On May 5, as UA President Robert C. Robbins began rolling out the schoolβs coronavirus response, he made an appearance on MSNBCβs βMeet the Press Dailyβ and detailed the basis of a plan for how students would return to the Tucson campus in the fall.
βWeβre going to test, weβre going to trace, and weβre going to treat,β he said.
Robbins, who is wrapping up his third year as the UA president, used that message to propel himself through a media tour of roughly two dozen of the nationβs morning shows, cable news programs and newspapers in the weeks since.
Behind the scenes, Robbinsβ elevation from cardiac surgeon to a must-book coronavirus guest was largely the work of a deal quietly brokered by the University of Arizona Foundation, the schoolβs nonprofit fundraising wing.
The foundation enlisted the help of Cavalry LLC, primarily known for its connection to Republican U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to provide media access to Robbins and others to promote the schoolβs response and to help it weather decreases in revenue and philanthropic gifts caused by the pandemic.
βThe results and the outcomes have been exceptional,β the UA said. βThe foundation reports more than $650,000 has come in from parents and alumni as a result of the media blitz to support the testing and research programs and a record number of prospective students committed to the university in May.β
The agreement has irked some UA faculty members, who cited a lack of transparency regarding the firmβs work, and that the public-relations campaign came as employees face $90-plus-million in pay cuts brought on by the pandemic.
It remains unknown how much Cavalry is being paid, although the UA has said no state or tuition money is being used. The school hasnβt said who arranged the agreement, citing a policy against releasing foundation contracts and gift agreements. The foundation is typically not subject to public-records laws.
βIt does raise a lot of red flags, mainly because we donβt have a lot of answers,β said Celeste Gonzalez de Bustamante, who is on the steering committee for the Coalition for Academic Justice and is an associate professor at the school of journalism.
In response to questions submitted by the Star, the university provided a one-page statement praising Cavalryβs work for the UA, pointing to Robbinsβ interviews βacross the political media spectrumβ on CNN, Fox News, NBC and ABC and with hosts like Savannah Guthrie, Neil Cavuto and Wolf Blitzer.
βIt worked because President Robbins is an expert medical professional who was fully transparent about how and why the university was serious about returning to campus,β the statement said.
Knowing those in the know
The day before his afternoon appearance on MSNBC, Robbins was asked about the relationship with Cavalry during a meeting with the schoolβs faculty senate.
In response to the first question, about how much the firm is being paid and the scope of its work, Robbins started his response by saying, βI donβt know.β
Questions regarding Cavalry continued. Faculty members expressed concern about the firmβs involvement with hyperpartisan causes. They prodded Robbins about whether the work could instead be handled in-house. They asked if foundation money could be otherwise used to offset a projected $250 million in losses at the UA.
Robbins said the agreement was done with no public money and that Cavalry is βsimply helping us get on these talk shows, on the news, in print media.β
He said itβs important to amplify the steps the UA took in the wake of the coronavirus. Thatβs included swiftly moving to distance learning, launching a task force led by UA distinguished professor and former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona to plan reentry back to campus, and a goal of testing 250,000 first responders and health-care workers for antibodies statewide, spearheaded by $3.5 million in state funding.
βThe last three mornings Iβve been up at 4 oβclock doing East Coast shows,β Robbins said, according to a publicly available recording of the meeting. βI donβt think we can do that on our own. We can try, but these are people who have inside connections with all the major networks and the newspapers. I think itβs important for us to tell the story that weβre taking this very, very seriously.β
He specifically addressed his interview with Guthrie, the co-anchor of NBCβs βToday,β a UA alum and Tucson native, and whether someone locally could have arranged that.
βI text with Savannah frequently. What she usually does is say, βTalk to my producer.β I donβt know her producer,β Robbins said. βThese people know her producer.β
For many professors, those explanations havenβt been enough.
Jessica Summers, the chair of the faculty senate, said many questions remain, including why the university picked Cavalry, the price tag, how long the agreement is set to last, and the purpose of the hiring.
βIt would have been helpful for the executive leadership team or the senior leadership team to disclose this information before we started seeing the president in media outlets because not only did we not know the content of what he was going to share, we didnβt know this was a strategic plan of his,β said Summers, who is also an associate professor in the department of teaching, learning and sociocultural studies.
She noted that she understands the benefits of wanting to get a message out to prospective students who might be concerned about the universityβs future plans, but the lack of transparency has caused more issues than itβs solved.
She said professors have found inconsistencies in the messages portrayed on a national audience and those shared with faculty and staff.
βIn terms of how itβs affected morale on campus, I think itβs been damaging because heβs not talking about these plans and these intentions and the message with shared governance beforehand. We wish that he would,β Summers said.
More than a half-dozen professors reached by the Star said they either found out about the relationship from their colleagues, or didnβt know about it. Bustamante and Summers each said theyβve heard concerns from roughly 20 professors.
Farid Matuk, an associate professor of English who found out about the agreement during a social and behavioral sciences webinar, said βfaculty are not naΓ―ve about the financial crisisβ and understand the media appearances. But he said the lack of transparency, as Robbins asked the faculty to buy in to sweeping pay cuts, shows heβs not reciprocating a relationship.
βWhen you ask employees to take a pay cut, you increase our stake. ... Thereβs been no reciprocal increase in shared governance and transparency in government,β he said. βWe fully see the value of having the president out on morning shows, but I think for me, the anxiety is what are the priorities and expectations and why work with such a partisan group. ... Why this one?β
In its statement, the UA said promoting what the school is doing in the face of COVID-19 was meant to βimpact as many prospective students, their parents and supporters as possible to emphasize that we have a plan and the means to make it happen.β
βPublicity through regional and national news media was the most effective and efficient manner to get the message out, and we werenβt going to spend state or tuition money on it,β the statement said.
