom Manafort likes to call the “boss”, GOP sources say.
.. Eyebrows have also been raised over several new hires on Manafort’s brief watch, which include a few ex-lobbyists and consultants – such as Rick Gates, who handled some Ukraine-related projects for Manafort in largely administrative functions – who have little campaign experience.
.. Manafort’s ties with Trump stretch back a long way: Trump turned to Manafort’s first lobbying firm in Washington in the late 80s for lobbying help for the Trump Organization. Trump forged close ties with Manafort’s then partner Roger Stone, who became a confidante of the billionaire and is now an informal campaign adviser who had a role in promoting Manafort’s hiring.
.. But Manafort’s work in Ukraine and his links to some scandal-plagued business figures, such as the oligarchs Firtash and Deripaska, and the arms dealer Abdul Rahman el-Assir, could wind up embarrassing the Trump campaign
.. Manafort has been credited with helping to reshape Yanukovych’s image to make him a more appealing candidate in 2010 by, among other things, getting him to speak Ukrainian instead of Russian, which he had done in past campaigns.
.. sources say that Manafort would meet periodically with high-level officials in the US embassy in Kiev and often tout Yanukovych’s pro-free market and pro-business views with an eye to buffing his image. Manafort’s job wasn’t easy, say people familiar with Yanukovych. “His client was somebody who had a very troubled reputation,” said former Bush State Department official David Kramer.
.. In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, he defended his work for Yanukovych: “The role I played in that administration was to help bring Ukraine into Europe and we did.”
Paul Manafort explains why his boss is “gonna win,” no prob.
Trump just has to be presidential enough in the first debate (no body parts mentioned), pick an experienced running mate, and run Clinton into the ground as a corrupt version of Barack Obama.
.. Manafort’s sunny vision may be a little skewed. Having made millions as an image crafter for foreign tyrants, he can’t help but see Trump as an easy lift by comparison.
.. “I will be surprised if he puts them out. I wouldn’t necessarily advise him to. It’s not really an issue for the people we are appealing to. His tax returns are incredibly complicated. I wouldn’t understand them, so how are the American people going to? The financial disclosure he put out gives the salient points,” Manafort said.
“The only people who want the tax returns are the people who want to defeat him.”
.. “The national polls are distorted,” Manafort said. “To get a national sample they rely too much on Hispanics from New York and California, which is where large populations are, but also where most of the radical Hispanics are.”
“But if you look at Hispanics in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and even Florida, you see a different picture. We’re going to target Hispanic voters in those and other swing states.”
.. “The message is going to be jobs, national security, terrorism, family values and education,” he said. “In that order.”
.. “If we get into the high 20s in those states with Hispanics, we will win them, and in Florida we can do even better if we do what we need to do in the Cuban community.”
.. “We’ll continue the rallies. That is Trump’s brand. We’ll do the broad themes at the big rallies. No one wants to change that.”
But, Manafort added, the campaign will assemble a state-of-the-art social media and on-the-ground operation.
.. The first presidential debate will be key. Needless to say, Trump won’t hesitate to attack Clinton in that and other debates. Attack is and has always been his only mode.
.. He seems himself more as the chairman of the board, than even the CEO, let alone the COO.”
.. There is little reason to worry that Trump’s abrasive attacks will backfire, Manafort insisted. “He’s not going to fundamentally change, though you have to say it right,” he said.
The main message about Clinton will be that as president, she would be “Obama Three” but with worse ethics. The prospect of another term for the current administration will be enough to convince voters, the president’s relatively strong recent job approval numbers notwithstanding.
Mr. Trump, who by the end of March had spent around $40 million of his fortune on the primaries, has said that he may need as much as $1.5 billion for the fall campaign, but that he will seek to raise it from donors rather than continue to self-finance.
.. even if individuals can contribute up to the current limit of $334,000 at a time to the party
.. Republican Party officials have pressed Mr. Trump to sign a joint fund-raising agreement, which would allow him to raise money for the national committee and for his own campaign simultaneously. That, in turn, would also give Mr. Trump a defensible answer for why, after months of railing against Wall Street executives and special interests, he recently turned to a former Goldman Sachs executive, Steven Mnuchin, to corral large checks for his campaign.
.. While the limits were lower in 2012, Mitt Romney raised less than $500 million under such an agreement that year, using a donor network that had taken years to develop.
.. The Trump campaign plans to try to take firm control over the party’s convention, with two senior advisers to Mr. Trump, Paul Manafort and Barry Bennett, expected to head to Cleveland on Thursday, according to two people close to the Trump campaign.