Printer for state Senate candidate’s campaign acknowledges he helped set up PAC to attack primary foe

Friday, June 1, 2012 | 12:01 p.m.

NOTE UPDATE AT BOTTOM

A man listed as the resident agent for a political action committee attacking Brent Jones’ opponent in a key state Senate race also is the printer for Jones’ campaign, raising questions about improper coordination and contradicting the candidate’s claims he knows nothing about the PAC.

Robert Conrad, who was listed as the resident agent for Republicans United, which is attacking Mari St. Martin in the Senate District 9 race, said he has met Jones, who denied knowing Conrad on “Face to Face” Thursday evening. Conrad also has a long friendship with another Jones backer, consultant Tony Dane, and is acquainted with Jones’ main backers from a Tea Party group who attended the program’s taping Thursday.

Jones has tried – and did again Thursday evening – to distance himself from Republicans United, which set up this website with an ugly, sexist assault and language that mirrors what another PAC, the Conservative Republican Caucus, used in a mail piece against St. Martin. Jones used similar rhetoric again last night to tar St. Martin as a “party girl, per se,” quite the memorable and ludicrous phrase.

The CRC PAC is the brainchild of Dane, a longtime operative, whom Jones acknowledged knowing on the program and who Conrad told me this morning is a friend of a decade and a half. Coincidence?

All these dots connected this morning during a conversation with Conrad, who acknowledged both that he is the head of RC Communications, listed on Jones’ disclosure, and that he is the same man listed as a registered agent for Republicans United.

“I am the printer for him,” Conrad said of Jones. When I asked if he had ever met Jones, Conrad said, “I delivered a banner to him at a park.”

I suppose Jones could have forgotten the meeting. But even if they had never met, the nexus between Conrad, who appears on both Jones' report and the PAC, cannot be coincidental, although Conrad was cagey about who asked him to be the agent for Republicans United. “I don’t know if that’s public,” he told me. I pressed him, but he emphasized his discretion with clients.

Conrad said he has been contacted by the secretary of state’s office, which is investigating Republicans United. The PAC put up the web site before it registered as required by law. Conrad also told me that he is “no longer the agent. I was asked to be removed” within the last few days.

By whom? He would not say.

I called Dane, who was paid $7,500 by Jones, according to his report, to see if he had asked his friend, Conrad, to be the agent. But he did not return a call. St. Martin's campaign has filed a complaint with the secretary of state alleging that Dane and Jones are improperly coordinating vis a vis CRC PAC.

Adding to the obvious integration here, Conrad said he knows the ladies behind the tea party group, TRUNC, Laurel Fee and Jeri Taylor-Swade, who accompanied Jones to the taping at KSNV. But Conrad told me he does not know Steve Palmer, a Washington State businessman listed as the only officer of Republicans United as “Steve Parsons,” which also has made the SOS suspicious. The state has sent a letter of inquiry to Palmer/Parsons, too.

These revelations only add more flavor to a spicy race that has featured a defamation lawsuit by Jones, who alleges St. Martin is misrepresenting his role in an old lawsuit over…an ostrich farm. St. Martin is the anointed choice of the GOP Senate caucus, but she clearly sees Jones as a possible threat as evidenced by the erection of her own website posting that old ostrich farm controversy.

Last night on the program, St. Martin said she did so to try to prevent a “fringe, marginal candidate” from winning. Moments later, Jones called her unqualified to serve and said, “The allegation is that she’s a party girl….somebody that likes to go out and party and drink,” an echo of what is on the Republicans United site.

Jones then disclosed that he had been arrested after a night of partying in college for poking a police officer in the chest.

Yes, it’s that kind of race.

UPDATE:I connected with consultant Tony Dane, who told me he is indeed responsible for Conrad becoming the resident agent of the PAC, Republicans United. But, Dane told me, he only referred "a guy named Reggie," who wanted to help Brent Jones, to Conrad. Dane said he has nothing to do with the attack web site, but said "it looks to me like they copied stuff from (my) mailer" he sent out through his own PAC attacking St. Martin. Something tells me Dane won't be filing any copyright infringement charges against Republicans United for pilfering his language. "If someone calls me up to assit my candidate, I will help them," he said, referring to Jones and the mysterious Reggie, whom Dane promised to try to find and put in touch with me. I'm waiting with bated breath. Maybe I can get a candy bar out of it, too. What a story.