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 News from Around the Americas | December 2005 
Republican Strategist Is Taking Heat for Taking Mexico as Client
 Simon Romero - NYTimes
| | Rob Allyn's office is in downtown Dallas, whose skyline, he says, "was built largely by Mexican immigrants." (Jerry Hoefer/NYTimes) |
Dallas, TX - Rob Allyn, the political consultant, meet Rob Allyn, the punching bag.
A longtime Republican strategist, Mr. Allyn has found himself in the cross hairs of conservative critics in the last week after signing a contract with Mexico's foreign ministry to lead a campaign to strengthen the country's image in the United States.
A CNN anchor asked Mr. Allyn whether Mexico was "dabbling in U.S. policy" by hiring him as a marketer. Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, describing Mexico as a "corrupt, chaotic country" with 40 percent unemployment (it is closer to 4 percent) told him in another interview that he had his work cut out for him.
Then protesters here in Dallas, where Mr. Allyn lives, held a news conference in front of the Mexican Consulate to assert that Mexico's government would have done better by hiring a Mexican-American firm. Allyn & Company is a unit of Fleishmann-Hillard, the public relations concern, itself part of the Omnicom Group, the international marketing company.
"I've had friends say on this latest one, should I congratulate you or extend condolences," Mr. Allyn, 46, said in an interview at his office.
Making news, rather than helping to shape it, is not what Mr. Allyn wants to do. Public relations consultants try to remain in the shadows. Perhaps that is impossible when the issue is as emotion-filled as immigration after the approval this month of a bill in the House of Representatives.
That bill requires mandatory detention of many undocumented illegal immigrants, stiffer penalties for employers who hire them and a broadening of the immigrant-smuggling statute to include employees of social service agencies and church groups that offer services to undocumented workers. It also calls for building 700 miles of fence along the border with Mexico.
Even some of the bill's supporters acknowledge that its requirements, once considered on the extreme fringe of the immigration debate, will make approval difficult in the Senate.
Mr. Allyn's contract, worth about $720,000 over the next year, calls for him to represent Mexico in the United States in meetings with nongovernmental organizations; through polling and organizing tours of Mexican officials; and potentially with a small amount of advertising.
Paramount among the Mexican government's concerns these days is fighting anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States. More than 10 million undocumented immigrants live in this country, according to a recent report by the Pew Hispanic Center. Nearly 500,000 undocumented immigrants, most of them from Mexico, have moved to the United States each year since 2000, the Pew study said.
The latest contract has a much higher profile than Mr. Allyn's last big foray into Mexican politics, in 2000, when he quietly helped orchestrate the campaign of President Vicente Fox.
Attuned to sensitivities in Mexico over the involvement of foreigners in the country's elections, Mr. Allyn traveled to Mexico under pseudonyms like José de Murga and Alberto Aguirre to advise Mr. Fox on polling, wardrobe and speeches.
Since then, Mr. Allyn has branched out to work on campaigns in other countries. He counts among his clients the Golkar Party in Indonesia; the prime minister of the Bahamas, Perry Christie; and, most recently, Dumarsais Siméus, the Haitian-born Texas millionaire who aspires to be elected president of Haiti.
Mr. Allyn said most of his foreign political work is a result of his Republican contacts in Texas, where he did political consulting work for President Bush while he was governor of Texas, as well as worked for prominent Democrats like Mayor Laura Miller of Dallas and Mayor Bill White of Houston.
Mr. Allyn is also co-chairman of Vox Global Mandate, a venture with other Omnicom companies, including GMMB and Mercury Public Affairs, to provide services from both Republican and Democratic strategists for political clients around the world. Still, none of his other campaigns generated as much controversy as his latest contract in Mexico.
"I know people roll their eyes and say the last thing we need to export from this country is spin," said Mr. Allyn, a former writer, sitting next to a cutout from a magazine article describing him as Mexico's "go-to gringo" in Texas.
"But everything you see there," said Mr. Allyn, pointing to the skyline of downtown Dallas outside his window, "was built largely by Mexican immigrants."
Few states have a Hispanic immigrant population as robust as Texas's. The United States Census Bureau said this year that Anglos make up less than half of the Texas population for the first time in more than a century, after a surge in the state's Hispanic population.
Yet in Texas, Mr. Allyn said, a less-hostile view of immigration from Mexico generally holds sway because of a perception of interdependent economic ties with Mexico.
He said one of his objectives would be educating people in other parts of the United States - particularly in nonborder states with fast-growing Mexican populations - about the economic importance of Mexico. After all, Mr. Allyn said, Mexico ranks ahead of Japan, China and Germany and behind only Canada as a trading partner with the United States.
The most pressing part of his campaign may be dealing with an emerging schism in the Republican Party over immigration. Congressmen like Representative Nathan Deal of Georgia threaten to drown out the administration's guest-worker plan with proposals to deny citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States.
"The conservative movement I signed up for stood for tearing walls down, not building them," Mr. Allyn said.
Many people in Mexico find it hard to comprehend how the debate over immigration has progressed to such a level. And amid the firestorm over Mr. Allyn's contract, there is a feeling among some Hispanics in the United States that their voice on the immigration debate has been shunted aside by political leaders in Washington and Mexico City.
"You don't promote Mexico by giving a contract to a friend who helped get you elected six years ago," said Carlos Quintanilla, a Dallas entrepreneur who has publicly criticized Mr. Allyn's deal with Mexico's foreign ministry. "You don't need an Anglo to advance Mexico's interests in the United States. It's a regression and a disconnect."
Shrugging, Mr. Allyn said he was steeling himself for more criticism. "All I can say is that I'm working on my Spanish as hard as I can," he said. |
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