By IAN T. SHEARN, Contributing Writer NJ Spotlight News
Despite unpleasant departures from his two most famous clients — first, former Gov. Chris Christie and more recently, former President Donald Trump — Bill Stepien, New Jersey’s most prominent GOP operative endures.
Since Stepien’s well-publicized, self-proclaimed falling-out with Trump after the 2020 election where he served as campaign manager, his consulting firm, National Public Affairs, has collected over $3 million in political consulting fees, according to Federal Election Commission reports. The lion’s share of it has come from 17 Republican congressional candidates running in this year’s midterm elections.
Almost all of Stepien’s congressional candidates are MAGA loyalists — many of them endorsed, and some hand-picked, by Trump. And 11 of them are unapologetic election deniers, which was the very issue Stepien claims caused his break from Team Trump.
“I didn’t think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional,” Stepien testified to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. “That led to me stepping away,” he added in a video clip played by the committee at a televised public hearing in June.
Jeff Van Drew’s campaign paid Stepien’s firm $155,000 for consulting during this year’s primary, which Van Drew won with 87% of the vote.
For the most part, the national media portrayed Stepien as a Trump aide who spoke truth to misguided power. That appears to be true, but it didn’t stop Stepien from being paid by candidates pushing the election-denying fervor that has since consumed the Republican Party.
“Stepien is your classic follow-the-money kind of guy. … His story is similar to a lot of people in this business,” said Carl Golden, a longtime Republican insider who is now senior contributing analyst with the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University. “And it certainly hasn’t hurt his bottom line.” (Golden is a regular opinion writer at NJ Spotlight News.)
Lucrative list of clients
Stepien, who declined requests for an interview, has a client list that includes New Jersey’s own Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd), along with five other members of Congress who on Jan. 6, 2021 voted to reject President Biden’s victory: Reps. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), Jason T. Smith (R-MO), Mary E. Miller (R-IL) and Markwayne Mullin (R-OK).
Stepien’s most lucrative client — with $744,000 in consulting fees — is Wyoming’s Republican House candidate Harriet Hageman, who trounced incumbent Liz Cheney in this year’s GOP primary. Cheney, the current vice chair on the House Select Committee, was publicly ostracized by Trump and stripped of her party leadership position after she supported Trump’s second impeachment last year.
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