Seth Weathers loves The Duke.
In John Wayne’s movies, the political consultant said he finds a do-whatever’s-gotta-be-done attitude that’s easy to embrace.
“Wayne was always the one going to the town, the little sheriff’s given up, can’t fight, criminals are gonna overrun the town, and no one’s gonna fight. All the other guys are a bunch of [wimps],” Weathers says. “And Wayne’s like ‘no, we’re gonna stand up and fight to the death and kill them all.’”
To his clients, the brash 32-year-old Republican strategist wears the white hat. Others would rather see him ride out of town.
Weathers, the former director of Donald Trump's Georgia campaign, has been in the national spotlight recently after Gwinnett County Commissioner Tommy Hunter, a longtime client, called civil rights leader and U.S. Rep. John Lewis a "racist pig" on Facebook. He has stood by Hunter since the day the commissioner's Jan. 14 Facebook post went viral, and he's made plenty of new enemies along the way.
Weathers has publicly sparred with various Democratic officials, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and the attorneys who filed an ethics complaint against Hunter. One of those attorneys, Helen Kim Ho said, "this is not a joke" after Weathers incorrectly questioned whether she had passed the bar.
Weathers has become a second target for those protesting the commissioner, too.
Phyllis Richardson of Snellville called Weathers’ various comments “disrespectul and disingenuous.” Gwinnett County Democratic Party Chairman Gabe Okoye called Weathers “the moral equivalence of Commissioner Hunter.”
"They are birds of the same feather," Okoye said, "but [Weathers] may be worse, because he is more calculating."
During a recent interview at an Atlanta-area steakhouse, Weathers dismissed those assessments with a hearty laugh.
“I don’t give a [expletive] what people think about me,” he said. “I know people say that. But I really don’t [care].”
‘A brass-knuckle fighter’
Weathers’ childhood was spent playing along the train tracks in downtown Norcross. Home-schooled, he jokes that he’s had “basically no education.” He said he read Ronald Reagan’s autobiography when he was about 14 years old and listened to talk radio.
“I don’t know,” Weathers said. “I just always liked politics.”
Weathers did not go to college and started a web design business fresh out of high school. With a second job working the night shift at OfficeMax helping make end’s meet, he began to make his way into the political world, too.
“I’d be stocking [stuff] at night, and then go throw my suit on and go to a luncheon at the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce that day,” he said.
By 2010, Weathers had served as an “e-consultant” for several campaigns. He made the leap to full-service consulting less than two years later.
One of his first clients was Tommy Hunter, who reached out before Hunter’s 2012 county commission run.
Weathers also handled the 2014 campaign of State Sen. Michael Williams (R-Cumming), who in Oct. 2015 became the first member of Georgia's General Assembly to offer public support for Trump. By then, Weathers was already the director of Trump's Georgia campaign.
“I read ‘The Art of the Deal’ at 18, and I’ve followed Trump since then,” Weathers said. “He’s a brass-knuckle fighter. I’d wanted him to run for years.”
Weathers’ official time with the Trump campaign lasted only about two months, though. It’s unclear why Weathers left the campaign, and he calls rumors hinting at a reason for his departure “fake news.”
The official line is that Weathers “transitioned” out of his position to “devote his time to pursuing work with outside organizations and down-ballot races through his firm.”
‘It’s personal’
Weathers now lives in Johns Creek with his wife and two sons, one that’s 4 1/2 and another that’s less than two weeks old. The latter is named Rearden Wayne — Rearden coming from a character in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” Wayne being an homage to the movie cowboy.
On the same day his youngest was born, Weathers did a TV interview on the Hunter situation in the hospital parking lot.
“For most consultants that I interviewed and talked to, it was a job,” Williams, the state senator, said. “To Seth, it’s personal.”
State Rep. Dewey McClain, a Democrat from Lawrenceville, said Weathers advising Hunter to skip out on public comment periods at board meetings is tantamount to encouraging the commissioner not to do his job.
Democratic State Rep. Dar’shun Kendrick, who represents part of Hunter’s commission district, called Weathers’ recent disparaging remarks about her — which came as a response to the Legislative Black Caucus calling for Hunter’s resignation — the “same old tactics” that led to Hunter being on the hotseat to begin with.
But clients love that he's so willing to go to war for them, either in the press or in person. On Valentine's Day, he quickly ushered Hunter out of a tumultuous meeting with the Gwinnett NAACP.
And Weathers likes defending his clients, and the political gamesmanship involved, perhaps more than any other part of his job.
He said he has no regrets about his handling of Hunter — who, in his eyes, has been railroaded after saying “something dumb” that “had nothing to do with racism.”
“I like fighting for the person that’s just gonna get run the [expletive] over if someone else doesn’t fight for them,” he said.
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