BRIAN PERRY/Hederman leads Rubio
The friendship and competition has a parallel in Mississippi. Rubio’s Mississippi state chairman Arnie Hederman works from his Clearwater Group office in downtown Jackson, down the hallway is his business partner and friend, Austin Barbour, who serves as senior advisor to Bush’s campaign.
Hederman says Barbour and the Bush campaign, as well as his other friends supporting Ohio Governor John Kasich and other candidates, all want the same thing, “We all want to change the direction of the country. I think Rubio has the best path, vision and is the most electable candidate against Hillary Clinton. But at the end of the day, whoever the nominee is, we’ll all get back together to make sure a Republican is in the White House.”
In 1991, Hederman served as political director under Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Evelyn McPhail when the GOP first won the Mississippi Governor’s Mansion with Kirk Fordice. McPhail’s focus was on grass roots campaigning and she took her “Nuts & Bolts” training to the Republican National Committee as director of political education and later as national co-chairman at the same time fellow Mississippian Haley Barbour served as chairman. Hederman joined her in Washington as her deputy putting on campaign management colleges and organizing activists across the country.
Hederman himself served as Mississippi Republican Party Chairman in 2011 overseeing the Party’s efforts to take control of the state legislature for the first time, winning a majority in the Mississippi House of Representatives.
If McPhail were around today, Hederman said she would tell Rubio – or any of the candidates, “to work hard, never quit and ‘no’ is never an answer.”
Madison County Journal
11/11/15
Magnolia Tribune
