Portman Campaign Aide’s Ties to Controversial Lobby Firm Go Unnoticed

It was no surprise that Rob Portman hired a veteran GOP campaigner to manager his 2010 run for the Senate.

In so doing, Portman is the first of many potential Republican and Democratic candidates who want to capture the Ohio Senate seat being vacated by George Voinovich.

Ohio native Bob Paduchik will begin managing Portman’s campaign February 7, according to published reports.  Paduchik, a Tallmadge native and graduate of the University of Akron, was Ohio campaign manager for President George W. Bush's 2004 re-election.  He has worked on several successful gubernatorial and congressional campaigns.

Paduchik is currently listed as a vice president at DCI Group, a Washington public relations and lobbying firm with strong GOP ties... But DCI is no stranger to controversy.  It is tied to running a public relations campaign for the military junta in Burma, sponsoring a video released that raised doubts about Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and operating a 527 group that was fined for violating election laws.

In May 2008 John McCain tapped DCI CEO Doug Goodyear to run last year’s GOP convention, but he abruptly resigned when DCI’s activities came to light. 

Here’s the group’s history.

In 2002 DCI was paid $348,000 to represent Burma’s military junta, which had been strongly condemned by the State Department for its human-rights record and which continues to control that isolated county.

According to a Newsweek report last May, Justice Department lobbying records showed DCI pushed to "begin a dialogue of political reconciliation" with the regime.   This is rather strange given the Bush Administration’s stand on not talking to recalcitrant national leaders.  Newsweek noted that DCI “led a PR campaign to burnish the junta's image, drafting releases praising Burma's efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing "falsehoods" by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses.”

DCI CEO Doug Goodyear told Newsweek last May that "it was our only foreign representation, it was for a short tenure, and it was six years ago.” The Newsweek piece appeared in May after John McCain picked Goodyear to chair last year’s Republican Convention.  Goodyear resigned a week after the story appeared.

DCI was also active in running so-called independent campaign spending organizations – called 527 groups – which have been denounced by candidates in both parties.  In 2004 DCI organized and led a pro-Bush 527 group called Progress for America, which was later fined for violating federal election laws.

Goodyear told Newsweek that DCI is "not in the 527 business anymore."

In 2006 DCI was also linked to a video parody that belittled global warming and ridiculing Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. The parody was produced by Tech Central Station, a DCI project funded by ExxonMobile, AT&T, General Motors, McDonald's, Microsoft, NASDAQ, National Semiconductor, PhRMA, and Qualcomm.
 
Tech Central’s activities prompted Sens. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., to publicly ask ExxonMobile to stop supporting groups “whose public advocacy have contributed to the small but unfortunately effective climate change denial myth."

In 2006 ABC News said that a “report by the Union of Concerned Scientists noted that ExxonMobile funded 29 climate change denial groups in 2004 alone” and that since 1990 the company spent more than $19 million funding groups whose publications are not peer-reviewed by the scientific community. 

DCI sold Tech Central in October that year.
                   
In his announcement about hiring Paduchik for his senate bid, Portman said "This will be a hard fought contest and we need the best team that we can put on the field."