New Dole Team

Republican nominee Bob Dole’s new media team has extensive GOP campaign credentials.

ALEX CASTELLANOS: Castellanos’ reputation has been built largely on negative ads, notably the 1990 “Hands” spot for North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms that showed a white man tearing up a notice that a job had gone to a minority candidate. Helms’ opponent was black.

A cigar lover who also takes pride in his expensive wardrobe, Castellanos is soft-spoken but not shy about promoting his work or his conservative views. He is a resident of Alexandria, Va., who emigrated from Cuba with his family when he was a youngster. He worked for Texas Sen. Phil Gramm during the Republican primary this year and collaborated for a time on President Bush’s 1992 reelection bid with Don Sipple and Mike Murphy, the Dole ad consultants who resigned Thursday.

Castellanos won accolades for positive spots that helped Fred Thompson win a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee in 1994. The ads featured Thompson telling viewers about the need to change the Congress. Castellanos and the 1996 Helms campaign parted ways earlier this year.

GREG STEVENS: Having begun as a New Jersey Statehouse correspondent, Stevens has more than 20 years of experience in politics and public affairs. He worked on the staffs of several federal lawmakers, as well as of former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, before becoming a consultant. He has advised and produced ads for Sens. Gramm of Texas, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rod Grams of Minnesota.

According to a biography supplied by Alexandria, Va.-based Greg Stevens & Co., Stevens supervised five major statewide victories in 1994: by Gov. George Voinovich and Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio, Gov. John Rowland of Connecticut, Gov. Lincoln Almond of Rhode Island and Gramm. Stevens claimed a role in George Bush’s come-from-behind victory in 1988, helping to produce a damaging spot that showed Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis atop a tank and sporting a combat helmet.

While this is Stevens’ first tour with Dole, he produced spots for Jack Kemp’s 1988 presidential bid as a partner with Campaign Consultants Inc. He also produced several spots for the Republican National Committee, including one that featured rapid-fire snippets of President Clinton changing his timetable on balancing the federal budget.

CHRIS MOTTOLA: Mottola runs a one-man consulting shop in Philadelphia. GOP officials said he once worked for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

In a 1992 newspaper interview on the tendency to stretch the truth in politics, Mottola was quoted as saying: “As a media consultant, when things really get bad, I lie awake in bed at night and offer up prayers that my opponent will say an out-and-out lie. This offers me a chance to beat them senseless.”

Source: Associated Press