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Bradley Blakeman

Bradley A. Blakeman is the president of Freedom’s Watch, a conservative organization that describes itself as “dedicated to educating individuals about and advancing public policies that protect America’s interests at home and abroad, foster economic prosperity, and strengthen families.” He previously worked as deputy assistant to President George W. Bush for appointments and scheduling, as a Republican strategist, and as a lobbyist.

Sara Fritz interviewed Blakeman on October 23, 2007.

We’ll start out by asking you to tell us about how Freedom’s Watch was founded and what its origin is.

Freedom’s Watch was founded because the folks who founded us believed that there was a void in the conservative agenda and debate. So we had a choice either to complain about it or to do something about it, and we decided to do something about it. We decided that we would form a never-ending campaign that was run like a business but managed like a campaign. We realized that if we took on generational issues, we had to be around past election cycles. So our mission is to be as busy between election cycles as we are during election cycles, so that election days become an event to us, but only an event. And after Election Day, we are back to work on the next project.

So Iraq is not your only issue?

Absolutely not, no. We will have a robust, domestic agenda, which we are going to roll out shortly. But because of the necessity of Iraq and the [General David] Petraeus report, we felt it was absolutely necessary not to wait until we were so-called “on our feet,” that we could do two things at once. And one of those things was to not let the fall slip by and not be engaged on Petraeus and Iraq and at the same time build our organization.

I understand you were founded by the Republican Jewish Coalition?

No. No. We weren’t founded by any one group. We were founded by like individuals who had a common pedigree, some of whom were in the Republican Jewish Coalition. Some were former Bush [administration] members, staff members. Some were well-known Republican philanthropists. So I think it was a commonality of interests which brought people together.

Is this the Republican answer to MoveOn.org?

Some people have claimed that. And I say no. I really don’t see anything that we have in common with MoveOn.org, because I see MoveOn.org as very divisive, very mean-spirited, and very centralized in their command-and-control structure in that MoveOn.org has affiliates. Everybody reports to the home office.

What I seek to do is have partnerships. And if you looked at the work we did with the Iraq project, I formed a group of 30 organizations that are not beholden to us, and we are not beholden to them. Those organizations all do something well and join in the mission of supporting the war effort and supporting the troops. So I brought these 30 groups together. And I said to them: If we all work together, we can make sure that each is well-funded, and we can speak with one voice, but yet you all do something unique to each other. And if we all hang together, we are going to have a much better chance at influencing policy than if we did our own things.

So I don’t seek affiliates. I seek partnerships because there are already third-party groups out there that do great work [and] that could do even better work if they join together in coalitions or are properly funded.

Give me some examples of the 30 organizations.

Vets for Freedom. Families United. Rolling Thunder. American Legion. VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars]. And we made a difference this fall, because we all spoke with a unique voice. And we all were independent in our command and control of our own organizations.

So to me, you look more like the answer to the Democracy Alliance.

Well, when we looked at forming, I really didn’t look at any group. One group I did look at, just from a historical point of view, is Freedom House. And what I saw with Freedom House was an organization that was started in 1941 by Eleanor Roosevelt to combat Nazism. Nazism is no longer, thank God, a problem for us, but Freedom House still exists. That’s what we want to do. We want to exist many years into the future.

The generational issues that we take on today, hopefully, will not be the issues we’ll be taking on tomorrow. But realizing that in order to influence policy you cannot just appear for an election cycle. You must be engaged throughout the year for many years. Radical Islam and the emerging Iranian threat, unfortunately, will be a problem for a while.

Can we get a list of the 30 organizations?

We haven’t given a list of the entire coalition, but the groups I have mentioned and others are an informal coalition. We are not a formal coalition in the sense that we have not formed a new entity. What we did was we formed an informal coalition of like-minded groups that meet under not a single command-and-control structure.

But do you have like a regular meeting or something like that?

Yes. We have regular meetings. And we have progress reports. We share information, and we share lists.

But there is no money shared.

