Michael Steele

RNC: Steele Spent $18,500 To Redecorate Office

Zachary Roth | May 1, 2009, 1:50PM

OK, it's small potatoes compared to John Thain's legendary $1.2 million redecoration of his Merill Lynch office suite. But still: in these cash-strapped times, we're wondering how RNC members feel about Michael Steele's decision to spend $18,500 on his own quarters.

Check out this nugget, from a Politico story about rancor between Steele and the committee members:

Read more »

Michael Steele

RFPs Past And Present: Compare and Contrast

Zachary Roth | March 12, 2009, 2:36PM

Earlier this week, we had some fun with the Republican National Committee's recent Request-For-Proposal for a redesign of its website. The two-page RFP was so sketchy and vague that it generated blogospheric ridicule -- and even prompted one prominent conservative blogger to suggest that it might mean that embattled chair Michael Steele had already given a favored designer the inside track for the project.

The committee later sent out a second try, which was a bit more detailed. But if you want to see what a real RFP for a project like this looks like, Tech President has dug one up from 2002, that the RNC, then under different leadership, sent out for an earlier web redesign.

As Tech President notes:

The document makes for an interesting contrast to the RFPs the RNC is currently circulating, with the 14-page document detailing everything from the audiences the site should target ("party loyalists," "persuadable voters") to how the backend database should be designed to how user accounts should function.

You can check it out over at Tech President...

Republican National Committee

RNC Tries Again On Web Design Doc

Zachary Roth | March 11, 2009, 1:32PM

If at first you don't succeed....

In what looks like a second bite at the apple, Michael Steele's RNC has put out a new Request-For-Proposal for the redesign of its website -- after its original two-page effort was widely panned as sketchy and unprofessional.

That first RFP, which was circulating earlier this week, was so lacking in detail that one prominent right-wing blogger suggested it could mean Steele already had a favored contractor in mind, and was just going thru the RFP process for show. We offered a suggestion for who that favored contractor might be here.

The new RFP, posted by the site Tech President, is a bit longer -- five pages -- and a bit more specific about what the committee is looking for.

One interesting detail: the RNC says it wants a site that, in Tech President's words "functions as the backbone of a distributed network of sites populated by state parties and campaigns -- nonetheless connected back to the mothership at RNC headquarters." It's unclear whether that means it might subsume the state party sites, which currently are independent.

And, unlike before, there's a budget: $250,000 for the main site, plus $200,000 for the network of sites.

Michael Steele

Is Steele Favoring Ally's Firm For Web Design?

Zachary Roth | March 9, 2009, 7:25PM

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.

Michael Steele

RNC Web Design Doc Is "Every Consultant's Worst Nightmare"

Zachary Roth | March 9, 2009, 5:00PM

We've talked to a couple more people about that Request-for-Proposal sent out by Michael Steele's RNC, looking for a consultant to redesign the organization's website.

And if there were any doubt before about the fact the document is embarrassingly sketchy and vague for a project of this kind, there's isn't now.

"It's really hard to write a proposal for that vague of a request," Jennifer Kyrnin, who has been designing web sites since 1995, and teaching web design since 1997, and who frequently responds to RFP's for web design work, told TPMmuckraker.

Kyrnin allowed that she had received RFP's as vague as this one, but never from a company or organization as prominent as the GOP. "Most are from new small businesses who've never put up a site before," she said.

Kyrnin flagged several obvious weak spots in the RFP.

Citing the RNC's view that "an aesthetically pleasing site that is intuitive and fun to use should be the overall goal," she said: "Well, yeah. I mean, that's what everybody wants."

As for the RNC's advice that it want someone with "experience in building social networks," Kyrnin said: "That, I look at and I go, 'what the heck do you mean?' If I were writing a proposal that would make me nervous."

The RFP, which surfaced Friday and appears to have been sent out shortly before, calls for bids to be submitted by March 18. Kyrnin called that deadline "very short."

"Most of the companies that are large give at least a month," she added. "If they're asking for it a week from Wednesday, you get the quality that you can expect from a rapidly written proposal."

Kyrnin said that if she were to receive this RFP, her response would be to request more detailed instructions before submitting a bid. But given the fast-approaching deadline, she said she wouldn't expect to get a response.

