George Gorton (1947 – 2022) was a Republican political consultant from California, who worked on the elections of presidents, senators, governors, mayors, and international leaders in Russia, Panama, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Canada, among other places.
His four-monthKlosterman, Chuck (2022). The Nineties. New York: Penguin Press. p. 186. . involvement in Boris Yeltsin's reelection campaign, along with his partners Joe Shumate and Dick Dresner, was the subject of a ten-page cover story in Time magazine, and a major motion picture (Spinning Boris) where George, the central figure in the movie, is played by Jeff Goldblum. Gorton pretended to be a flat-screen TV salesman, but was in fact helping Yeltsin's politically inexperienced daughter Tatiana Dyachenko to run Yeltsin's campaign. He was paid $250,000. Along with collaborators Richard Dresner and Joe Shumate, he leveraged Russian fears of civil war to present Yeltsin as the more stable choice.
Gorton served on the national campaign teams of Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. He managed all of Governor Pete Wilson's successful gubernatorial and US Senate races. He was the first political consultant hired by Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2000 and was the chief strategist for his campaign for governor in 2003.
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