No. There is money that we have given to these organizations to empower them, but on a project-specific basis, we endow nobody. Our mission is we don’t endow because we believe endowment makes people expect it, and, quite frankly, lazy. But we believe if we empower people on a project basis, then we are always looking for new opportunities. And they can do so much good in their own right, own name, own organization, that I seek to make them more powerful, because if they are more powerful, we are more powerful.

So what kind of tax situation is it? Are you running a 527?

No.

Are you running a 501(c)(4)?

Yes. Stand United for Freedom will be our 501(c)(3). And Freedom’s Watch is our 501(c)(4). Now the 501(c)(3) is tax exempt as an organization. But also, contributors to the 501(c)(3) get a tax deduction as a charitable contribution. Contributions to 501(c)(4)s are after tax dollars, although the organization itself is tax exempt. And a 527 is really an organization that is short-lived. Typically as we see in the election cycles — and this has been the fault, I believe, of the conservative movement — we form a 527. It’s extremely well-funded, and then Election Day is over, and it disbands. We have lost all of that brain trust, that organization, the fundraising. It all disappears. And what I said was, why are we losing all of that talent? We should have a never-ending campaign that is engaged 365 days of the year, so that we can influence issues over time.

Plus there is a material product, is there not, the lists and things like that?

Oh, absolutely. Exactly. And, in effect, it stays on a shelf somewhere. It’s not shared, it’s not worked on, and it’s not developed over time.

Did you inherit the material product of any group?

No. We started from scratch. But we have a blessing of being heavily funded. Now what I want to do is turn that around and turn that into grassroots. So my mission now is to build a grassroots structure to give people a home and a place to come for information, a place to exchange ideas, a resource for like-minded people on our issues that they can visit regularly. So my mission now is to turn that.

How are you going to do that?

Well, the typical way you do that is mining, is you get lists. And you tell people who you are and what you believe in. We do direct mail. We’ll do telephone. And quite frankly, a lot of people have been driven to our site just through our initial wave of advertising. So we have already built a pretty good list.

Are you seeking small donors as well as your big ones?

Absolutely. I want $5 and $10 and $50 and $100 donors. To me, somebody who gives commensurate with their ability to give, if you can only give $10, you are as important to me as somebody who can give much more, because it’s all within your ability to give. And thank God, in our country, it’s one man, one vote. If you can give a large donation to a group, you still have one vote. And if you can give $10, you still have one vote.

But my job now is to turn that into a grassroots movement so that people are invested in what you believe in. Then you become a tremendous resource for people. And also, you get much more power in that you can show that there are troops out there who are willing to walk door to door or telephone their congressperson. So that’s the real power of an organization over time, is their ability to have membership.

You got this 10,000 square foot place. So how many people have you employed? And how many are you going to employ?

Well, we are going to employ enough to make sure that every office that you typically see in a campaign, we will have. We’ll have rapid response. We’ll have grassroots. We’ll have government relations. We’ll have communications. We’ll have policy. We’ll have interns. When you look at our office, it’s Bloomberg-esque in that it looks like a campaign. It feels like a campaign. And that’s the way we want to portray ourselves.

Will you have places around the country? Or is it going to be centralized in Washington?

Right now, this is the only location. Having said that, over time, I don’t rule out having satellite offices if it comes to that. But certainly, we are going to be here for a very long period of time. We see this as a legacy item. And that is, I want to turn this organization over to a successor, who then takes it to the next level.

What does Stand United for Freedom do as a (c)(3)?

Well, Stand United for Freedom will be more of our educational arm, our charitable arm of Freedom’s Watch. So we’ll be looking to invest in educational programs and a more charitable arm of the issues that are important to us.

Can you give me examples of education and charitable?

Sure. For instance, we may want to invest in a chair at a university on radical Islam. Or we may want to invest in a conference that is educational, either on a campus or in a locale, and bring experts in to educate the public. The law allows a 501(c)(3) and a 501(c)(4) to act in tandem, yet they have two distinct missions. And our mission is to work those issues both on the (4) side and the (3) side to maximize our message.

