Hotmire has enviable Washington career

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

As a student at Crestview High School two decades ago, Erik Hotmire learned about American history from teacher Joe Steffan. Over the last 15 years, though, Hotmire has been directly involved in making a lot of American history as a staff member for two U.S. senators, a White House aide to President George W. Bush and a senior advisor at the Securities & Exchange Commission.

It’s a distinguished career that’s likely got a long way to go, and it all started at local radio station WERT. “I was actually hired at WERT when I was 15,” Hotmire said during a recent visit to Van Wert that included a retirement party for his mother, Juanita, longtime director of the First United Methodist Church Preschool.

Hotmire said he did the typical duties of radio station employees: he played music, did the weather and even was a color commentator alongside sportscaster Scott Allen for local sports contests.

But it was the time he spent on the “news side” of the station, including a summer as “acting” afternoon news director while he was attending Taylor University in the early 1990s, that provided him with the right tools for a fascinating career.

“Frankly, that was the foundation for my understanding of basic journalism, which I still use today,” Hotmire said.

While he acknowledges that his time covering Van Wert County news was instrumental in teaching him journalistic fundamentals, Hotmire said the job could be hard — especially when those in the news were people he and his family knew personally.

Moreover, as valuable as his hometown media experience was, it was the contacts he made working for Fort Wayne, Ind., media outlets that led to his first Washington, D.C., position. In addition to working at WERT, Hotmire had a part-time job at WAJI-FM radio in Fort Wayne — then “Majic 95” — and also worked for a Christian radio station there. In addition, he also had an internship as a PR person for what was then the Fort Wayne Wizards minor league baseball team. “It was a crazy summer, but I was young,” Hotmire said. Hotmire laughs when he recalls that, like many radio personalities, he got a new on-air name while working at WAJI.

“I had always used my normal name, but the program director didn’t prefer my last name, so he gave me Erik Davis,” Hotmire said with a smile. He added that Davis was a name he used only while at the Fort Wayne radio station.

After graduating from Taylor, Hotmire began working as the afternoon assignment editor at WPTA-TV, Channel 21, in Fort Wayne, sending reporters out to cover fires, murders and all sorts of other local happenings. He also got to know the communications directors of a number of Indiana politicians of the time, including Governor Evan Bayh, Fort Wayne Mayor Paul Helmke, U.S. Representative Mark Souders and U.S. Senators Richard Lugar and Dan Coats.

One of those contacts paid off in a big, but surprising, way for Hotmire, when the phone rang one day while he was working at Channel 21. The caller was Tim Goeglein, Dan Coats’ press secretary, a Fort Wayne native Hotmire had come to know personally.

Hotmire said he thought at the time Goeglein was probably just trying to steer him to a story, but found out soon that Goeglein was offering him an opportunity to interview for a position as Coats’ deputy press secretary.

While a prestigious job, Hotmire said it was not something he had even thought about prior to Goeglein’s call. “My ultimate goal was to be the executive producer of ‘The Evening News’ on NBC,” he said, but after giving it some thought, decided to interview for the Coats job and was hired in December 1995. He was 22.

“My dad went with me to buy my first decent car and I then loaded it up for the trip to Washington,” Hotmire said. It was a sign of his youth that everything he owned fit easily into the car.

Hotmire worked for Coats from January 1996 until 1998, when Coats decided to retire after two terms in the Senate. Like Coats’ other staff members, Hotmire went looking for a job and found one as communications director for newly elected Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas.

That job lasted until 2003 when another phone call out of the blue sent him to the White House. “I had known a bunch of folks at the White House, but I didn’t know the people who called,” Hotmire remembered, noting that someone he did know had recommended him.

He accepted the job, which carried the title of Special Assistant to the President and entailed being a media spokesman for President Bush in connection with the USA Freedom Corps and other matters.

Essentially, the Freedom Corps was a call to Americans in a positive way to volunteer following 9-11, Hotmire said, adding that there was a “real fear that there would be a negative backlash among Americans” following the terrorist attacks.

The job also provided Hotmire with the opportunity to interact with President Bush on a regular basis, because he led the communications effort for a Freedom Corps program that involved selecting a volunteer in each community President Bush stopped at on U.S. trips. The person selected was photographed with the President as a way to publicize the program.

Hotmire, who was also part of the internal White House communications team and a presidential spokesperson, added that he was often in the Oval Office and was personally impressed with President Bush, particularly his ability to focus on an issue and to cut to the heart of a matter. “There was never any doubt who was in charge in those meetings,” Hotmire said.

The White House was heady stuff for the 30-year-old Hotmire, who was unused to the trappings of the presidency. One thing that took a little getting used to was the “rank” given to White House senior advisors. White House senior staffers fall into three categories: Assistants to the President, Deputy Assistants and Special Assistants. Assistants are the civilian equivalent to a four-star general, while Deputy Assistants are three-star general equivalents and Special Assistants like Hotmire were given the equivalent rank of a two-star general.

He left the White House in 2005 and took a job as a director for the public relations firm of Clark & Weinstock, but later went back into government service when he again received a third call out of the blue from people he didn’t personally know.

As in the past, it was an acquaintance of his who had recommended him for a position as a senior advisor for then-SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. Cox, a former California congressman, was taking some major criticism from the media for “allowing” major financial companies, such as Shearson Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, to go under.

That was in the fall of 2008 and the SEC and Cox were being hammered for their role in the financial crisis that exploded that year.

“The SEC took a ‘reputational hit’ because the SEC was seen by many people as somewhat inactive during a crisis, whereas Treasury stepped up and did things in an inventive way,” Hotmire said.

Things got even worse for the SEC when it was found that Bernie Madoff had been conducting what was eventually found to be a $65 billion Ponzi scheme and had been doing so for decades without the SEC’s knowledge.

“It was a very difficult time, but it was an education,” Hotmire said, noting that his job was to work with the media and explain SEC procedures. Although Hotmire said everyone was calling for Cox’s firing, he said his SEC boss was “one of the smartest people I have ever been around in my life … and a man who followed the law, even in a crisis.”

After President Barack Obama’s election, Hotmire said he expected to be fired, as many of the Bush Administration people were at the SEC, but was surprised when the Obama Administration asked him to stay and help restore the reputation of the federal watchdog agency. He also served as a senior communications advisor to the Enforcement Division of the SEC, where he was involved in a number of high-profile enforcement actions.

Finally, in late 2010, Hotmire left the SEC to take his current position as a director for the Brunswick Group, an international corporate communications partnership, where he advises clients on financial sector, corporate reputation, litigation and media matters.

One thing Hotmire said he likes about his new job is a chance to do some “positive” traveling, noting that he jets off to New York City at least once a week from his suburban Washington home, and also travels to the West Coast monthly and also to Europe on a less frequent basis.

On a personal level, Hotmire is happily married to his wife of nine years, Erica, who was also a political staffer, for Tom DeLay, when Erica’s sister, who worked with Hotmire, introduced them. The couple has four children: Jaida, 8; Jack, 5; Tatum, 3; and Noah, 4 months old. “We’re a busy little home,” Hotmire said.

The Hotmires have known tragedy, though, as their third child, Lily, died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) at 2 months of age — something Hotmire still has trouble talking about. With all that he has accomplished — by the age of 38 — Hotmire remains a humble and self-effacing person, something that shouldn’t be surprising, though, for a child of Phillip and Juanita Hotmire.