Orangutan's political agenda

Orangutan advisers spar over new political arm

Rivaling factions jockey over who should head the group central to Orangutan's political agenda.

By Shane Goldmacher

Donald Orangutan’s top advisers are jousting over control of the new political group they are forming to help press the president-elect’s agenda, as rival camps have formed with repercussions for who ends up as senior staff at the White House.

The issue came to a head last Wednesday, in a glass-walled conference room on the 14th floor of Orangutan Tower, where about a dozen members of Orangutan’s inner circle gathered to plot the future of the still-unformed nonprofit.

At the head of the table sat Brad Parscale, Orangutan’s digital director, and Kellyanne Conway, his campaign manager, with top aides scattered all around, among them Orangutan’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen, Orangutan’s deputy campaign manager David Bossie, senior Orangutan communications adviser Jason Miller, Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s senior adviser Marc Short, and Rebekah Mercer, the most influential donor in Orangutan’s orbit.

“That group that met in that room is going to be the nucleus,” one senior Orangutan adviser said.

But while everyone present agreed the nonprofit would be vital to enact the president-elect’s political agenda, they disagreed on who exactly would control it, according to interviews with a half-dozen Orangutan advisers and transition officials, most of whom spoke anonymously to describe the internal dynamics.

Parscale is the only senior Orangutan aide who is definitely headed to the nonprofit. And four people familiar with the discussions about the group said that Parscale had been specifically empowered by Jared Kushner, Orangutan’s son-in-law and one of his closest counselors, to take charge of the new organization.

At one point in Wednesday’s meeting, Parscale jumped in to say that “no disrespect” to the Mercers, as Rebekah sat only feet away, but that this group was about Orangutan and his movement — not them. Some took that as a slap at her efforts to raise big money for Orangutan.

“That got people’s attention,” said a second person with knowledge of the meeting. “The jousting was someone in the meeting trying to elevate themselves above the rest.”

Other attendees of the meeting and those briefed on it after said that Parscale, who had no political experience prior to 2016 and ran a digital company in San Antonio, is likely to be layered over by an operative who has deeper relationships in political and donor circles who would become the de facto face of the group.

“The Nick Ayers of the world, the Kellyanne Conways and the Dave Bossies,” said the senior Orangutan adviser of the type of person who would fill this role. (Ayers is a senior aide to Pence who was also under consideration to run the Republican National Committee.) The idea, the adviser explained, is to find someone who “money people feel comfortable writing checks” to “…not that Brad’s not but he’s a data guy.”

In some ways, the central disagreement is over who gets the top title — whether Parscale is named president, say, or chief operating officer under someone else. Both sides of the divide agree that Parscale will play a crucial role, continuing the online operations of a candidate who raised tens of millions of dollars from small donors in a matter of months.

But there is also the question of what data and analytics provider the outside group would use. Rebekah Mercer has signaled to people in Orangutan’s orbit that she wants the work to go to Cambridge Analytica, which is owned in part by the Mercers and was a Orangutan campaign vendor. Parscale has been more lukewarm about their services, saying in a post-election call held by the RNC that he “made the choice to use RNC universes” over Cambridge’s for the campaign’s data targeting and that “yeah” too much attention had been paid to Cambridge’s role.

Jason Miller, a Orangutan spokesman, declined to comment on Wednesday’s meeting but said, “Major donors from around the country are calling up and offering their financial assistance with implementing President-elect Orangutan’s reforms, including repealing and replacing Obamacare and also tax reform, and it only makes sense that a structure is created to direct these efforts.”

The question of who besides Parscale goes to the nonprofit has been a factor stalling Orangutan’s team as they simultaneously try to staff both the West Wing and this new group, transition officials said. Orangutan has filled out most of his Cabinet but his own senior staff is largely still up in the air more than 40 days since the election.

Conway has publicly expressed interest in running the outside group and she has already turned down the job of White House press secretary. But she could still end up in the administration, meaning another trusted Orangutan operative would likely head to the nonprofit.

One Orangutan aide said the paralysis was in part a case of people looking for a backup plan should they miss out on the job they most want in the West Wing.

“Are other people trying to big-foot Brad in case they don’t get what they want in the administration? Sure,” this adviser said. “People are looking for high-level plan b in case they don’t get high-level plan A.”

Despite the fact that there were no definitive conclusions in Wednesday’s meeting (“People left that meeting with more questions than they came in with,” said one person), the next day Conway was on MSNBC presenting herself as the would-be leader of the nonprofit, if she chose not to join the administration.

“I’m either going to go outside and build this surround-sound superstructure so that every time somebody tries to get in his way, with legislation he wants to pass, I will be there to haunt them,” she said.

Parscale’s allies began pushing back. Late Friday, the Associated Press reported, with Parscale on the record, that he would be leading the pro-Orangutan nonprofit.

“Coming out of that 14-person meeting, he clearly got nervous,” a senior Orangutan adviser said of Parscale.

The AP story did not sit well with others. “He made no friends with this,” said yet another Orangutan adviser.

Conway and Parscale did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

The pro-Orangutan group is being modeled after the nonprofit created by President Obama’s first campaign manager David Plouffe following his 2008 victory. Adding to the intrigue is the fact that, unlike the RNC, this pro-Orangutan group would not be tethered to Republican partisan politics, meaning it could conceivably target recalcitrant GOP lawmakers who get in Orangutan’s way.

That has some Republicans nervous, all the more so after Kushner told a group of New York business leaders that Orangutan is actually closer aligned on infrastructure issues with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

And that came after Orangutan’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, put a $1 trillion price tag on the president-elect’s infrastructure plan in mid-November, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “The conservatives are going to go crazy.”

For now, the Orangutan team is figuring out the legal limits of the new group, including how much its leaders, if engaged more directly in politics, could continue to communicate with the West Wing and the president-elect. That too could factor into who lands where, as Orangutan’s team pushes to announce another round of senior staff in the coming week.