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Is Steele Favoring Ally's Firm For Web Design?

So about that RNC Request-For-Proposal for a contract to redesign the committee's website...

As we told you earlier, the document's hilarious vagueness and notably short time frame, flagged by the site Tech President, among others, haven't just provoked ridicule at the apparent incompetence of Michael Steele's RNC. They've also spurred one leading conservative blogger, Red State's Erick Erickson, to angrily suggest that Steele's team has already decided to give the contract to a favored firm, and sent out the RFP merely for the sake of optics.

That got us to poking around. And there's at least one web development firm that fits the bill as being close to Steele.

That would be iWeb Strategies, a political web design company with a long list of conservative and GOP clients. In fact, one of those clients, according to the firm's website, was Steele himself, whose own now-defunct site, promoting his recent run for RNC chair, was designed by iWeb.

iWeb is run by Blaise Hazelwood, an experienced GOP consultant, who, while at the RNC, played a key role in building the vaunted Voter Vault database that helped produce the impressive GOP turnout in 2004 that carried President Bush to victory. Hazelwood also runs a voter-targeting firm called Grassroots Strategies.

During his run for RNC chair, Steele responded to a questionnaire sent out by a GOP committeman. Asked which political consultants were assisting him, he named Hazelwood, as well as Curt Anderson, who runs a consulting firm called On Message.

Anderson also has close ties to Hazelwood. According to reports, he was her boss while both were at the RNC. And iWeb also touts its design work for On Message.

It seems clear that Anderson, at least, is still helping to call the shots at the RNC. In a piece published by Politico today, Anderson defended Steele's controversial tenure at the committee, identifying himself in a bio line as a "top adviser to Chairman Steele" who "has been Steele's personal friend for 15 years."

And last week, Politico reported, amid resignations by several RNC staffers:

For now, "the fourth floor," as the RNC's executive suite is known, is being run by a pair of consultants.

So: could those two consultants be Hazelwood and Anderson? And was that embarrassing RFP a reflection of the new chairman's pre-existing desire to give the web consulting contract to Hazelwood's iWeb?

Neither the RNC nor Hazelwood responded immediately to TPMmuckraker's requests for comment.



9 Comments

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My guess: April 22 is the day he steps down.

Pure, out of my ass guess.

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Funny, I have a bet with my sweetie...he says this Friday. I say next week.

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According to Sean Quinn over at 538.com, it could well be all over by April 1st if Tedisco loses the special election in NY-20.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/steeles-fate-likely-hinges-on-ny-20.html

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I wonder if the GOPers calling for his removal will sacrifice the NY-20 seat in order to have the ammo to remove Steele.

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iWeb certainly does have a CMS ready to use. Looks like they are using the open source Drupal CMS. They haven't bothered to the favicon with their own.

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If they sack him, the GOP will confirm, clearly, that they are staggeringly intolerant and vastly impatient. (Yes, all on here know that already). two consecutive election cycles with blowout losses and they elect the same political team in the House and Senate, and they relentlessly attack Obama and the Dems on anything and everything, only caring about politics it seems. they are great at being afraid of things, and scaring others. the one thing they are very afraid of: change. they should, but they dont want to.

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This sounds very likely to me. Reading through the RFP, it really didn't strike me as unusually clueless but there was certainly something very odd.

It reads like someone was writing it from an advertising flyer for a Web hosting company. I have never seen an RFP sing the praises of Flash. If the customer wants flash they list it as a requirement. But apart from Flash games, the Flash programming on most sites is there to impress the consultant's next prospective customer.

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If Steele loses this job I wonder where he'll find another. Maybe he can start a Steele/Addington Lobbying firm?

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I would bet you a million dollars (if I had it) and guarantee you that Hazelwood and Anderson wrote the RFP. Steele is a crook and is probably in the process of getting a kick back the word is
s-t-e-a-l. This man should go to jail, he may be attempting to steal right under the noise of the RNC members. The language in the RFP suggest technical knowledge, of which Steele does not have. It doesn't take a genius to know that he did not write that RFP.

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