9 Out of 10 White Supremacists Prefer Rory McShane

The Las Vegas consultant billing $1.65 million off Idaho campaigns worked for the worst people in American politics, and Sen. Jim Risch hired him to run his campaign.

Rory McShane runs a Las Vegas political campaign shop, now called RMC Strategy (Revolutionizing Microtargeted Campaigns), and his own clients page reads like a who’s who list for national extremism. Paul Gosar. Andy Biggs. Bob Good. Corey Stewart. Jim Marchant. McShane sells these associations as a credential, which tells you exactly who they are trying to attract.

McShane is a leading practitioner of confrontational politics. His firm’s Vice President, Woodrow Johnston, shamelessly used that playbook to help a violent enforcement group try to take over the Nevada Republican Party and be an intimidation force behind their congressional candidate client. The Nevada Current reported that Johnston used a group chat to recruit Proud Boys members to attend a post-election rally on behalf of the Nevada Republican Party. The rally was organized in support of Paul Gosar, one of McShane’s own clients, and Johnston reached out directly to Proud Boys leadership to staff it. Johnston wrote those messages. McShane’s response after the messages were leaked to the press was: “I have no reason to believe that’s the case. That would be the first time I’ve heard of it.” He doubled down on his support for Johnston and kept him on as his top lieutenant.

While McShane stood behind the tactics, one client was mortified when she learned what happened. In August 2023, Republican Nashville mayoral candidate Alice Rolli fired McShane within hours of learning that story, only after burning two-thirds of her campaign budget with his firm.

Rory McShane (Instagram)

The rogues’ gallery

Paul Gosar enjoyed the Proud Boys’ support and did nothing to distance himself from that association. He also became the first sitting member of Congress to keynote Nick Fuentes’s white-nationalist America First conference, then posed for photos with Fuentes the next day, and the U.S. House eventually censured him for posting an animated video depicting himself killing a colleague. Anthony Kern sat under a nine-count fake-elector indictment in Arizona. Liz Harris got expelled from the Arizona House 46 to 13. Corey Stewart called an open antisemite “one of my personal heroes.” Dennis Hof won a Nevada Assembly seat after dying in his own brothel three weeks before Election Day.

Remember how much trouble Idaho Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin landed in when she got caught filming a video appearance at Nick Fuentes’s Groyper conference? These associations end political careers.

McShane bragged about these candidates on his website. Very fine people indeed.

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How the money flows from a national network into Idaho hit pieces

The likely bridge is Club for Growth, a McShane client whose logo sat on his page since 2022. Club for Growth’s former VP of Government Affairs, Andy Roth, left to found the State Freedom Caucus Network, which stood up Freedom Caucus chapters in Idaho and other states on a farm-team model. The Idaho director of that network was Maria Nate, wife of Idaho Freedom Foundation President Ron Nate and the whip behind the Gang of 8. McShane’s shop helped write those nasty mailers to help reelect the slate she directed. Many of SFCN legislators went on to become McShane clients where they laundered culture war narratives faster than the finance reports could be surfaced.

If Club for Growth sounds familiar, that's because they were one of the biggest backers of IFF Vice Chairman Bryan Smith’s failed campaigns to unseat Congressman Mike Simpson.

Across the 2025-2026 cycle, per Idaho Secretary of State Sunshine records and federal filings compiled in the Idaho Extremism dossier, McShane’s firm billed $1,246,038 in Idaho state expenditures across 414 records from 36 filing entities, plus $403,281 in federal payments, for a combined $1,649,319. The billing ran through six different aliases: McShane LLC, RMC, RMC LLC, RMC Strategy, RMC Strategies, and one called Revolutionizing Microtargeted Campaigns. Fragmenting filings across six aliases made it harder for voters and watchdogs to trace the full scope of the firm’s influence in Idaho.

Some of the biggest money moved through Scott Herndon, Heather Lauer, and Brent Regan-controlled Republican central committees: Bonner County’s committee paid $476,867, Blaine County’s Common Sense PAC paid $241,354, and Kootenai County’s committee paid $190,990. In each county, the local party apparatus ran independent expenditures against sitting Republican legislators from its own party, and McShane’s shop helped craft the dishonest hit pieces that landed in voters’ mailboxes.

The man who drafted Idaho’s party platform was on McShane’s payroll

The man McShane has on the ground in Idaho is Bjorn Handeen. Per his own public bio, Handeen is a “RMC Strategy Strategist.” He was also, at the same time, the sitting Chair of the Idaho Republican Party Platform Committee. The document that defined what it officially meant to be a Republican in Idaho was being drafted by a man on the payroll of a Las Vegas campaign firm.

