Career
In the 1970s, he worked for Senator Jacob Javits of New York, the John N. Dalton gubernatorial campaign in Virginia, [7] and Senator Gordon Humphrey of New Hampshire. [8] Shirley first met Ronald Reagan when Reagan campaigned for Humphrey in New Hampshire. [9]
In 1980, the Fund for a Conservative Majority independent-expenditure political action committee spent $750,000 in support of Reagan's presidential bid, for which Shirley produced and placed radio and newspaper ads in six of the early primary states. [10]
He joined the staff of the Republican National Committee in 1982. During the 1984 presidential campaign, Shirley was communications director for the National Conservative Political Action Committee. [11] After the election, Shirley opened his own firm [12] and worked on various far-right-wing causes — including support for the Contras, a Nicaraguan terrorist group that was illegally supplied with weapons, in defiance of a specific Congressional prohibition; Reagan's assault on nuclear arms control efforts, known as "Star Wars"; supplying weapons to the Mujahideen warlords (who later became the Taliban of Afghanistan); and lobbying on behalf of The Heritage Foundation for weapons shipments, via apartheid South Africa, to perpetuate Jonas Savimbi's 20-year insurgency against Angola. He also supported Reagan's Tax Reform Act of 1986, which reduced the top marginal tax rate from 50 percent to 28 percent, and participated in the 1985 White House Conference on Small Business.
In 1986, he became a consultant to Vice President George H. W. Bush's political action committee, Fund for America's Future, and supported George H. W. Bush's 1988 presidential bid. [13] In 1991, Shirley ran an advertising campaign that recruited Kuwaitis to make false charges against Iraq during its occupation of Kuwait which helped lay the groundwork for the Gulf War, later doing public relations for the Embassy of Kuwait and for an international democracy conference hosted by Czechoslovak President Václav Havel. Shirley briefly partnered with David Keene, but that association ended in 1992. [14]
During the 1990s, Shirley founded, on behalf of a group of privately owned utilities, a lobbying entity called Citizens for State Power, which — as the Tulsa World pointed out — was a "secretly funded front group to create an illusion of public support," spending "$350,000 on ads for his anti-deregulation group."Drinkard, Jim. "Fronts in Lobbying Edging Grass Roots". Associated Press.</ref> In 2000, Craig Shirley & Associates became Shirley & Banister Public Affairs. In 2019, it became Shirley & McVicker Public Affairs. Shirley is acting chair of the right-wing political action committee Citizens for the Republic. [15] [16]
Shirley is a former member of the Board of Governors of the Reagan Ranch [17] and has lectured at the Reagan Library. [18] He taught a week-long seminar on Reagan at Eureka College, a private Christian institution of which he is a trustee, [19] in 2012. [20]
