The Many Sides of NCPAC
He's a libertarian, a rock-and-roller, a painter, a raconteur, a dedicated bureaucrat who was ready, he wrote last month, "to throw myself on the grenade" for his bosses. A man of strong opinions, vividly expressed.
Steffen's submissions to FreeRepublic.com were posted under the name "NCPAC." That's short for the National Conservative Political Action Committee, which funded attack advertising against liberal candidates. Steffen was its spokesman in the early 1980s.
Joe Steffen, right, with Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich, before Steffen got fired because of his postings on the Free Republic Web site.
(WMAR-TV2 via AP)
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Steffen also was an inveterate e-mailer during his two years in the Ehrlich administration. The governor has said Steffen handled "troubleshooting" at departments including human resources and juvenile services before he moved to the Maryland Insurance Administration. In response to Maryland Public Information Act requests filed by news organizations, the state released 14,500 e-mails sent from Steffen's government computer.
An accidental self-portrait emerges from these e-mails and the Web musings of NCPAC. It's a pointillist likeness -- self-dramatizing and selectively incomplete. But also passionate, confident, whimsical, engaging.
The libertarian spars electronically with those whose conservatism relies on religious conviction. He's for overturning Roe v. Wade and against a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, because both represent federal intervention. He thinks abortion rights and gay marriage should be decided by the states. He defends pro-choice conservatives like Ehrlich.
He likes to name-drop conservatives he has worked or volunteered for over the years -- Reagan, Richard Viguerie, Terry Dolan, Brent Bozell, Craig Shirley, Linda Chavez, Pat Buchanan, Ehrlich.
His hero is Reagan. He believes the generation of twenty- and thirty-something Republicans who were nurtured on Reaganism will complete the conservative revolution Reagan ignited. They have a "libertarian streak a mile wide" that might surprise the social conservatives ("the right wing's version of the nanny state"), he writes. They understand that "freedom is also FUN." They "like to rock out."
Steffen likes to rock out, too. He once led an expedition of state workers to see Cheap Trick. When Rolling Stone announced last fall that Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" was the greatest rock song of all time, NCPAC -- while offering Dylan props for lyrically libertarian leanings -- begged to differ: "I truly believe 'Human Being' " -- a primitive guitar-pounding anthem by the New York Dolls -- "is the greatest rock song ever."
He was the self-appointed jester, sending out quips, quotes, song lyrics, tender doggerel to a circle of friends he selected "because you've got something: a gleam in the eye, a devilish grin, a propensity for abuse, a lack of self-control . . . something!"
At the same time, other state employees now say he was trying to get them fired, which he also wrote about: "I am unofficially looking for 'OUTS!' to be made (per [Appointments Secretary Larry] Hogan's request)."
And some of his dispatches have an over-the-top quality. You wonder if he is kidding. NCPAC summed himself up:
"Anti-tax, pro-gun, pro-premptive defense measures, pro-free speech, pro-state's rights: That's me, a social darwinist with a Jack and Coke in one hand and a hand rolled smoke in the other. My nicknames in political campaign circles are 'The Prince of Darkness,' 'Doctor Death,' and 'Doctor Ice.' (as in ice water in the veins). When I am involved professionally in a campaign, I play hard. I play to win. Period."
King of the Jungle
In the 1977 yearbook at Franklin High School in Reisterstown, a suburb of Baltimore, Steffen's senior quote was: "C'mon, the jungle is ours and it's time to rule it like the King and Queen that we are."
Steffen's first wife, Cathleen, says the message was for her. They had met doing community theater. The line in the yearbook was about seizing life, she says.
"Joe's always had a grand feeling about himself," says Cathleen Steffen, who now teaches theater in suburban Baltimore. "A lot of actors do. You're a little bit in a different world. You're looking down on the rest of the populace. He's always been that way, and he still is."
In a sense, Steffen was forging his identity from scratch, having been adopted as an infant, according to his ex-wife.
"My biological mother was single and 16 when I was born," NCPAC wrote last June in a discussion about abortion and choice. "I thank God for her everyday, even though I've never met her. In the end, though, I know having me and giving me up for adoption was her choice. If I, as an adopted 'bastard' can understand that, why oh why, is it so difficult for others to see?"
Cathleen and Joe were married on the last day of 1977. They have two daughters and a son, now 26, 22 and 18.
After high school, Steffen went to work. He operated a band saw for a time, did promotions for a lawn-care company, his former wife recalls. With less time for stage acting, he and his wife became regular players of Dungeons & Dragons, the elaborate role-playing game. He wrote an unpublished novel with a D&D-inspired plot, also lots of poetry, and he painted.
He also apparently wrote piquant letters to the editor. This is how he got his job at NCPAC.