And the (4)s will be doing the ads?

The (4)s will be doing the ads. Correct.

Do you have any for-profit component here?

No. There is no profit component.

OK. Because [that] seems to be the latest idea.

Yeah.

Have you thought about that?

No, I really haven’t. I am an attorney by trade. The way the law, as I see it, allows for a 501(c)(3) and (4), it allows us to do our mission. And as long as we have the ability to have donations come in and people support us, that’s really the test of an organization. Because the products we “sell” are ideas and issues. And I am not so sure you should be making profits off of that. I would rather see us spend every nickel or invest every nickel in the ideas and not turn a profit.

Well, you know why they do it for profit? There is no disclosure.

Oh, yeah. No disclosure. Well, we have no disclosure as a 501(c)(4) and a 501(c)(3), other than to the IRS. So our donors are anonymous. Some seek to be anonymous, some don’t.

Have you filed 990s or whatever you have to file at the creation? Because I couldn’t find them, I don’t think.

Yes, they have been filed.

For both these organizations?

I don’t know yet for the (c)(3), but certainly the (4) has been filed. The (3) is in formation now.

I am becoming quite an aficionado of this kind of thing. It really is interesting.

Oh, it is.

And it’s really taking off. It must be exciting for you to be involved in something like this.

Oh, it’s great. We are only nine weeks old. And in nine weeks, have taken down The New York Times and MoveOn.org. And we made a difference with the coalition on the surge. We had commercials that [when] focus groups looked at it, people cried. And they couldn’t tell us whether it was a Republican ad or a Democratic ad. They liked the content. And that is what’s rewarding: In nine weeks we have done a lot. To get the ombudsman of The Times to uncover that MoveOn.org has been receiving, in effect, in-kind contributions for ads was very important for the public to know that it wasn’t right. And in fact, we paid much more for an ad than MoveOn.org did. Why? Because they didn’t like our message. But that’s not the way the system works.

Your ads are good. Who is doing them?

Jamestown Associates is doing our ads. They are from New Jersey. When we decided to run ads, we came up with the idea that we are going to use real people. And the people we use in our ads are either people who suffered a personal loss by the loss of a husband or a child, or people who have served their country and have been wounded. And their message is their own words, unscripted. We gave them the ability to get their words out. The only thing our ads say at the end is who paid for it. And if you believe in the ad, call your congressman or senator. So it’s without editorial comment. It’s their words. And I think that’s what drives our opposition crazy, quite frankly, is if you attack the ads, you are attacking real people.

Do you intend to keep that idea of real people, no matter what your topic is?

I suppose that in the future we will continue to use real people when we feel that it’s appropriate to do that. But, for instance, when MoveOn.org attacked Congressman [Brian] Baird, a Democrat from Washington, because he told the truth when he came back from Iraq, they did a $20,000 ad. I swooped in with a $30,000 ad to support Congressman Baird, because you shouldn’t be attacked, in my opinion, for telling the truth. MoveOn has corrupted the Democratic Party, in my opinion, in that they coerce Democrats and go after their own when they go off the reservation. And I don’t think that’s right.

Now, I have read $15 million. It sounds like what you are doing, though, is going to cost a lot more than $15 million.

Yes.

But tell me about your funding. Where does it stand?

Again, we are extremely well-funded. We have like-minded individuals who have provided the wherewithal for us to get started. And now our mission is to spread that out amongst hundreds of thousands of donors, and that’s what we’re attempting to do now.

So is $15 million with the seed money?

No. Fifteen million was spent on the ads.

Here is another thing: MoveOn.org in May, if you recall, promised an Iraqi summer. They said there is going to be rioting in the streets and there are going to be protests. And we are going to spend $12 million on an ad campaign. And they called it “the Iraqi summer.” Well, there was no rioting in the streets. There was a protest in Crawford, a guy and a dog. And if you count the dog, that’s two people. And there was no $12 million ad campaign.

