Here’s how this USMC vet became a political consultant and RNC delegate
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- After getting a taste of wearing uniforms and drilling while attached to a JROTC unit in high school, New Orleans native Adrian Bruneau joined the Marine Corps on his eighteenth birthday.
"My father was a colonel in the Air Force and he was not very happy about that," he recalls. "He came straight home and said, 'Son, don't you know people get killed in the Marine Corps? I said, 'Dad, I'm pretty sure people get killed in the Air Force flying and whatever too.'"
Bruneau wound up spending 15 years in the Corps -- 8 on active duty and 7 in the reserves -- primarily working as an avionics technician. "If it had an electronic heartbeat in an aircraft I could work on it," he says. "Whether it was nav gear, satellite gear . . . anything that was electronic -- not electric, but electronic -- that needed to be fixed I could fix it."
But while Bruneau got a lot of satisfaction out of his military service, his real passion was politics, largely because his father had been in the Louisiana state legislature for 32 years. As soon as he got off of active duty, he walked into the State House and found a job as an aide to a state senator. After working as a staffer at the state level for awhile, he decided he wanted to try his hand at working on political campaigns.
"I asked Ron Forman — a candidate for mayor of New Orleans and a longtime mentor — if I could have a job on his campaign even though I was a Republican and he was a Democrat — a conservative one, but still," Bruneau remembers. "It was an interesting race for mayor because it was right after Hurricane Katrina and there were a lot of issues to figure out for the people there. After that, things just kind of snowballed."
He formed a corporation -- "BHC" -- to give him some business and legal protections. Bruneau says, "My dad told me, 'Somebody's going to blame you for something at some point in time, so you'd better have the legal protection to back it up.' "
He followed that race (that was won by high-profile figure Ray Nagin) with a pivot into judicial elections — "popularity contests for lawyers," as he puts it. And he made it a point to work on both Republican and Democratic campaigns.
"New Orleans is a little blue dot in a sea of red," Bruneau says as a way to justify his bi-partisan track record. But as his network and impact grew along with his desire to work beyond the border of New Orleans, a trusted friend who worked at the national level told him he had to pick a side.
Bruneau focused on the Republican Party, and his first job was working on the campaign of Ilario Pantano, another Marine Corps veteran, who was running to fill North Carolina's Second District congressional seat. Pantano, who first came to national prominence after being accused of murdering innocent civilians in Haditha, Iraq, while serving as a platoon leader — an allegation for which he was ultimately not charged — lost the race. But that didn't deter Bruneau from jumping right back on the campaign trail with another hopeful.
"It's just like a military campaign, really," Bruneau says while describing the nuts-and-bolts of running political campaigns. "You got your ground game, your air game, and your logistics. Air game is your media, your television. On the ground side, you organize people and get the fire going, which I actually enjoy better."
He doesn't enjoy the fundraising part of the process. "Not my space," he says. "I just stay away from that. I'm a Marine. Go stick me in the ground and let me do my thing."
Bruneau admits the political world can be frustrating at times. "You serve two masters," he says. "The candidate always has a group of insiders — his 'kitchen cabinet,' people he's had around him his whole life. Sometimes those people were helpful, but other times they'd get the candidate's ear and I'd have to spend hours talking him out of a bad idea. I've seen good people lose because they listened to the wrong people and I've seen candidates who I never thought could win do so because they formed a good team and listened to them."
This week, Bruneau is in Cleveland because he has another role in politics beyond running Gulf South Strategies, the current name of his consulting firm. He's an RNC delegate from Louisiana.
"Back in 2012 my business partner and I reached out to the Trump campaign through the state party chairman, but soon thereafter we were told that Trump was going to endorse Mitt Romney," he says. "This time, the Trump campaign came to us and said, 'Hey, fellas, we think we're going to do this again.' "
Bruneau advised the Trump campaign on who should be part of their team in Louisiana, and because of that effort, he was asked if he was willing to be an at-large delegate. He jumped at the opportunity.
"A lot of people have said, 'Gee whiz, Adrian, you're crazy supporting Trump,' " he admits. "I said, 'Nope, I read his book when I was a junior in high school and I've been fascinated by his business every since.' "
Bruneau admits that his path has been unorthodox, but he thinks politics is a viable follow-on career for those leaving the military.
"I tell former servicemembers that getting into politics is a relatively easy transition to make," Bruneau says. "Politicians naturally have an appreciation for military service and are inclined to hire vets."
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