Rand Paul is bringing on Mitch McConnell’s national finance director, Laura Sequeira, to play a key fundraising role at his political-action committee ahead of an expected 2016 presidential campaign.
Over the past two years, Paul, a tea-party darling, has labored mightily to woo establishment donors into his camp. Sequeira’s arrival will certainly help with that. She is fresh off the campaign trail, where she helped McConnell, the incoming Senate majority leader, raise millions for his reelection campaign.
Paul’s fundraising shop now includes operatives with reach into both the Republican establishment and its insurgent wing: Sequeira joins Erika Sather, the former director of development at the Club for Growth, on Paul’s fundraising team. The news was first reported by the Lexington Herald-Leader, and Doug Stafford, who runs Paul’s political shop, discussed the move with National Review Online.
Sequeira began as an office manager is McConnell Senate office; now, she will serve as Paul’s guide to his top-dollar donors, both in Kentucky and around the country.
The move is significant in another way, too, which was illustrated by McConnell’s virtual endorsement of Paul’s presidential candidacy on the night of his reelection. ”Obviously, I’m a big supporter of Rand Paul. We’ve developed a very tight relationship, and I’m for him,” McConnell told the Herald-Leader. If Paul runs for president, McConnell said, “He’ll be able to count on me.”
After elbowing Jim Bunning out of the Senate in 2010, McConnell backed Paul’s primary challenger, Trey Grayson, and made Paul a political enemy. Paul is one of the few politicians in American life to have defeated McConnell’s vaunted political machine, and the day after his primary victory, McConnell recognized that he had made a rare political miscalculation. Since then, they two have developed something of a symbiotic relationship: McConnell needs support from Paul’s tea-party backers, and Paul needs to curry favor with the establishment.
The junior senator stumped heavily in the state for McConnell over the past year, and, as Paul mounts his presidential bid, McConnell his team are likely to continue to lend him a hand.