βWe make their fight our fightβ
The βWhat We Doβ section on Cavalryβs website promotes the firmβs work with Fortune 500 companies, trade associations, political and nonprofit clients that is done with a goal in mind: βWe make their fight our fight.β
The firmβs three founding partners have close ties to McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, including prior and continuing campaign work. That includes Josh Holmes, his former campaign chief of staff and an Arizona State University graduate, whom McConnell said βpitched a perfect gameβ after a big win during the 2014 election cycle, according to Politico Magazine.
Public accounts show a majority of the firmβs work is in politics. The firm received nearly $13 million as a vendor during the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections, according to data tracked by OpenSecrets.org.
The firmβs work earned it the No. 2 spot on Politicoβs 2017 Playbook Power List after having βthe best election cycle of any shop in D.C.β The article noted its efforts on GOP campaigns, the representation of Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson, but most importantly the fact that McConnell consults the firm on his moves βand his moves matter, because they will help (U.S. President Donald) Trump succeed.β
The firm has also been credited for coining the βCocaine Mitchβ epithet, a moniker initially meant to tie McConnell to a drug bust on a ship owned by the family of his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, by a West Virginia Senate candidate. The firm later used the phrase as a fundraising effort for McConnell on things like T-shirts.
While the firmβs political connections are clear, the remaining scope of its business remains unclear. In response to questions specifically about whether they advise any other universities, John Ashbrook, one of the founding partners, deferred comment to the UA Foundation.
Summers said Steve Moore, the UAβs senior vice president and chief marketing and communications officer, told her during a meeting that Cavalry was vetted βand that they had a good reputation as far as he was concerned.β
βThat was really the only additional information that Iβve gotten about Cavalry in a meeting,β she said.
The professors said that lack of information prompts their other concerns.
βThe university is a Hispanic-serving institution. Itβs a university that sits on Native land. The optics really arenβt good when you have the UA Foundation working in whatever form that is with a hyperpartisan organization called Cavalry coming in to strategize the UAβs next PR move,β Bustamante said.
βThe anxiety by many of us is the donor or foundation ... is going to at some point expect a reciprocal change in policy that would reflect the priorities of conservative think tanks or legislators? Might there be an expectation of a deepening relationship between this donor or foundation?β said Matuk, the English professor, adding that heβs wondering how it affects the Arizona Board of Regentsβ efforts to promote freedom of expression on campus.
In response to questions about whether the board has concerns about the relationship, foundation spokeswoman Sarah Harper said βthe board does not review foundation contracts.β
βThe board understands that services of Cavalry LLC were engaged to help bolster national media exposure in the effort to inform the public about the University of Arizonaβs plan to welcome students to campus in the fall,β she said in a prepared statement.
Spending money to make money
Like most institutions, universities spend millions to promote their brands, whether itβs on campaigns to attract students or faculty, or to raise money. But experts said itβs on the university to be transparent about how those dollars, a lot of which are spent on outside firms, move the schoolβs goals forward.
Anthony DβAngelo, a professor of practice at Syracuse Universityβs Newhouse School of Public Communications, said the UA Foundationβs deal with Cavalry raises questions, specifically the fact that βthere are lots and lots of public relations firms that donβt take on that kind of political work.β
He said UA leaders should have anticipated questions.
βIf itβs perceived that youβre not being transparent in your motives or your mode of execution or how youβre spending money or what youβre going to get out of it, that gives the public, on whom your existence ultimately depends, an impression that may hinder you as an organization,β said DβAngelo, who was previously the chair of the Public Relations Society of America.
At the UA, itβs hard to quantify how much money is being spent to promote the schoolβs brand.
An analysis of in-house expertise shows 15 professionals in the presidentβs office and communications wings are paid more than $1.6 million. And many departments have their own communications professionals, some of whom make upward of $200,000.
The UA spent $4.5 million for both internal and outside work on the production and disbursement of its most recent marketing campaign, dubbed βWonder Makes Us,β according to figures provided by the school.
The UA Foundation has its own communications and marketing staff, but itβs unknown how much it receives. Leaders spent $13.5 million on nonemployees during the 2018 fiscal year, according to the most recent federal filing. The nonprofit is required to list its five highest-paid consultants, which made $189,000 to $418,000 for services like software development, transportation, investment and auditing, but not communications and marketing.
DβAngelo said that breakdown mirrors what is seen at other universities.
βNot only in terms of public relations, but in terms of strategic planning, in terms of government relations, it becomes a question of how does an organization get the right kind of expertise to assist it in moving its main goals forward? It usually ends up being a combination of external consultants and internal staff,β he said.
He acknowledged that branding has become more important as the economy has crashed due to the pandemic, with the financial ramifications of the coronavirus hitting universities hard with drops in donations, enrollments and revenues.
βI think all organizations right now are under incredible financial pressure, which is a whole other very significant concern, in addition to the public-health concerns that universities have,β DβAngelo said. βItβs a very, very intense organizational environment right now. All organizations get up every morning and study this all day. Itβs kind of this constant read and react as they try to apply evidence-based decision making for what they do next.β
Itβs no different at the UA.
Robbins noted to the faculty in a late April email that the school has incurred losses of $58 million in fiscal year 2020 and projects $97 million in losses by June 30 due to decreases in enrollment, drops in resident housing applications and more. He added that auxiliary decreases included athletic revenue losses, as sports have been canceled, as well as an unspecified decrease in philanthropic gifts.
In his faculty senate comments, Robbins said the university was exploring all options to offset the financial crisis, including selling some of the schoolβs art collection, selling buildings and reducing administrators. But dipping into the endowment, which topped $1 billion in 2018, is βusually the last step before insolvency and bankruptcy,β he said.