Micah Sifry, a founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, which focuses on the intersection of technology and politics, and whose site was among the first to highlight the RFP Monday, agreed. He called the document "at best a back of the envelope vision statement that you give to someone to write an RFP."

"This is every consultant's nightmare," said Sifry, who, like Kyrnin, has worked regularly with such RFP's for web design. "They have no idea what they're asking for."

Conservtive blogger Dale Franks, who, as we noted earlier, says he responds to web design RFP's for a living, has already offered his own point-by-point rundown on the "confusion and idiocy" of the document.

And Red State's Erick Erickson was so appalled that he suggested the RNC may already have decided to give the contract to a favored firm, and had sent out the RFP merely to cover its bases.

Michael Steele

New Steele Setback: RNC Doc On Web Redesign Draws Ridicule, Suspicion

Zachary Roth | March 9, 2009, 3:00PM

Michael Steele has already said that he's going to implement communications strategies at the RNC that are "off the hook" and "beyond cutting edge." But is he now taking things to a whole new level?

Check out this RNC Request-for-Proposal that's been circulating on the internet, soliciting bids for redesigning the group's website.

It begins with a general (very general) statement of principles:

Chairman Steele made his tech priorities clear at the [RNC Tech Summit]: "...bottom line is if we haven't done it - let's do it. If we haven't thought of it - think about it. If it hasn't been tried - why not? If it's going to be 'outside the box' - then not only keep it outside the box, but take it to someplace the box hasn't even reached yet."

And it doesn't get a whole lot more specific after that. In fact, the two-page document is so light on the kind of details you might expect an RFP of this sort to have, that it's already being slammed on conservative blogs.

Dale Franks at The Next Right -- who says he responds to web development RFP's for a living -- calls the document "a masterpiece of confusion and idiocy" that was put together by "clueless losers". He continues:

I assume it was written by someone who has heard of this new thing called "com-poo-tors", and who doesn't actually have one, but has been told that they'll be very big in the future.

In fact, one prominent conservative thinks the document is so sketchy that it could suggest that the open bidding process is just for show, and that the RNC has already picked out a favored contractor.

Erick Erickson, the founder of Red State, writes:

Friends, either the RNC has no freakin' clue what the hell it is doing or else all the rumors about certain consultants having an inside track at RNC contracts is true.

Why? Because there is no way any competent person would put together an RFP like this. It's crap. It is not legitimate. It is unprofessional. It is illusory.

Either they don't know what they are doing, or they've already picked their consultant and are going through the motions. If it is the former, well, the RNC is screwed. If it is the latter, Michael Steele's claims about bidding out work was B.S.

And I suspect it is all B.S.

These are hardly the first allegations of contract-related BS directed at Steele. The FBI has been investigating payments made by his 2006 Senate campaign to a catering company run by his sister, which were listed as being for media work, and ... web design.

And a Baltimore TV station recently reported that that same Steele campaign paid $64,000 to a commodities trading firm, run by a Steele fundraiser, for work that was described as "political consulting."

We've been looking to get a better sense of how this RFP measures up to the kind of document that a potential contractor would need in order to submit an effective bid on a project like this. (Readers with experience bidding on these kinds of contracts, we'd love to hear from you, too.)

We're also hearing more about what Erickson means when he refers to rumors about "certain consultants having an inside track at RNC contracts"...

We've also asked the RNC about all this (no response so far, shockingly), and will keep you posted on what we find out...

Michael Steele

Report: More Questions About Steele's Campaign Payments

Zachary Roth | March 4, 2009, 4:38PM

Looks like Michael Steele's got more to worry about than his abject surrender to Rush Limbaugh the other day.

The RNC chair is also facing renewed questions about what looks like irregular campaign spending during his thwarted 2006 Senate bid in Maryland.

We told you a few weeks ago about allegations -- albeit from a convicted felon seeking reduced jail time -- that Steele's campaign made payments to a company run by his sister, for work that was never performed. FBI agents questioned Steele's sister about the issue, and the Steele camp still hasnt given explanations for the payments that add up.

Now, a local Maryland TV station reports on what sounds like a similar possible scheme. Both Steele and fellow GOPer Bob Ehrlich -- who was running at the time to hold on to the governorship -- made payments from their campaigns to a firm called Allied Berton, according to campaign finance records.

