In April, The Washington Post reported that the Sanders campaign was outspending Clinton on media strategy, creating “a financial windfall for his team of Washington consultants.”
One of those consultants is the campaign’s senior strategist, Tad Devine.
Bernie Sanders has been a client of Devine’s for decades. Devine was part of a firm that worked for presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004, and his current shop — Devine Mulvey Longabaugh — is a widely known in the world of political consulting.
Devine — whose company has received more than $5 million to create ads for Sanders’ primary campaign — told the Post that he had an additional source of income from the Sanders campaign: a percentage of the ad buys. Devine said he split a commission with Old Towne Media. The exact amount is unclear; the Post reported that he was “splitting a single-digit-percentage commission” with Old Towne.
Devine did not return multiple phone calls — both on his cellular and office lines — regarding the financial details of his media contracts.
The Post identified Old Towne Media as an agency run by two of Devine’s longtime buyers.
Devine could have given the 2016 media work to Bougie and Hutton-Hartig, who he worked with for decades, through Canal Partners Media, instead of Old Towne. Bougie and Hutton-Hartig merged Abar Hutton Media with Canal Partners in 2013, and they remain partners in the firm.
Canal Partners, which has locations in Washington, D.C., and Marietta, Georgia, has handled less than $1 million in ad buys for a few different clients during the 2016 cycle.
Neither Bougie nor Hutton-Hartig returned repeated phone calls to their D.C. offices at Canal Partners.
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