Eskew partners with ex-Democrat staffers

The Greenville News
May 26, 2005

By Rudolph Bell
BUSINESS WRITER
dbell@greenvillenews.com

Business, like politics, can make for strange bedfellows.

Longtime Republican strategist and former Greenville resident Tucker Eskew has launched a new Washington consulting firm.

Two of four partners in the new firm, called ViaNovo, used to work for former Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas.

Eskew said Thursday, however, it's not the first time he's worked with Democrats.

"When I was Carroll Campbell's press secretary, the only way we got things passed was by working with conservative Democrats and that's what I'm doing here," he said.

Eskew, who graduated from Christ Church Episcopal High School in Greenville, was a top aide to Campbell, former Republican governor of South Carolina, for eight years.

Later, he was a spokesman for President Bush's 2000 campaign and served in various jobs at the White House, including director of the Office of Media Affairs and director of the Office of Global Communication.

He left the White House in 2003 to start Eskew Strategy Group, a consulting firm, which has now been merged into ViaNovo.

Eskew's partners in ViaNovo are Blaine Bull, former legislative director for Bentsen and director of Bentsen's 1988 re-election campaign; James S. Taylor, former special assistant to Bentsen; and Matthew Dowd, chief campaign strategist for Bush-Cheney 2004.