Alex Castellanos

Alex Castellanos
Castellanos in 2013
Born	Alejandro Castellanos 1954 (age 62–63) Havana, Cuba
Alma mater	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Political party	Republican

Alejandro "Alex" Castellanos (born 1954) is a Cuban American political consultant. He has worked on electoral campaigns for Republican candidates including Bob Dole, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, and Mitt Romney. In 2008, Castellanos, a partner at National Media Inc., co-founded Purple Strategies, a bipartisan communications firm. Castellanos is also a regular guest commentator on Meet the Press and a contributor for CNN.

Alex Castellanos was born in Havana, Cuba in 1954 and immigrated to the United States in 1960 or 1961 with his family. He went on to attend the University of North Carolina where he was a National Merit Scholar, a Morehead Scholar and a philosophy major. Castellanos is married and has two children.

Castellanos has worked as a political consultant for Republican candidates for state and federal elections since the 1980s, including six presidential elections. In particular, he has received media attention for his work developing ads for political campaigns and is sometimes referred to as "the father of the attack ad".

Castellanos began his career working on the successful 1984 re-election campaigns for United States Senators Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond. While working on these campaigns Castellanos met Mike Murphy, with whom he later formed the firm Murphy & Castellanos. Their firm worked on Bob Dole's 1988 presidential campaign. In 1989, Castellanos became a partner at National Media, Inc.

In 1990, Castellanos again worked on the re-election campaign for Jesse Helms. During the campaign, Castellanos drew media attention for an ad he created that showed the hands of a white man holding a rejection letter because he had lost a job to a minority worker. The ad, known as "Hands", was criticized by supporters of Helms' opponent, Harvey Gantt for appealing to racial biases of white voters. Castellanos later explained that the intended message behind the ad was that "nobody should get a job, or be denied a job because of the color of their skin." Also in 1990, Castellanos created television commercials for Bob Martinez's re-election campaign for governor of Florida.