So what they did was they used their past laurels to scare people and say this is what’s going to happen. It never happened. We know it. And then we come over the hill, like the cavalry, with a real $15 million ad campaign, a real coalition of real groups. And I think first of all, we caught them flatfooted.

Secondly, we showed the American people and the people on the Hill that there is another side of the story, and that General Petraeus deserved the right, because he was confirmed by Congress and supported by the president, to report to the American people unfiltered. And at least our argument was, give him the chance to report and don’t second-guess the person who you put there to do a job. I think our groups made a difference. All we wanted to do is give the American people cause to listen to another side of the story, then make whatever decision they want based on information.

What I say, in this sort of arms race of groups, is that free speech is still alive and well. But it sure ain’t free.

It’s not free. No.

It’s very expensive.

It’s very expensive. It’s very expensive to get heard. I could stand on the street corner in Lafayette Park and talk my head off, and I am not going to get too far. But yet, if you have like-minded people who get together, there is strength in numbers. And you have a message. It’s more likely to get out by joining people together of like minds than if I stood out by myself.

So that’s why I seek partners and not affiliates. I want to empower those people who have a constituency. We have a common message to join together and get that message out. And by being a loose coalition, the coalition is constantly changing.

So have you shared some of this $15 million with these other groups?

Fifteen million dollars was the ad campaign, and I have shared our resources with other like-minded groups to empower them to do the work that they do already. But they can do it even better if they have proper funding.

Do you have any idea what it’s going to take per year to run an organization like this?

Yeah. It’s millions of dollars, just to run our side. I can’t put it in numbers, because we are actually still putting together our budget. Again, we have only been around for nine weeks. But I will tell you in 2008 we expect to play a major role in issues and defining those issues that are important in the presidential campaign and that cycle. Now, as a 501(c)(4), I can’t suggest to our constituents who they should vote for, but I can define the issues that we believe to be important. And that’s what we seek to do.

Have you selected the issues that will be coming up?

We have four main issues that make up our central core. Radical Islam and the emerging Iranian threat is one. And then shortly, we will be announcing the others. We will be as robust with those issues as we are with the first.

Can you share it with us now?

I can’t share it now, but I will say that we have another component to our organization called “conservative agenda.” Now, we are right of center, OK? So we are, I would say, middle-of-the-road conservatives. We are not hardcore, right-wing conservatives. So we will define those issues that are important in 2008, because the conservative agenda is always changing.

How does it change? It changes based on legislative agenda, based on political agenda. So we could take on an issue that may be important to us, but falls on deaf ears, because the American people don’t see it as an important issue at the time. Now that’s not to say that we may be working on issues now that may become right, so that we are geared-up so that when it is timely, then we launch. So we have to be looking at those issues that we want to take on that we have an affinity for.

We believe we can make a difference. The problem with an organization like ours is that some see us as a cure-all, that we have to fight every battle of the conservative movement. But I am smart enough to realize, if you fight every battle, you can’t fight it well. But if you pick your battles, you are more likely to have success. So we are going to be an organization that picks issues that we believe are important to us, and then we will take on those issues. And there is a whole host of issues that we will not take on.

So you have people who want you to pick up on their issues?

Oh, yeah. My phone rings off the hook.

I’ll give you $1 million if you pick up on this.

Well, I wish they would give me $1 million.

Well, in other words they say, “We’d love to support your group if you speak on our issue.”

Yes, that’s right. Or they will come lobby and say this is right up your alley, and you should be concerned about this. And quite frankly, if you are going to wage a campaign that is well-funded, you have to have support for it. You have to have the wherewithal to get it done. And our mission is to take on issues that we want to win. There are enough think tanks in town. We are a “do” tank. There are not enough do tanks and that’s what we seek to be. We are a do tank, and when we do something, it’s going to be robust.

Tell me about “conservative agenda.” Is this a portion of your group or something?

No. There are four key issues that make up our core.

Oh, and that is what you are calling your “conservative agenda”?

Yes. Conservative agenda. And that is constantly going to change based on . . .

I see. And one of them is radical Islam?

Yes.

And the other three?