As the news channel, WBAL, reports:

The firm's Web site said it was in the business of trading commodities, such as minerals, metals, coffee and sugar. But the campaign payments it received, according to the candidates' accounting, were for a wide range of other activities, according to campaign filings.

It continues:

Steele's Senate campaign made four payments to Allied Berton in October and November 2006 totaling more than $64,000. Each of those expenses was listed as political consulting, according to campaign filings.

The company is run by Sandy Roberts, a well-connected Republican who held a party for Steele at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York.

A Steele spokesman offered no better explanation for these payments than it has for the payments to Steele's sister -- saying only that Steele's campaign followed all FEC rules.

As for the Ehrlich camp, it said that the payments might have been for those homeless election day workers that the Republicans bussed in from Philadelphia to give the illusion of African-American support.

Why the GOP would have entrusted that task to a commodities trading firm was not explained.

Republican National Committee

Steele Trap? Taking Stock Of The Claims Against The New RNC Chief

Zachary Roth | February 9, 2009, 12:47PM

So what to make of the allegation against newly elected GOP chairman Michael Steele, that his 2006 Senate campaign made payments to a company run by his sister, for work that was never performed?

It's not yet clear. The claim comes from a court filing made last March by Alan Fabian -- Steele's finance chair during that campaign -- who was facing unrelated fraud charges and hoped, in vain, to get credit for cooperation. In the end, Fabian was sentenced to nine years in jail for swindling millions from businesses and banks.

So there's reason to be skeptical.

But there isn't reason to dismiss the claim out of hand. For one thing, the Feds appear to be taking it seriously: Agents have spoken to Steele's sister about the issue, according to a Steele spokesman.

Steele told ABC's This Week that the FBI is "winding this thing down" but didn't explain how he knew that. And although Steele added that the payments were for legitimate work, the explanations from his camp don't yet add up.

At issue is a February 2007 payment of more than $37,000 made by Steele's unsuccessful Senate campaign to Brown Sugar Unlimited, a company run by Monica Turner, Steele's sister (and also the former Mrs. Mike Tyson, incidentally).

According to campaign finance records, reports the Post, the payments were for "catering/web services." But a Steele spokesman told the paper that Turner "did a lot of media stuff" for the campaign. The spokesman then showed the paper an invoice for catering services for two events. But the invoice was dated December 2006, although the events occurred in October 2006 and July 2007. The spokesman attributed this to a typo.

So, was it media, web services, or catering? How many companies do all three?

There's also the fact that, as the Post reports, "Turner filed papers to dissolve the company 11 months before the payment was received". (Steele told ABC yesterday that Turner believed the company was still in existence when the payments were made.)

The payments to Turner aren't the only allegations Fabian is making against Steele. There are three additional -- and apparently less serious -- claims.

One is that Steele, who at the time was Maryland's lieutenant-governor, used his state campaign to pay bills invoiced to his 2006 Senate campaign for printing services, totaling around $38,000 -- which would violate campaign finance law. Steele's spokesman says the printing was related to Steele's lieutenant governor's office.

Another claim is that Steele paid $75,000 from the state campaign to the law firm of Baker Hostetler, for work that was never performed. The payment was listed in campaign finance records as an in-kind contribution to the state GOP. And a lawyer for Baker Hostetler -- who was also chief counsel for the RNC -- told the Post that the payment was for legal work on challenging Maryland's 2002 legislative redistricting.

Finally, Fabian claims that Steele or an aide transferred more than $500,000 in campaign cash from one bank to another without appropriate authorization. The bank transfer appears to have angered aides to former Maryland governor Bob Ehrlich, who had hoped to use the money for other states races, including Ehrlich's. But there doesn't appear to be evidence that it was illegal.

There's also no evidence that the Feds are looking into any of these latter three claims.
So it's those payments to Steele's sister's company that appear to be where the action is. And until we get a fuller explanation of what those payments were really for, this story will probably linger.

That can't be a prospect that will please a Republican Party that just made Steele its major national spokesman.

Election 2006

Reid: Robo Calls Make Legislative Hit List

Paul Kiel | November 16, 2006, 4:43PM

From Salon:

Remember those abusive Republican robo-calls and the sample ballots that suggested -- falsely -- that Michael Steele is a Democrat? The soon-to-be Senate majority leader does, and he's prepared to do something about them.

