Staff Shuffle at American Crossroads

Three Cap­it­ol Hill vet­er­ans are tak­ing on new roles at Amer­ic­an Cross­roads as the con­ser­vat­ive su­per PAC revs up to try to help claim the Sen­ate for Re­pub­lic­ans this fall.

“I’m from Louis­ville, Ky., so I would love to see a Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Mc­Con­nell,” said Jen­nifer Fay, who was pro­moted to chief of staff this week after serving as dir­ect­or of op­er­a­tions since Au­gust 2011.

Fay, 33, star­ted on the Hill as an aide to then-Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-N.Y., and later did a stint in the of­fice of then-Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. Af­ter­ward she joined her broth­er, Jef­fery A. Green, at his boutique lobby shop, J.A. Green & Co.

“That was a fam­ily busi­ness, and it all star­ted at the kit­chen table,” she said. “Ac­tu­ally, work­ing for my broth­er wasn’t all that dif­fer­ent than work­ing at Amer­ic­an Cross­roads. In both places, we keep over­head low and try to put all the money on the tar­get.”

The con­ser­vat­ive su­per PAC, which was set up by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie in 2010, is abuzz with activ­ity as it read­ies a new batch of paid me­dia in sup­port of Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates. With this year’s midterm elec­tions only sev­en months away, the group is sal­iv­at­ing at the pro­spect of re­tak­ing the Sen­ate and ex­pand­ing the Re­pub­lic­an ma­jor­ity in the House.

“The work­load has picked up quite a bit,” said Matt Wall, who has been pro­moted to re­search dir­ect­or from re­search ana­lyst at the PAC’s Wash­ing­ton headquar­ters. “We’re ex­pect­ing a very busy cycle.”

New at Cross­roads for the midterm stretch is Paul Lind­say, who has signed on as com­mu­nic­a­tions dir­ect­or. Born and raised in Wash­ing­ton, Lind­say at­ten­ded Gonzaga Col­lege High School, just a few blocks from the Cap­it­ol, and in­terned for then-Rep Chris­toph­er Shays, R-Conn., dur­ing his seni­or year. As an un­der­gradu­ate at James Madis­on Uni­versity, he spent his sum­mers work­ing as a door­keep­er in the Sen­ate. “It was a great op­por­tun­ity for a polit­ic­al junkie like me,” he said. “Some days it was just quor­um calls, but oth­er days it was more ex­cit­ing.”

After gradu­at­ing, Lind­say be­came an aide to Rep. Charles Bous­tany, R-La., just a few months be­fore the Gulf Coast was battered by Hur­ricane Kat­rina. In 2008, Lind­say was hired by John Mc­Cain’s pres­id­en­tial cam­paign as com­mu­nic­a­tions dir­ect­or for the battle­ground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Four years after that, he served as com­mu­nic­a­tions dir­ect­or for the Na­tion­al Re­pub­lic­an Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee dur­ing the 2012 elec­tion cycle. Lind­say, 32, comes to Amer­ic­an Cross­roads from Pow­ell Tate/Weber Shand­wick, where he served as a vice pres­id­ent in the firm’s pub­lic-af­fairs prac­tice.

Wall, who was raised in the Den­ver sub­urbs, also has some ex­per­i­ence on the Hill. After re­ceiv­ing a de­gree in polit­ic­al sci­ence from Col­or­ado State Uni­versity, he taught Eng­lish in Ar­gen­tina and then in­terned for then-Rep. Tom Tan­credo, R-Colo., even­tu­ally be­com­ing his le­gis­lat­ive as­sist­ant. When Tan­credo re­tired from Con­gress in 2009, Wall joined Man­aged Funds As­so­ci­ation, a trade as­so­ci­ation for hedge funds, man­aged fu­ture funds, and oth­er al­tern­at­ive in­vest­ments. Wall, 29, joined Amer­ic­an Cross­roads in 2011.