Rob Allyn

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Rob Allyn is President and CEO of Allyn & Company, Inc., the high-profile public relations, advertising, public affairs and political media firm he founded 22 years ago in Dallas, according to the website of VOX Global Mandate which he co-chairs.

"The Allyn & Company agency serves Fortune 500 corporations, industry groups, governmental agencies and heads of state in the U.S., Mexico, the Caribbean and Asia. ... A former speechwriter to Texas Governor Bill Clements, Rob served on Capitol Hill as a PR executive for Frito-Lay and PepsiCo, Inc. A graduate of Georgetown University, he holds a Master of Liberal Arts from SMU. He served on the Texas Governor's Criminal Justice Task Force, the 1993 Young Leaders Conference in Berlin, and led a 1999 democracy-training mission to the West Bank of Palestine for International Republican Institute." [1]

Articles on Allyn & Company's website brag of Rob Allyn's political consulting prowess, especially involving his business and political clients in Mexico. An article titled "Mr. Mexico" in D Magazine, March 2001, reads in part: "One of the first phone calls George W. Bush made after the inauguration was to Mexican president Vicente Fox. The men chatted amiably in Spanish. Perhaps President Bush ought to keep Rob Allyn’s phone number nearby, too—Allyn helped put Fox in power. We caught up with the public relations guru in Mexico City, where he’s already working the levers—on behalf of American businesses. If you want to do business in Mexico, Rob Allyn is the man to know. Last year, Allyn helped elect Vicente Fox to the presidency, knocking off the PRI, the ruling party that had dominated Mexico for 71 years. The long-shot win turned Allyn into a valuable liaison between American business and a changing Mexico. In Mexico City on December 2, the morning after Fox’s inauguration, Allyn is already working the levers. Despite a lingering cold, Allyn is in good spirits as he settles down to breakfast at the Four Seasons Hotel. The day before, he escorted 7-Eleven CEO Jim Keyes and his wife, Margo, to the inauguration, where Fox delivered a speech that Allyn helped craft. The consultant then hosted a reception for soon-to-be Governor Rick Perry, national Republican Party chair Jim Nicholson, and other notables. Tomorrow Allyn will accompany clients from Deloitte & Touche, Mary Kay Cosmetics, American Airlines, and other corporations to a reception at nearby Los Pinos, the Mexican White House." [2]

According to an April 6, 2000, article in the Dallas Observer, Rob Allyn was a key player in the George W. Bush campaign to discredit his rival for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination Senator John McCain. Millionaire Bush supporter Sam Wyly funded Republicans for Clean Air to attack McCain in key states during the 2000 primary campaign. Rob Allyn was paid $46,000 to help create the ads. [3]. (Merrie Spaeth, PR consultant on the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attack on John Kerry, played a bit role in the operation according to web intelligence aggregator NNDB.) [4]

On Sunday, July 9, 2000, The Narco News Bulletin announced in headlines on its website: "Texas GOP Political Consultant Rob Allyn Admits Covert Activity in Mexican Presidential Campaign. 'Democracy Watch' Director Boasts to Dallas Morning News that he was Fox's Consultant All Along. Fox has lost all moral and legal authority to expel human rights observers and journalists from Mexico." The gist of the story, as summarized and documented on The Narco News Bulletin website as a statement to Mexico President Vincente Fox, is: "Today's revelations in the Dallas Morning News, Mr. President-elect, are that: For three years you used foreigners -- and were used by them -- to participate in Mexican politics without disclosing that fact. During these three years you said nothing in defense of the hundreds of foreign human rights observers and journalists expelled from the country under Article 33 of the Mexican constitution (prohibiting direct involvement in Mexican political affairs, but not, legally speaking, journalism or human rights observance). That your foreign campaign operatives created a phony human rights group, 'Democracy Watch,' to 'monitor' the elections. Therefore, when you arrive December 1st to the presidency, you will have already lost all legal and moral credibility to continue the policy of expelling and deporting foreign journalists and human rights observers from Chiapas, Guerrero or any other part of Mexico. And you can thank Rob Allyn for that." [5]

According to the website of Ace Cash Express, which " operates 1,230 check cashing, short-term consumer loan stores in the United States," Rob Allyn joined their Board of Directors in 2004. [6]

External links

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