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Nancy Pfotenhauer , formerly Nancy Mitchell , née Nancy Wadley (* 1964 ) is an American lobbyist . Pfotenhauer became known as vice president of the business association Citizens for a Sound Economy and president of the Independent Women's Forum (IWF). In 2008 she was a member of the advisory board of the US presidential candidate John McCain .

Life and work

Around 1980, Nancy Mitchell began studying economics at George Mason University , which she graduated with a master's degree. During her studies, Pfotenhauer worked as a research assistant for Walter Williams .

In 1987 she got a job as a business advisor with the Republican National Committee . In 1988 she was appointed chief economist on that body of the Republican Party . For the election campaign team of then presidential candidate George HW Bush , Mitchell contributed expertise to the Federal Trade Commission and the Interstate Commerce Commission . While the first body dealt with trade issues for the federal government in Washington, the latter dealt with trade between the individual US states. In the Bush administration (1988–1992), Pfotenhauer was a member of the Council for Competitiveness founded by Vice President Dan Quayle , a body that was supposed to develop proposals for increasing the economic competitiveness of the United States, but which was often accused of basically nothing else as a tool to fight for industry and against environmental protection. In 1990 Pfotenhauer worked for Senator William L. Armstrong .

After the 1992 Democratic victory , Mitchell assumed the chairmanship of Citizens for a Sound Economy , an organization set up by Koch Industries , one of the largest petrochemical companies in the United States, which had also co-financed Mitchell's studies to contribute to the "recovery of the economy". From 1996 to 2001, Mitchell was the top lobbyist for Koch Industries. In 2001, Mitchell divorced her first husband, Daniel Mitchell, who was a business advisor for the Heritage Foundation . In the same year she married Kurt Pfotenhauer, the chief of staff of US Senator Gordon H. Smith .

At that time, Mitchell / Pfotenhauer also assumed the presidency of the Independent Women's Forum (IWF), an advocacy group established by Koch Industries. In 2002, Pfotenhauer was appointed by then Attorney General John Ashcroft to the National Committee on Violence Against Women , an advisory staff that deals with the issue of violence against women and how to deal with it. In 2003 Pfotenhauer took over the presidency of the Americans for Prosperity association .

In 2007 Pfotenhauer was appointed to the campaign team of Arizona Senator John McCain, who was running for the Republican Party nomination for the presidency at the time. In the following months Pfotenhauer supported McCain in the party's primary campaign. After McCain was able to prevail in March 2008 against his competitors for the nomination as presidential candidate of the Republican Party, Pfotenhauer took part in the election campaign of the Republicans against the Democratic Party for their candidate Barack Obama . Pfotenhauer primarily took on tasks as an advisor to McCain's staff, and she also acted publicly as spokesperson for the McCain campaign, particularly on issues of energy policy. To this end, she appeared regularly as a representative of the Republican point of view on television programs such as The Situation Room or Larry King Live . In this role, Pfotenhauer was particularly noticeable because of his energetic support for drilling for oil off the American coast ( offshore oil drilling ).

Because of the arbitrary manner in which Pfotenhauer argued in favor of the interests of the McCain campaign, which she supported, was viewed by her critics as one of the most controversial figures in the American presidential campaign. For example, the pro-democracy watchdog website The Wonk Room insulted Pfotenhauer as “McCain's dirty energy spokeswoman”. The television comedian Jon Stewart, on the other hand, criticized Pfotenhauer in a contribution for his satirical news program The Daily Show that she practiced a shameless double standard when evaluating political events in the context of her appearances on news programs. In support of this allegation, he presented a series of clips with excerpts from interviews by Pfotenhauer in various political programs, in which she commented on identical situations with diametrically opposed statements: On the one hand, she answered in an excerpt from early summer 2008, in which she was asked how she stood up to attacks on the Democrat Hillary Clinton that it could not be acceptable for a woman to use the “victim card” in politics and that women should not demand to be approached differently than men in the political arena. In a second clip that captured her reaction to similar attacks on Republican Sarah Palin , Pfotenhauer complained that she would see it as unbearable from a “female point of view” to deal with a woman in this way.

Pfotenhauer caused a stir and criticism again in October 2008 when she called the southern parts of the US state of Virginia "the real Virginia" and thus implicitly branded the northern parts of the state - dominated by the Democrats - as un-American.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See, Archived Copy ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
2. ^ The Daily Show, September 3, 2008.
3. ↑ See archived copy ( memento of the original from October 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Web links

• Nancy Pfotenhauerstrasse in the nndb (English)