It gets worse. Handeen’s Platform Committee wrote the “eliminate the property tax” plank onto the 2026 Idaho Republican platform, and his paying campaign client, Senator Scott Herndon, ran that exact slogan as his headline issue. I have already shown you why that promise was arithmetic fiction in “Scott Herndon’s Property Tax Outrage Machine.” The relevant fact here was simpler: the Platform Committee Chair wrote his client’s campaign slogan into the party’s governing document, and omission of the disclosure of that relationship at the recent Idaho GOP convention appears to be part of their strategy.

They did not care who the candidate was

McShane found a way to profit off of candidates who lacked morals, character, and competence. David Worley was the clearest example of that in Idaho, and the numbers backed it up: his 2026 Senate campaign against Sen. Jim Guthrie paid RMC $50,118, the largest Idaho legislative candidate invoice of the cycle. Per the Idaho Army National Guard relief documentation cited in the Worley dossier, Worley said of a subordinate, verbatim: “well, its not like I raped [First Sergeant redacted] well, not yet.” The Assistant Adjutant General called that remark “an extreme lapse of judgment” and relieved Worley of command for “demonstrated counterproductive leadership that reduced morale, eroded trust and showed little respect for others.” Six months later, McShane’s firm was running his Senate campaign. Idaho Republican voters saw through it and beat him 53 to 47%.

Then there was Chad Christensen, a documented Oath Keepers and III% cosplay militia member who paid McShane LLC $30,917 for his 2026 House race and lost 56 to 44. And there was the client who carried more documented extremism than the entire roster combined: Dave Reilly. He is infamous for his role at the violent Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, his Identity Evropa white supremacist group membership, and for openly praising former Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler. Reilly even appeared twice on Iranian state television to mock Jewish people. Reilly posted on his own X account, in December 2025, “Nick Fuentes is right about the Jews.” McShane’s firm produced mailers for the same North Idaho county party that endorsed him.

Iranian ally David Reilly and Sen. Jim Risch at the 2026 Idaho GOP convention (x.com)

Senator Risch hired him anyway

Senator Jim Risch hired Rory McShane to help run his 2026 US Senate reelection campaign.

Per FEC records cited in the dossier, Idaho’s senior United States senator paid McShane’s firm $403,281. Our senior senator, a man who served in public office in this state for more than four decades, put the Proud Boys shop on his campaign payroll.

There are plenty of Idaho Republican strategists who could have handled the reelection campaign. So why did Idaho’s senior senator hire the Las Vegas-based operative who weaponizes contention and deception against Republican incumbents?

The far-right machine in this state spent years branding Risch a “RINO,” a contentious slur it hung on anyone it could not control. Perhaps hiring the machine’s own preferred vendor bought a kind of protection. When your consultant was the same shop working with the IFF-aligned far-right network, those vile mean tweets suddenly went quiet.

To say this looks bad is an understatement. Even IFF fired Dave Reilly after they got caught working with him. Now Risch has hired Reilly’s consultant and gives exclusive interviews with another known Idaho white supremacist, Brian Almon, creator of the far-right propaganda site called the Gem State Chronicle.

As a long-time supporter of Sen. Risch, I never could have imagined him endorsing white nationalism and antisemitism, yet here he is using donor money to fund extremists who profit off of dehumanizing Americans.

It’s insulting to people like me who’ve sacrificed so much to fight this dangerous threat to our state.

Senator Risch owes Idaho Republicans an explanation

Senator Risch, please explain this hire. Tell us why, with a state full of capable Idaho Republican consultants, you sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Las Vegas firm that the Gosar wing, the anti-Israel wing, and Iranian ally Dave Reilly all used.

Did your team fail to run background checks on the Las Vegas team hired to publicly represent your reelection efforts? Were you aware of this network’s ongoing media attacks against Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East?

With all due respect, Senator Risch, you are one of the most powerful men in the world, with access to sensitive classified data and National Security briefings.

There is absolutely zero excuse for this intelligence lapse in your own campaign.

You have an offramp here to do the right thing. Cut ties with these extremists and publicly disavow them. The alternative is that the very people you hired to help you win reelection may tarnish the decades of good work you’ve done for Idahoans.

The internet is forever; how you choose to act now will impact your legacy.

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About the Author

Gregory Graf is the creator of Political Potatoes and a lifelong conservative Republican who lives in Star, Idaho.

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Disclaimer: The following is intended to convey an opinion on newsworthy events of public concern regarding public figures and/or public officials in exercising their official duties. No implications or inferences—beyond those explicitly stated in the preceding— are intended to be conveyed or endorsed by the Author. Wherever available, hyperlinks have been provided to allow readers to directly access any underlying assertions of fact upon which this opinion is based.