In a breakfast meeting sponsored by the American Prospect, Harry Reid told reporters today that the calls and the phony campaign literature were "absolutely wrong," and that one of the first 10 bills he introduces in the next Senate will deal with such abuses. "We need to make these criminal penalties," Reid said, saying that civil liability was apparently not enough to deter what happened in the run-up to last week's election.

Reid's legislation seems like it will be targeted against harrassing robo calls like the ones the NRCC deployed. But as we noted yesterday, there's movement against all robo calls on the state level.

Michael Steele

MD GOPers Didn't Expect "Strong Reaction" from Homeless Stunt

Paul Kiel | November 13, 2006, 3:47PM

Which nefarious election stunt from 2006 will live on in greater infamy, the NRCC's robo calls, or Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich and Lt. Gov. Michael Steele's recruitment of out-of-state homeless men to hand out misleading campaign literature in African-American neighborhoods?

The Washington Post makes the case for Ehrlich and Steele (who made an apparently unsuccessful bid for chairman of the Republican National Committee) in today's paper, even including a picture of the now-famous fake ballot that the men were handing out, which showed Ehrlich and Steele as Democrats. So check it out.

A highlight:

On the eve of this month's election, the mailers began landing in Prince George's mailboxes. One was a glossy red, black and green flier -- the colors that represent African American power -- sporting pictures of County Executive Jack B. Johnson, his predecessor, Wayne K. Curry and past NAACP president and former U.S. Senate candidate Kweisi Mfume.

Above the pictures of the three Democrats the flier read, "Ehrlich-Steele Democrats," and underneath it announced: "These are OUR Choices."

None of the three candidates had endorsed the governor, and only Curry had declared his support for Steele.

There were other fliers, too. A similar "Democratic" guide with Ehrlich's and Steele's photo on the front appeared in Baltimore. Another distributed in Baltimore County identified the Republican candidate for county executive as a Democrat.

An Ehrlich aide who agreed to discuss the strategy on the condition of anonymity said the purpose of the fliers was to peel away one or two percentage points in jurisdictions where the governor would be running behind. No one inside the campaign expected a strong reaction.

Michael Steele

RNC Chair Nominee Flashback: Steele Shifted, Lied about Bush Remarks

Paul Kiel | November 10, 2006, 11:01AM

Here's another thing to keep in mind as Michael Steele makes his bid for Chairman of the RNC, a position that requires frequent contact with the press -- not to mention loyalty to the party.

Back in July, Michael Steele granted a briefing to reporters, during which, under the cover of anonymity, he spoke of the burden of running as a Republican this election, famously referring to "R" as "the scarlet letter" and saying that he wouldn't want Bush campaigning with him. Dana Milbank wrote about Steele's remarks in his column, dropping a few clues about the identity of the speaker. A fury of speculation followed, and Steele was finally unmasked.

But instead of owning his remarks, Steele furiously backpedalled (saying that Bush, in fact, was his "homeboy"), even lying about the nature of the briefing, accusing Milbank of printing "off the record" remarks. But as an email to Milbank from Steele's spokesman made clear, the remarks had been "on background" -- meaning they could be used anonymously.

Just a foreshadowing of the straight-dealing one can expect from Steele as the spokesman for the Republican Party. (I wonder how he handled that "scarlet letter" comment in his job interview?)

Michael Steele

RNC Taps Homeless-Hustling Pol for New Chief

Justin Rood | November 10, 2006, 10:37AM

Michael Steele, Maryland's lieutenant governor and a failed GOP Senate hopeful, has been asked to take the helm of the Republican National Committee, the Washington Times reports this morning.

Steele's Senate campaign, you may recall, has twice bamboozled homeless people to campaign for him. The first time the "volunteers" never got paid; the second time they were told to hand out literature so misleading, the men were verbally assaulted by the voters they interacted with.

In that literature and elsewhere, Steele has repeatedly portrayed himself as a Democrat. Not by adopting Democratic stances -- but by literally labeling himself "Democrat" in the material. That's a curious habit for a guy who's set to run the Republican party, don't you think?

