Thursday, March 18, 2010
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Activist redirects spotlight onto new boss Cuccinelli
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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Brian Gottstein is a very busy guy these days.
For the first time ever, the less-government-is-always-better activist and Roanoke political consultant is on the government payroll.
Gottstein, 40, is communications director to Virginia's lightning rod attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, who recently has dipped one toe after the other into the boiling political cauldron of state politics.
"Yes, it's a government job," Gottstein says of his $70,000 a year position.
There's little doubt Gottstein has been working hard for that paycheck.
His first day at work, Feb. 25, Gottstein found himself on the phone with a reporter from The Washington Post. The second, it was The Richmond Times Dispatch. The third, USA Today.
Then Gottstein took an extended (and previously planned) business trip with his wife to Argentina, and all you-know-what broke loose.
In a form letter to state universities a couple of weeks ago, Cuccinell advised the institutions to drop their employment policies banning discrimination against people based on sexual orientation.
It would be a vast understatement to say many in Virginia were less than amused. Many perceived it as gay baiting.
Then Monday, a political blogger posted a taped conversation from Cuccinelli's fall campaign, during which the candidate hypothetically entertained challenging federal laws enacted under President Obama -- under the theory the president is not a natural-born citizen.
Fairly or not, it made our attorney general sound a lot like one of those crazy "birthers." Before Monday's end, Cuccinelli found himself in the uncomfortable position of denying that. The Virginia attorney general actually issued a statement that he believes the president was born in the United States.
Now he's got real birthers mad at him, too.
Monday was Gottstein's first day back on the job after the trip to Argentina. So perhaps you can understand why he's feeling a bit whipsawed.
As we spoke via cellphone Tuesday, his office telephone rang incessantly in the background.
"I came here for the love of the attorney general I'm working for and not the money -- I'll tell you that," Gottstein says. He called Cuccinelli "the only politician in Virginia who I could work for on a regular basis."
Gottstein grew up around Buffalo, N.Y., and moved to Virginia to attend Virginia Tech (he graduated with a bachelor of arts in communications in 1991).
For about 18 months, he said, he traveled the country doing recruiting and fundraising for his college fraternity. Then he took a job here raising money, and later heading communications and marketing, for United Way of the Roanoke Valley.
Jobs in financial advising and marketing followed. Then he formed his own consulting company and got deeply involved in some local political campaigns. Many of his clients, such as mayoral contender Alice Hincker and city council candidate Wendy Jones, lost their races.
Among the politicians he was once but no longer is close to is former mayor and state Sen. Ralph Smith, R-Botetourt County.
Gottstein also wrote a column for roanoke.com in which he regularly decried the growth of government and government spending and promoted free-market principles. Among the areas government should be out of, according to those columns, is public education.
He recently gave up a Sunday night Libertarian talk show on WFIR 960 and seven other Virginia stations because of his new position.
Gottstein is shy about publicly discussing those views these days. That's understandable, because the focus needs to be on his boss and not him.
Smith says Gottstein is "hardworking, extremely bright" and "very good at public relations."
That's probably a good thing for the controversy-prone Cuccinelli.
