Matt Rhoades

Matt Rhoades ( born February 3, 1975 in Saratoga Springs, Saratoga County, New York) is an American political functionary. He was best known as the manager of the campaign team of the presidential candidate of the Republican Party, Mitt Romney, in the presidential elections in 2012.

Life and activity

Rhoades is the son of businessman Paul Rhoades. After visiting the Saratoga Springs High School, which he left in 1993, Rhoades studied at the Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University ( BA 1997) in Syracuse (New York), and the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University ( MA, 1999) in Washington, DC

In the late 1990s Rhoades began to work as a functionary of the party organization of the Republicans. A decisive influence on his coinage took at that time, Congressman Tim Griffin of Arkansas, who is regarded as his mentor.

For the first time Rhoades did out during the presidential elections in 2000. In particular, he fell on during the controversial Nachauszählung of votes in the U.S. state of Florida as a Republican analyst. After the Supreme Court had decided to end the Nachauszählung and George W. Bush was elected president, took this Rhoades with the White House. He obtained a leading position in the department for the management of staff of the President ( associate director for presidential personnel ).

During the election campaign in the run up to the presidential election in 2004, Rhoades was head of the workspace opposition research in George W. Bush's campaign team. In this position, Rhoades scoured the biography of Bush's Democratic opponent for the presidency in the election of 2004 year, John Kerry, for contradictions and weaknesses. A decisive contribution Rhoades added Bush campaign gathered by Rhoades and his staff set pieces to a - from the perspective of U.S. voters - devastating narrative together, the Kerry as his positions constantly changing Wryneck ( flip - flopper ) and people's rapt snob with Francophile inclinations portrayed, which is not acceptable as commander in chief. In the following years, Rhoades worked for the Republican National Committee again.

To Rhoades 2006 came with the Republican politician Mitt Romney in contact, which eventually drew him as a political staff itself. During the campaign, Romney to apply for nomination as a candidate of the Republican Party for the U.S. presidency for the beginning in January 2009 term of office in the years 2007 and 2008, Rhoades served as Romney's communications director. He retained this position until at Romney officially announced in March 2008 that it was no longer possible for him to win his party's nomination, and then withdrew from the race for the presidential nomination of his party.

From 2007 to 2010, Rhoades Vice President of DCI Group, a communications firm in Washington, DC. 2010 Rhoades was chief of a new presidential candidate Romney preparatory political action committees Free & Strong America.

After deciding Romney to re-apply at the presidential election in 2012 for the nomination of the Republican Party, Romney Rhoades brought to 2010 figures in his campaign team and entrusted him with its leadership, by conferring upon him the job of campaign manager. From summer 2011 until spring 2012 conducted Rhoades from the Romney campaign headquarters in Boston (Massachusetts ) from Romney's efforts in the party internene primary campaign the Republicans against a number of other candidates in order to enforce presidential nomination. After it was Rhoaedes candidates in March 2012 succeeded in de facto to secure the presidential nomination of his party and the Romney campaign had virtually become the Republican presidential campaign, Rhoades took over as manager of the Romney campaign so the management of the campaign organization of the Republican Party in the competition president.

Except Eric Fehrnstrom Rhoades is considered the most important member of Romney's campaign team of the presidential election in 2012. His old friend Griffin commented in this regard that one " in the intense focus on the objective and the intense discipline of Romney CAMPAIGN clearly the handwriting of Matt Rhoades " recognize.

Rhoades is considered the eminence grise: publicity-shy, taciturn and reserved. Its candidates, he accompanied only rarely in public appearances. Interviews, he is almost never, so that journalists often emphasize that they had, despite its important position in Romney's staff, its appearance would hardly know and did not recognize him at press receptions. The roots of Rhoades career is in the range of opposition research, ie every sector of the American campaign organizations who is dealing with it, information - especially those compromising nature - to promote on the candidates of the respective opposite side a-days to be able to use this as ammunition against the opponents of their own candidates in the election campaign. According to the Wall Street Journal it's Rhoades specialty " dirt [ his opponents ] dig ".

The Washington Post described Rhoades as the organizational force behind the scenes of Romney's cautious and smooth polished campaign "

Private life

Rhoades is married to his second wife Jamie Loftus since the summer of 2012.