Conservative agenda, and two others that we’ll launch shortly.

Oh, I see. And do you have the conservative agenda on paper, or has it not been decided?

No. The conservative agenda is something that changes over time. So in other words, in this next election cycle, we will pick an issue or two that we believe is right up our alley. Then when the election is over and that issue has passed, then we’ll regroup and say, “What are the other issues that are out there in the next legislative cycle that we should be involved in?” So the conservative agenda is a moving target. The other three issues are core. And they will not change, because they are generational. They go on no matter what. The conservative agenda is more topical based on the legislative and election cycles.

A lot of groups I have talked to like to refer to you as a White House front group.

Sure. Yeah. It’s the bogeyman.

What do you think about that?

I think it’s ridiculous. I think that the White House doesn’t tell me what to do. I don’t tell them what to do. I don’t seek their advice and they don’t give it. That’s it in a nutshell. Everybody likes a bogeyman. And everybody likes to believe in a cabal theory. And quite frankly, it’s good cocktail conversation. But there is absolutely nothing to it. I am very proud of the service to President [George W.] Bush. I saw government service as an opportunity, not a career. I served and I left. And Ari Fleischer, who is on our board, has the same feeling. He served and left. And when you leave, you leave. Of course, I have many friends at the White House still; I consider the president to be a friend. And I see them all from time to time. But they are my friends. And they are colleagues. I talk to them as I do a friend.

Tell me a little more about yourself.

I actually am an attorney by trade. I am admitted in New York and D.C., although I don’t practice anymore. I started in politics, actually, going door-to-door with my dad, who was a New York state assemblyman, when I was seven. And I got the political bug. And then when I graduated college, I volunteered on the [Ronald] Reagan campaign. I was a motorcade driver.

What year was that?

That was 1980. And then they won. And I continued to help out. Then I went to law school and continued to help out and helped 41, President [George H.W.] Bush the first, for 12 years that he was around.

Where were you living?

I was in New York, but I would commute back and forth to Washington. And then when this president decided to run, they asked me if I would help out. And I did. I took about a year and a half off of my law practice as a volunteer and went out on the campaign.

You were on the campaign?

I worked with Andy Card. Andy and I did the debates. I did New Hampshire for the president. And Andy and I did the convention.

So you are still in that “making things happen” kind of mode.

Making things happen. Right. And then when the president won, he asked me if I would come to Washington. And I said I would, although I was told that the job I took, Andy Card said it’s either me or you who goes first. And it’s usually not pretty. So I took that as a signal to rent. So I rented for the first year and a half.

What was your job?

I was in charge of appointments and scheduling, vetting and research. So I was the gatekeeper. And I had a great time. It’s a wonderful experience serving this president at a very important time in our country, 9/11. I lost a nephew in 9/11. He was a first responder, my sister’s oldest boy. So it was an amazing time to serve and see this government in action at a very critical time in our history.

So then when you left the White House, did you go back to law?

No. I became a lobbyist. And I did that for a couple of years.

Who were you representing?

I was with Barbour, Griffith, and Rogers, and then with Park Strategies.

Barbour as in Haley?

Haley, yeah. And I own a homeland security company with two other [people]. We have a patented manhole locking device, which we are making America safer with. And then this group came to me.

Who were your clients when you were a lobbyist?

Well, we had Louis Vuitton at Barbour, Griffith, and Rogers. And we had the Concerned Citizens of Connecticut and BMI, the music folks.

So this looks like it will be a career here for you in this position.

Well hopefully, yeah, and what’s crazy is, when you have people come and you are pitching them for a job, or they are pitching you, they go, “Well, what happens after election 2008?” I say, “You come to work.” And they say, “Really?” This is foreign to people in this town, because everybody is so caught up in election cycles that they don’t realize that I am looking for career people.