Michael Steele

TNR: For MD GOPer, Homeless Brigade Not New

Justin Rood | November 9, 2006, 4:57PM

Observers have been shocked and outraged by two Maryland Republicans' use of homeless and poor Philadelphians to pass out misleading campaign material at the polls on Election Day. Now it turns out the duo had tried this sort of thing before.

This past Tuesday, for $100 and the promise of three meals, the GOP candidates for governor and senator recruited dozens of the least fortunate from Philadelphia's shelters -- all or most of whom were black -- to come to Maryland for the day and pass out fliers portraying the two hopefuls as "our choice" for African-American voters. (Steele is black; Ehrlich most definitely is not.)

The tactic was brazenly amoral, but also logistically curious. Why did the candidates go all the way to Philadelphia for homeless people, when there are thousands in Baltimore and nearby Washington, D.C.? If they wanted deniability, why did Ehrlich's wife -- Maryland's current first lady -- meet the buses and pass out hats?

It turns out the duo pulled a very similar stunt at least once before, in 2002, according to the New Republic. Then, they pulled homeless people from D.C. shelters, and black students from nearby Bowie State, and the candidates kept their distance from the operation. Instead of telling them to distribute literature, the campaign instructed the recruits to go door-to-door in predominantly black neighborhoods, telling residents that they were "volunteers" trying to get Maryland to elect its first black lieutenant governor.

It was a debacle:

About 250 recruits, drawn by the promise of free meals and a day's pay, participated in what one recruit later called a "scam from the start." The students didn't get their meals, and they didn't get paid. The homeless recruits also weren't paid, and, that night, the van that had taken them at dawn to Prince George's County and was supposed to transport them back to Washington, D.C. never showed up.

Some of the homeless workers reportedly staged a protest that night in front of the Democrats for Ehrlich headquarters in New Carrollton, Maryland. The next day, they enlisted legal help from the homeless center to get the money they had been promised. But the protest had alerted the state prosecutor, and when one of Ehrlich's campaign workers finally showed up with the money, investigators were on hand to witness the homeless recruits being paid.

Election 2006

Homeless Man to GOP Pol: "No One Has the Right to Use Me That Way"

Justin Rood | November 9, 2006, 12:59PM

A Philadelphia Daily News columnist tracked down one of the unfortunate locals who had been tricked by the Michael Steele for Senate campaign to hand out deceptive pamphlets outside Maryland voting places. The result: a refreshingly candid indictment of the failed GOP candidate Steele, who now hopes to head up the Republican National Committee.

"I might not have a home," an outraged Yusuf El-Bedawi told the Daily News' Ronnie Polaneczky, "but that doesn't mean I don't care about right and wrong. No one has the right to use me that way."

The Steele campaign recruited six busloads of poor and homeless Philadelphians to hand out flyers to Maryland voters portraying Steele and his ticketmate, governor Bob Ehrlich, as Democrats. Steele is currently Maryland's lieutenant governor; Ehrlich is governor.

"People started screaming, at us, 'Do you think we're that stupid? What are you trying to pull?' " El-Bedawi told the writer. "I said, 'I didn't know it was a lie! I'm from Philly!' And they said, 'Then go back to Philly!' "

"I am so angry and upset, I don't know what to do," said El-Bedawi, who's particularly shattered that he and at least 200 other Philadelphians didn't get home from Maryland in time to vote here.

"These people think we're too stupid to understand the magnitude of what we did."

What they did, said El-Bedawi, was cheat an entire community of unsuspecting voters.

And just because they didn't know they were doing it doesn't mean it doesn't feel awful.

Election 2006

MD GOP Candidate Recruits Homeless to Pass Out Deceptive Flyers

Justin Rood | November 7, 2006, 3:32PM

Misleading flyers were handed out at several Maryland polling places by men and women recruited by the GOP governor's campaign from out-of-state homeless shelters, the Washington Post reports. The flyers, given to voters in a heavily Democratic area, showed GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Ehrlich as a Democrat:

Erik Markle, one of the people handing out literature for Ehrlich, who is seeking reelection, and Steele, the current lieutenant governor who is campaigning to replace retiring Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D), said he was recruited at a homeless shelter in Philadelphia.

