WASHINGTON – Michael Steele stormed into the Republican National Committee chairmanship in January 2009 vowing to bring “something completely different” to the Grand Old Party. Steele, the RNC’s first black chairman, acknowledged his party’s “image problem” and quickly set his sights on making the GOP younger and more diverse.
One of Steele’s first acts as chairman was to hire Angela Sailor
The Republican National Committees coalitions director, Angela Sailor (courtesy of the RNC)
The Republican National Committee’s coalitions director, Angela Sailor (Photo courtesy of the RNC)
On Feb. 26, 2009, the 41-year-old Sailor became director of the RNC’s Coalitions Department, an office charged with evaluating “every outside constituent organization in the country at the local, state and national levels.” The department is integral to fulfilling Steele’s goal to reach out to minority voting groups on a full-time basis, not just during election season. It also strives to connect to young voters through social media, and trains grassroots activists about using new media to advance the party’s agenda.
To show he meant business, Steele elevated the Coalitions Department to a cabinet-level post within the RNC, complete with its own budget and a handsome salary for Sailor.
With strong connections to one of Washington’s prominent black-owned lobbying firms and experience reaching out to African-Americans during the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000, Sailor would seem the perfect person for the job.
But for Republicans, connecting with minorities and young people – all groups that voted overwhelmingly Democratic in the November 2008 general election – could prove to be an uphill battle.
Path to power
Angela Scott was born in Detroit on Feb. 24, 1968. Sailor’s parents divorced, and she was raised by her mother, a university professor and administrator. That career moved Sailor to several college towns during her childhood, including Ann Arbor, Mich., and Gainesville, Fla. It was her “adopted father,” an engineer and pastor, who “formally introduced” her to the Republican Party when she was just nine, Sailor said. Through him, she learned “the importance of civic participation and its relationship to free enterprise” – a lesson Sailor said she’d later connect to the conservative message of the GOP.
In 1990, Sailor earned an undergraduate communications degree from Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. After college, she worked at WGTZ-FM in Dayton, where she was an overnight disc jockey known on the air as “Janet From Another Planet.”
Sailor went on to hold various positions in broadcasting and the corporate realm, including marketing jobs with Procter & Gamble and BET, and freelance production work with Fox Morning News in Washington.
Sailor earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism and public affairs from American University in 1996.
She said she became more engaged in the policy end of politics while studying in Washington. Her first political job was as a staffer for U.S. Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., a post she held while earning her law degree from the University of Memphis. After working a few government jobs in Michigan, including a stint in the lLegal Department of longtime Republican Gov. John Engler, Sailor was named director of African-American affairs for the RNC in 1999, where she was in charge of reaching out to black voters during George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign.
When Bush entered the White House in January 2001, Sailor went with him. She served as the associate director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, where she focused on domestic policy affecting blacks and senior citizens. In 2002, she became deputy chief of staff to Roderick Paige, the first African-American secretary of education.
Sailor headed back to the private sector in 2004, when she became a partner at Watts Partners, a Washington lobbying firm co-founded by her husband, Elroy Sailor. Angela Sailor left the firm in February 2009 when she hired back by the RNC to be the new Director of coalitions.
Hiring controversies
Sailor’s hiring reportedly rankled some GOP leaders.
About a week after she was named director of coalitions, representatives from seven Hispanic groups sent a letter to Steele saying they were “extremely disheartened that no Hispanics were considered” for Sailor’s job. The letter did not question Sailor’s qualifications, nor did it mention her by name. An RNC spokeswoman explained to Politico.com that the committee was still in the process filling positions within the department. In June 2009, the RNC hired Nicaragua-native Manuel “Manny” A. Rosales to be Sailor’s second-in-command.
Sailor’s generous salary also reportedly touched a nerve with some rank-and-file Republicans. The Washington Times reported that Sailor was given a $180,000 salary – more than twice what her predecessor was paid, and $40,000 more than the RNC’s No. 2 elected official, Jan Larimer, was making. Hawaii Republican Party Chairman Willis Lee told the Times that sort of money was “way out of line for what staff should be paid for working for a political party.”
Sailor has called both criticisms “absurd” and chalked them up to “ridiculous, inside-the-Beltway” mud-slinging perpetrated by opponents of Steele’s agenda for the RNC.
The network
In 2002, Angela and Elroy Sailor were dubbed a “D.C. Power Couple” by JET magazine. Elroy Sailor is currently the CEO of Watts Partners, the lobbying firm he co-founded with former U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla. The company’s Web site bills it as “the largest African-American owned lobbying company in Washington, D.C.”