# Matt Schlapp **Matthew Schlapp** (born December 18, 1967, Wichita, Kansas) has chaired the [[American Conservative Union]] — and so run the [[Conservative Political Action Conference]] — since June 2014. He is the person who "puts on CPAC" today, and the chairman under whom it went from a movement-conservative trade show to a Trump loyalty rally with franchises abroad. Before CPAC he was a Bush White House political director, a Koch Industries lobbyist, and the founder of his own lobbying shop, [[Cove Strategies]] — a career that sits squarely on the [[Revolving Door]]. > [!note] Succession > ACU chairmen: [[David Keene]] (1984–2011) → [[Al Cárdenas]] (2011–May 2014) → **Schlapp** (elected unanimously June 19, 2014; he had been the ACU's second vice chairman). Wikipedia counts him as the ACU's ninth chairman. ## Career before CPAC - **Kansas.** Notre Dame (B.A.); master's in public policy, Wichita State. From 1994, five years as press secretary, campaign manager and chief of staff to Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS). - **Bush 2000.** Regional political director for George W. Bush's campaign across seven Midwestern and Plains states. - **The recount.** Schlapp is named among the participants in the [[Brooks Brothers Riot]] of November 22, 2000 — the operative-staffed protest that shut down the Miami-Dade recount — identified there as a former Tiahrt aide (Wikipedia's participant list). His own Wikipedia entry goes further and says he helped organize it and led on site; the vault treats participation as established and the organizer role as one source's characterization. See also [[2000 Presidential Election]]. - **White House.** Deputy assistant to the president and White House political director for [[George W. Bush]], May 2003 – February 2005, between Ken Mehlman and Sara Taylor. - **Koch.** Executive director of federal affairs at [[Koch Industries]], 2005–2009; founded [[Cove Strategies]] in 2009 and lobbied for Koch Companies Public Sector through 2010 (Washington Times, 2014). When he took the ACU, the Koch network said it had no ties to him (same source). - **Marriage.** Married [[Mercedes Schlapp]] in 2002; they met working in the Bush White House. She later became Trump's White House director of strategic communications (2017–2019), which made the Schlapps a two-person bridge between CPAC, the Trump White House and the lobbying market. ## Running CPAC (2014–present) **Trump alignment.** Schlapp took over three years after [[Donald Trump]]'s 2011 CPAC debut and oversaw CPAC's full alignment with him; see [[Conservative Political Action Conference]] for the arc (golden statue, coronation straw polls). He publicly defended the "We Are All Domestic Terrorists" banner as tongue-in-cheek — see [[We Are All Domestic Terrorists]]. **2020 election.** While ballots were still being counted in November 2020 he claimed some 9,000 votes had been improperly cast in Nevada; PolitiFact rated it "Pants on Fire." See [[Stop the Steal]] and [[2020 Presidential Election]]. **Pardon lobbying.** In the last weeks of the first Trump term he was paid a reported $750,000 to lobby, December 17–31, 2020, for a pardon for Parker "Pete" Petit, a Trump 2016 Georgia finance chair convicted of securities fraud (per Wikipedia's account of the reporting). **Compensation.** The ACU chair has traditionally been unpaid. Schlapp's CPAC pay rose after his lobbying income fell; Mother Jones, citing the group's most recent IRS Form 990, puts it at "more than $830,000" for tax year 2023. **CPAC International.** Under Schlapp, CPAC franchised abroad — Hungary, Brazil, Australia, Mexico, Japan — making it physical infrastructure for the [[Global New Right Network]]. He also signed the Madrid Charter drafted by Spain's [[Vox (Spain)]] party. The flagship franchise was [[CPAC Hungary]] (2022–2026), which the post-Orbán government revealed the Hungarian state had been paying for; when [[Péter Magyar]] said CPAC remained welcome in Budapest at its own expense, Schlapp said he was "very gratified" by the invitation. **2026: a smaller CPAC.** The March 2026 conference at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine drew what Mother Jones described as a "modest crowd": no Trump (who had attended every CPAC for a decade), no Trump family members on the lineup, no 2028 hopefuls such as [[JD Vance]] or [[Ron DeSantis]], and [[Ken Paxton]] as headliner. Turning Point USA's December convention had drawn far more — the vault's [[Turning Point USA]] page is where the movement's youth-and-spectacle energy now lives. ## The Huffman lawsuit - **Allegation.** Carlton Huffman, a staffer on [[Herschel Walker]]'s 2022 Georgia Senate campaign, alleged that Schlapp groped him during a car ride after drinks in Atlanta on October 19, 2022. - **Suit.** Filed January 2023 (initially as "John Doe"), seeking $9.4 million on sexual-battery and defamation counts against both Matt and [[Mercedes Schlapp]]. Through family attorney Charlie Spies, the Schlapps called the complaint false (NBC News). Later in 2023 the Washington Post reported two further allegations by male staffers, which Schlapp also denied (per Wikipedia's account). - **Resolution.** Dropped in March 2024; Huffman's lawyer said "the parties have resolved their differences" (AP). Rolling Stone and the Washington Times reported that Huffman received $480,000; the Daily Beast reporting they cite says the money came from the ACU's insurer, and Huffman's statement said neither the Schlapps nor the ACU paid him to dismiss the claims. ## Analytical note [[David Keene]] built CPAC as an open stage for the movement's factions; Schlapp turned it into a single-candidate venue and an export product. The two chairmen bracket the [[American Conservative Union]] page's thesis — fusionism to populist nationalism — and Schlapp's own résumé (Bush recount operative, Koch lobbyist, Trump loyalist, Orbán's conference partner) is a short version of how one coalition became the other. The 2026 shrinkage suggests the venue may now matter less than the network it seeded. ## See Also - [[American Conservative Union]] · [[Conservative Political Action Conference]] · [[CPAC Hungary]] - [[David Keene]] · [[Al Cárdenas]] · [[Mercedes Schlapp]] · [[Cove Strategies]] - [[Brooks Brothers Riot]] · [[Stop the Steal]] · [[Global New Right Network]]