Retired General Kurt Winstead announced Tuesday the latest additions to his campaign team in the race for the Republican nomination for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District.
The campaign has added Fred Davis as advertising consultant, Tony Fabrizio and David Lee as pollsters, and The Stoneridge Group as the direct-mail and digital voter contact firm.
Davis has worked on a number of successful state and federal campaigns including those of Governor Bill Lee, former Governor Bill Haslam and former Senator Lamar Alexander.
Fabrizio and David Lee are veteran consultants and pollsters who have worked for decades on hundreds of congressional and Senate campaigns across the country. Fabrizio was the chief pollster for former President Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
The Stoneridge Group is a conservative political consulting firm based in Atlanta.
“We have so much momentum. Our conservative message to the Republican voters in the 5th district is resonating, and I am so excited about our senior campaign team that will help us win this election,” said Winstead in an emailed statement.
The Tennessee Star previously reported that Chris Devaney, campaign manager for Governor Bill Lee’s 2018 campaign, is serving as senior advisor to the campaign. Kim Kaegi, a veteran of numerous successful campaigns across Tennessee, is the campaign finance consultant. Jimmy Granbery is serving as the campaign finance chairman. Granbery is currently the chairman of the H.G. Hill Company and CEO of H.G. Hill Realty Company.
Devaney is a former Tennessee Republican Party chairman. Kaegi has almost three decades of Tennessee fundraising experience. Her previous clients include Bill Lee, Haslam, and Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN). She additionally worked on several campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives.
Devaney and Kaegi both worked together on Fred Thompson’s 1994 U.S. Senate campaign.
“This campaign team is one of the best in the country and has the experience to win,” Winstead added.
Winstead’s campaign release describes him as “an eighth-generation Tennessean … raised in a home of educators and farmers. He served for more than 30 years in the Tennessee Army National Guard, including Director of the Joint Staff, Tennessee’s Staff Judge Advocate, and Brigade Command Judge Advocate during Operation Iraqi Freedom III.”
As of the March 31 Federal Election Commission Winstead had raised roughly $520,000, loaned his campaign $520,000, and had an estimated $1 million cash on hand.
The Republican primary is scheduled for August 4.
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Aaron Gulbransen is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]. Follow Aaron on GETTR, Twitter, and Parler.
Photo “Kurtis J. Winstead” by Rudy Winstead Turner PLLC.
Don’t you just love his folksy radio ads? Just a good old tobacco chewing farm boy. Yeah. Right!
Must be nice to be rich enough to attempt to by a Congressional seat. Dollars do not necessarily equate to good governance. See Pelosi as an example.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t do anything about the fact that Winstead is a wealthy No Record Candidate seeking to buy himself a seat in the U.S. House and conservatives shouldn’t give this candidate a scintilla of consideration. Not with proven conservative Andy Ogles on the ballot.
We know what beautiful flim-flam Devaney can create from the Bill Lee campaign where the emphasis was on irrelevant personal history with vague conservative rhetoric from another No Record Candidate only for us to be stuck with a bleeding-heart tepid conservative upon Lee’s taking office. Suckers for beautiful campaign flim-flam beware, Devaney’s got another No Record Candidate in toe.
Stuart, Andy Ogles raised the sales tax and has a budget full of red ink and deficits. How is he a conservative?