After a two-hour bus ride to Maryland, Markle said the workers were greeted early this morning by first lady Kendel Ehrlich, who thanked them as they were outfitted in T-shirts and hats with the logo for Ehrlich's reelection campaign. Nearly all of those recruited, Markle said, are poor and black. Workers traveled to Maryland in at least seven large buses.

Ehrlich's GOP ticketmate, Senate candidate Michael Steele, is also listed as a Democrat on the flyer.

Update: Maryland's Gazette newspapers have more. "We’re just down here trying to make some money," one Philadelphia homeless man tells a reporter. Then, pointing to a picture of Ehrlich: "I don’t even know if this cat’s a Democrat or Republican."

Michael Steele

MD Dems Bash Steele's "Premeditated Stunt"

Paul Kiel | July 27, 2006, 12:15PM

Looks like the Maryland Dems are planning to have a field day with TPMmuckraker's story yesterday about Michael "Scarlet Letter" Steele. Steele tried to double back on his disloyalty by claiming that his comments to The Washington Post's Dana Milbank were off the record.

Accused of a journalistic sin, Milbank was quite happy to send us over an email from Steele's flack proving that the comments were made on background, not off the record.

Here's a press release the Maryland Dems sent out earlier today:

Maryland Democratic Party Obtained Secret Email Between Steele Campaign and Washington Post That Discussed Quotes BEFORE Story Was Published

Steele LIED THROUGH HIS TEETH About “Off the Record” Interview; Whole Incident is Naked Political Stunt

TODAY Maryland Democratic Party Chair Terry Lierman to Release Secret Email at 2pm Press Conference in Baltimore

Who: Maryland Democratic Party Chair Terry Lierman

What: Lierman releases Steele campaign email to Washington Post revealing that Steele knew the “anonymous” story would be published and the campaign approved the use of those quotes in advance. This proves Steele and his campaign lied and that the whole incident has been a pre-meditated political stunt.

When: 2pm TODAY

Where: On top of Federal Hill, Federal Hill Park, Baltimore

Michael Steele

Senate Candidate Steele Caught in New Bush Fib

Paul Kiel | July 26, 2006, 5:59PM

What a pathetic climax to the days-long controversy following Dana Milbank's column about the "Scarlet Letter" Republican.

As everyone now knows, Milbank wrote a column Tuesday, relating the comments of an anonymous Republican carping about the burden of being a GOPer during Bush's second term. All day Tuesday, bloggers and pundits took turns guessing at the mystery Republican's identity. Finally, on Tuesday afternoon, Michael Steele admitted to ABC News that it was him.

And now, he takes it all back. Bush is his "homeboy," he said during a radio interview this morning. Whereas before (when he was under the guise of an anonymous "GOP Senate candidate") he said that "to be honest," he probably wouldn't want Bush campaigning with him, now he says that "If the president wanted to come and help me in Maryland, he is more than welcome, because I'm not going to turn my back on a friend."

But it gets even better.

Backpedaling furiously, Steele also said this morning that the interview with Milbank and other reporters was supposed to be off the record. That would mean that Milbank wasn't supposed to quote his remarks, anonymously or otherwise.

But it turns out that's just not true. Steele appears to be lying through his teeth. As Milbank clearly stated in his piece, Steele spoke to reporters "under the condition that he be identified only as a GOP Senate candidate."

This afternoon I contacted Milbank to find out what happened and he confirmed that the meeting, done over lunch, was not off the record. "The luncheon was one in a regular series, and they are all on background. It was announced at the start of the lunch that this one, too, was on background," he said.

As proof, Milbank forwarded me an email from Steele's flak Doug Heye, who in response to an email from Milbank checking whether he could run certain quotes from Steele in his story, responded, "since it was a backgrounder, if there are specific quotes you'd like to use, can you email them to me so I could sign off?"

So case closed.

Late Update: Here's the email as forwarded to me by Milbank (I've redacted their email addresses):

From: "Doug Heye" To: "Dana Milbank" cc: Subject: RE: Reconsider? 07/24/2006 03:38 PM

Won't waste your time, and know deadlines are tight.

I'd probably be fine with those you sent, but since it was a
backgrounder, if there are specific quotes you'd like to use, can you
email them to me so I could sign off?

I can hold off on signing off for other press for the time being, as
well.