This time over the leaks. I’m not surprised by that. Most contracts are going to have non-disclosure agreements within them. But I suspect the end of the relationship with NRA will mean the end of Ackerman-McQueen. Or at the least, they’ll go back to being a small firm serving Oklahoma City. Have you ever seen their Glassdoor Reviews? Not great. One comment notes:
There have been a growing number of layoffs, due to not winning any major new clients, so irrationality, desperation is setting in – it may just be karma.
Very unprofessional at times and disrespectful to employees. AM puts power over people and rules by fear while successful companies put power under their employees and rules by encouragement. The funny thing is, I’m not making this up. It’s evident in that the company is losing clients left and right and is HEAVILY dependent on one client. If we lost that one client, AM would nearly collapse.
Now, I take bad Glassdoor reviews with a grain of salt, because unhappy employees are going to be the ones leaving reviews. But I do think patterns are useful. If everyone complains about the same things, it’s probably happening.
But note the last line. I suspect that is now what’s happening. I know some people are annoyed at my focus on Ack-Mac, but right now I view booting them as an achievable victory. The Board has signaled they are with Wayne, for now. There’s nothing that can be done there in the short term. I also don’t trust the people gunning for Wayne right now. There are no good guys here, so I am holding out for at least throwing one of the bad guys in this bad drama overboard.
UPDATE: Complaint can be found here.
One step at a time.
I think thats exactly right. For now there needs to be unity to exercise the Ack-Mack cancer. If Wayne were to go prior to the Ack-Mack excision, it would give some people false hope that Ack-Mack would come back. Which would only prolong the process.
For the moment, Ack-Mack is the bigger problem. After Ack-Mack is gone, I expect WLP to retire. It would not surprise me one bit to find out 5 years from now “support me now while we get rid of Ack-Mack then I’ll retire” was part of the deal. Maybe in 2021 as an editorial in Ammoland even alluded to…
Just finished reading the complaint, if true and the NRA can prove it, wow!
I also can’t help but feel like there should be some criminal element to the whole extortion thing they tried. Somethings like extortion and wire fraud at least.
They dont need to prove it, they really only need the leverage.
NRA is gunning to drive Ack-Mack into bankruptcy. NRA wont see a dime, but bankruptcy will kill Ack-Mack.
This is a civil case and not a criminal case! The NRA has to show with preponderance of evidence that what they state is true. This is a lower bar than in a criminal case. However, I doubt that the NRA can actually do this without exposing themselves and others to civil, and potentially criminal, liability.
A while ago I got into a dispute with people on the topic whether the NRA was delving too deeply into SoCon issues. I want the NRA to be a single issue organization but I wasn’t seeing the SoCon stuff. After some back and forth, i was presented with evidence that it was NRATV going there which because I read instead of watch, I didn’t see. NRATV is AckMac so people concerned about the SoCon stuff should take getting rid of AM as the priority.
Ack-Mack wasted a fuck ton of money on NRATV which from what I can tell most got only a few thousand views on YouTube. My dog and boring cycling vids have more views.
At some point, before NRATV was NRATV, they were producing some quality programming. But in the past two years NRA might as well have burned that money.
Yep
I’d believe the NRA *could have* delved into that without disturbing a lot of members; based on the atmosphere at NRAAM 2011. And what I’ve seen since has been a lot closer to the line than I’d like, even outside of the NRATV.
Not enough to turn me off, but enough that when I did re-up I went life so I could vote immediately.
Well, this was sort of expected. Ackerman McQueen has filed a $50M countersuit: https://www.thedailybeast.com/nra-legal-fight-ackerman-mcqueen-ad-agency-fires-back-with-dollar50-million-counterclaim
On another note, William A. Brewer seems to be still employed by the NRA. A law firm that donated to Hillary Clinton and Beto O’Rourke.
Attorneys are not paid to agree with their clients, they are paid to win. It remains to be seen whether Brewer is a winner.
Speaking of people who have a lot of photo ops with the Clinton’s, Trump himself has quite a few and donated 100k to the Clinton foundation.
So, it is OK for you that the NRA’s lawyer donated to the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 and to the Beto O’Rourke campaign in 2018? That’s the same NRA’s lawyer who is also a McQueen in-law and charged the NRA $19M in 12 months. He recently charged the NRA $100K/day. Will he be donating to the Beto O’Rourke campaign in 2020?
As for the whataboutism regarding President Trump, he first tried to have a political career in the Democratic Party. When that was unsuccessful, he moved on to the Republican Party. Is he donating to the Democratic Party now, like Bill Brewer?
Normal people can separate their politics and business. Few people are ideological or puritans.
Given the NRA’s core mission is political, it is highly inappropriate to hire a lawyer that associates himself with the opposition to that political core mission. NRA member dues and donations should not go to a business that financially supports politicians that want to eliminate the NRA.
It is not a separation of business and personal politics if that BUSINESS donates money, which is the case here. There are plenty of excellent lawyers out there that support the NRA’s mission and that the NRA could hire. Oh, I forgot, they are not part of the NRA swamp, like Bill Brewer.
Legal profession is mostly Democrat. A lot of corporations and individuals donate solely for influence (e.g. to the perceived winner), not because they agree. Any Clinton donation is 100% influence peddling in my mind, those two wrote the book on how to peddle it.
If I were hiring someone for public relations, I’d hire someone with the biggest connections. That would probably end up being a Dem given how skewed the media is. Trial lawyers also skew heavily Democrat. Sometimes by the way you hire a lawyer simply to prevent the other side from hiring that lawyer, because that lawyer knows where the bodies are buried. I am not saying thats the case here.
The arguments being made against Brewer sound suspiciously similar to the arguments being made that the NRA is not hardliner enough.
Confining oneself to the little bubble of people who are in complete agreement is rarely a good idea in politics or PR – one always wants to know the other side’s argument as good or better than they do.
As I said, it remains to be seen whether Brewer is worth the money. I am a results oriented person, show me the results.