Two spinoffs of the successful “Young Guns” program started by Reps. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) are rising in the ranks of the GOP.
After a rocky start earlier this year, the Young Guns Network, a 501(c)(4) non-profit, and Young Guns Action Fund, a Super PAC, seem to be finding their way this election year, dominating the social scene at the Republican National Convention and releasing a slew of ads hitting targeted Democratic Reps. or promoting up and coming Republican members and challengers.
“I think their goal is to further the Young Guns brand of the next generation of conservative leaders in the country,” Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.), one of the five original Young Guns candidates to be elected in 2008, told The Hill in July. “This is really a way for an outside organization with outside donors, money and, really, involvement to kind of further what we’ve been doing internally.”
After the 2008 elections the National Republican Congressional Committee led by Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas officially integrated the “Young Guns” program into its candidate recruitment program. According to the program’s website, in 2010 “62 of more than 90 Young Guns candidates” were elected to the House of Representatives. The success of the Young Guns brand prompted former deputy chief of staff to Cantor – John Murray – to launch YG Network and YG Action in October of 2011, though YG Network did not have it’s first event until February of 2012 and did not run its first ad until March. In April it launched its women’s initiative, Woman Up! (YGW Up), which kicked off by holding focus groups on issue affecting women in Las Vegas, Nevada and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in May.
You can find the group on twitter at @YGNetwork or on facebook at YGNet, which it occasionally uses to promote itself and positive stories about Young Guns candidates. But the YG brand’s best asset is its “Morning Buzz” email sent out by YG Action. If you enjoy reading Politico’s “Playbook,” you’ll enjoy the Morning Buzz newsletter. Though predominately focused on news about Young Guns candidates, the PAC’s senior adviser Brad Dayspring always includes unique, non-political stories you usually won’t hear about from anyone else.
Cantor has said he has no control over the groups despite the fact that they are run by two former aides. Murray serves as the president of the groups while another former deputy chief of staff to Cantor – Brad Dayspring – acts as Senior Adviser to both. YG Action is funded in part by conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who donated $5 million to the group in June. His wife Miriam sponsored Woman Up’s events at the Republican National Convention in Tampa last month.
In early July, the Super PAC announced it would partner with Maverick PAC, a group that seeks to engage young Republicans in the electoral process through low dollar fundraisers with Republican figures and candidates. The groups vowed to put $5 million towards efforts “to mobilize and elect next generation of conservative leaders.”
“We stand at a pivotal moment. The choices made over the next year or two will determine what kind of country the United States is going to be for the better part of our lives. With so much at stake, it’s critical for our generation to be a game-changer in this election,” the group’s principals said in a jointly released op-ed in Politico.
YG Network and YG Action does not specifically focus on promoting candidates who are ‘young’ in age or targeting young voters. According to YG Network’s website the group “is dedicated to supporting center-right policies and the efforts of policymakers who fight for those policies.”
Traditionally the Young Gun program as a whole has helped give green Congressional candidates the national support needed to take on their incumbent challengers. However, that has not been the policy of the unofficial Young Guns program.
This spring YG Network spent $100,000 to protect incumbent Sen. Dick Lugar in his Indiana Senate primary, dropping two mailers to support the 80-year-old Senator, who went on to lose the primary to state Treasurer Richard Mourdock.
On the other hand, YG Action spent $50,000 in March to help freshman Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, an official 2010 Young Guns candidate, beat fellow Rep. Don Manzullo in a heated member on member primary caused by the mandatory redistricting that occurs after every census.
In July YG Action reached out to young Republicans working on Capitol Hill by holding a kegger at the Republican Club of Capitol Hill, a.k.a. the Capitol Hill Club, in Washington, DC. The party featured the timeless tailgating game cornhole and offered souvenir cups displaying the group’s logo.
Ahead of the Republican National Convention (RNC), YG Network ran $250,000 ads in seven endangered Democratic districts and seven competitive Republican districts. Last Friday the Super PAC began airing three additional ads supporting GOP challengers in competitive districts.
At the RNC the group had a noticeably large presence, sporting a classy Woman Up! Pavilion just a block outside the convention perimeter, which Dayspring described as “a place where women can come relax, chill out, meet people, grab a drink, and do a little work.”
Indeed, the pavilion offered free WiFi, comfy couches, a facebook photo center, a phone charging station, big screen TVs, a hair and makeup salon and a bar and delicatessen inside its convenient headquarters at the Tampa Women’s Suffrage Museum.
Throughout the week of the convention YGW Up played host to panels for women inside the pavilion on topics such as building your business and the Europeanization of the United States.
“We started the ‘Woman Up!’ project to listen to women, hear their concerns, and advocate conservative solutions to those problems,” Dayspring said in an email. “When you watch or read stories about the ‘women’s debate,’ it’s rarely mentioned that most of our laws were instituted when the majority of women weren’t even a major part of the workforce, which is such a huge contrast to the world that we all know today.
“So many women work hard to balance a career with a strong family life, build their businesses from the ground up, and are the breadwinners in the home. The economy, entrepreneurship, creating a business and jobs and managing others ARE women’s issues to them,” he added.
While Republican women – and men! – named the pavilion of the hottest spots in town, liberal organizations like Think Progress gave YG flack for including a hair and make-up salon in its pavilion.
“It is those people who are actually pushing a war on women – the thousands of women who visited this week and had a great time,” Dayspring said of the naysayers.
Even ABC’s “Nightline” crew stopped by to interview young Republicans enjoying the hangout, including MAVPAC co-chair Jay Zeidman and College Republican National Committee Chair Alex Schriver.
At the end of the convention YG co-hosted one of the week’s most talked about and most difficult to get into parties with Google. The party boasted attendees from GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s senior staff to Daily Show correspondents Jason Jones and Assif Mandvi, as well as a number of other members of the media and political class.
Though YG struggled to define itself early in the summer, the group that emerged from the Republican National Convention was certainly not in disarray. It’s easy to fly under the radar in a year when similar groups like American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS are in the spotlight. But as other Republican donors and organizations have found out this year, being underrated and overlooked by the Obama campaign and its allies may prove to be a net positive.
