Shop Talk: Forti-Fied

By Shira Toeplitz
Roll Call Staff
January 15, 2009

Veteran Republican operative Carl Forti has joined forces with Mike Dubke to form a new consulting firm for strategic communications and public affairs.

“We’ll look to help clients with public policy campaigns, message campaigns, grass-roots efforts, crisis management,” Forti said.

Forti most recently served as vice president of issue advocacy for Freedom’s Watch, the conservative group that sought to boost GOP House and Senate candidates in 2008. Forti arrived there after his work as political director for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. Previously he worked for seven and a half years at the National Republican Congressional Committee, serving as communications director in the 2004 and 2006 cycles as well as running the committee’s independent expenditure program.

Dubke founded the media-buying firm Crossroads Media in 2001. His résumé also includes stints serving as president of Americans for Job Security and as the executive director of the Ripon Society and the Ripon Educational Fund.

The new firm, Black Rock Group, is named for a neighborhood in Buffalo, N.Y. — the hometown of Forti and Dubke. The duo has settled on another waterfront town, Alexandria, Va., to house the new office.