Because the issues we take on are generational. And they are not solvable in any one election cycle. But in order to influence these issues, you have to work them over time. When Freedom House was started by Eleanor Roosevelt, it was Nazism. Well, thank God Nazism isn’t around. Yet Freedom House’s core is democracy and freedom, so they are still here. My hope is that radical Islam and the emerging Iranian threat will pass peacefully — and it’s not going to be solved at the end of a gun — that people will come to their senses and realize that people have to respect one another, and that will come peacefully, and that that will no longer be an issue for us.

But the other issues we take on are the same. They will be generational issues that will have to be solved over time. And the modicums of success are both subjective and objective. You have to be satisfied that the successes you make may be in small increments, but you’ll never be able to fully have success unless you make those incremental successes. So that’s our mission is to influence issues over time.

And from a conservative point of view. I mean is there any way you can talk about the issues you’ll use in a package other than just calling them conservative?

Well, when we announce the issues, then the issues themselves will define themselves. In other words, if we decide that taxes are going to be our issue in 2008, then we will work that issue — the conservative agenda will be taxes for us. If we decide it’s going to be health care, then that conservative agenda will be health care for that cycle. It’s constantly changing because of topicality. It’s of the moment.

So you must be engaged. Now I won’t be engaged in taxes, health care, immigration, and every other issue, because I can’t be successful. It’s a scattering approach. I don’t want to do that. I want to stay focused on an issue that I believe, as a group, will resonate, and we can make a difference with.

That’s interesting. And all of this ultimately will devolve to the benefit of the Republican nominee, will it not?

Not necessarily. For instance, I just gave you the example of coming to the aid of Congressman Baird, who is a Democrat. We are prevented, by law, from being partisan. We must be nonpartisan. And the issues we take on, the generational issues, in order for us to be successful, we must be nonpartisan. Now having said that, the public is more likely to have an affinity for us if they, themselves, have a conservative lean. But that’s not to say that we seek every supporter no matter who they are.

In an election year, what causes you to buy your ads in one congressional district and not another?

It depends on the record of the incumbent. It depends on the race itself, whether it demands our attention or not.

So you will have target races?

Yes. We seek like-minded individuals on the issues that are important to us. And if the public is sympathetic to the issues as we have presented them, then they are going to make the decision they make based on that information. But we can’t direct them to a particular candidate. Nor can we endorse a particular candidate. What we can do is define the issues.

One last question and then I’ll let you go. Jamestown Group [Associates]: How did you find them? It sounds like a windfall for them.

Yeah. I mean business is good for them. Jamestown is run by a guy named Larry Weitzner. And he also partners up with a political veteran, Arthur Finkelstein. Arthur and Larry are well known in the political world of advertising. And quite frankly, we interviewed quite a number of media companies. And when we told them what we wanted to do and saw their product, it was clear to me that they understood what Freedom’s Watch was about.

To me, in order to have longevity, you have to be credible. You have to be responsible. And you have to be well-funded. And you have to have a following. I am not a flash in the pan. I don’t seek to be divisive. I don’t seek to be hateful or spiteful or threatening. And I think that’s what sets us apart from MoveOn.org. MoveOn.org is about mainly an individual or a small group of individuals, George Soros mainly. And our organization is not about an individual or individuals. It is about the organization. And it is about entities and partners. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about me. It’s not about our funders. It’s about the organization. And if we keep it that way, the American people, I think, will have an affinity to what we have to say, because we have done it in a responsible way.

I don’t seek to change every mind. I think it’s impossible to do that. I respect people who respectfully disagree with me. And I think what’s missing from the American debate is the ability to be responsible with one another and be respectful of one another. If you believe a certain way, and that’s based on fact, and you believe that way, that’s what makes America a great country: the ability to disagree on fact. And not because they dislike you personally, [but] because they believe a certain way. That’s terrific. That’s great.

A fair reading of our ads that we aired, you can either choose to believe it or not to believe it. But it’s based on fact. And that’s fine. So I want to take as much as I can the high road, which is kind of unusual in this town that seeks to divide and personally defeat people. And I just don’t think that’s the right tact to take. I don’t want to be known as an organization that does that.

Well, it certainly is an admirable goal.

It’s refreshing.