May 7, 2006

Democratic Consultants Set to Take Vows
as State's Newest Political Power Couple

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor

The Texas GOP boasts more than its fair share of campaign consultants with spouses who also make a living dispensing political advice. There's Ted Delisi, who's Governor Rick Perry's direct mail specialist and Chief of Staff Deirdre Delisi's husband. Candidates who hire Allen Blakemore in Houston often enlist his wife, Elizabeth Blakemore, to take charge of fundraising. Houston's Dave Walden has advised politicians from both parties while wife Sue Walden raises money for candidates on the Republican side.

Beginning Saturday, May 13 - barring cold feet or something else unforeseen - Texas Democrats will have their own husband and wife team in the political consulting ranks when the wedding bell tolls for an ex-Bill Clinton fundraiser and a former co-worker who's been a top aide to a pair of Austin Democrats who wrestled Texas House seats away from the GOP in the past two years.

Democrats Jeff Hewitt and Eleanor D'Ambrosio plan to swap vows that day in a ceremony that will cap off a courtship that got under way after they met while trying to help David Cain keep his state Senate seat in 2002. The relationship that originated in the trenches of one of the most expensive races for the Texas Legislature in history turned out to be a silver lining in a campaign that fell short on a map that Republicans had designed a year before to ensure the Dallas Democrat's defeat.

The path that led Hewitt to Texas began right after the Democratic National Convention in 1992 when he volunteered for the Clinton campaign and won a quick promotion to a paying position as a bus tour coordinator and advance team member who spent that summer and fall on the road in 34 states. Hewitt went to work for the national fundraising firm of Cunningham, Plante and Associates and helped round up cash for candidates for statewide, legislative and local offices in the eastern part of the country from Florida to New Jersey.

Hewitt helped Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor Mark Singel break the all-time fundraising record for Quaker State Democrats with a $9 million haul for his race for governor in 1994 - and his clients over the next few years ranged from the New Jersey Democratic Caucus to Baltimore's Joan Pratt, the first African-American comptroller of a major U.S. city. Hewitt had a hand in Loretta Sanchez's milestone victory over a conservative congressman who'd been heavily favored in a California contest in the late 1990s. He found his way to Texas in time to help John Sharp raise money for his race for lieutenant governor against David Dewhurst in 2002.

D'Ambrosio was State Rep. Mark Strama's first legislative director and now runs State Rep. Donna Howard's office at the Capitol as her chief of staff. A Hartford, Connecticut native, D'Ambrosio graduated from Brown University with a BA in public policy and memories from her days as a coxswain on two women's rowing teams that won NCAA championships.

Hewitt and D'Ambrosio teamed up again in 2003 on Mississippi State Senator Barbara Blackmon's campaign for lieutenant governor - and they worked under the same roof once again for a while at the consulting office Hewitt opened in downtown Austin later that year. Hewitt was still a new kid on the political block when he helped elect more challengers to the Texas House than any other Democratic strategist in 2004. He helped some more candidates win Democratic primaries this year after directing Howard's media, which played a big role in her victory in a February special election runoff against a Republican who'd been highly favored at the start of the race. The Ohio State University graduate has a new business partner - veteran Democratic strategist Kelly Fero - in a firm called Fero Hewitt Global. And a new wife a week away.