Rick Ahearn

Frederick Leonard Ahearn (November 6, 1949 – November 14, 2023) was an American political and corporate consultant who served as executive vice president of Potomac Communications Strategies in Alexandria, Virginia.

Frederick Leonard Ahearn was born in Boston on November 6, 1949, the son of Francis X. Ahearn, one-time president of the Boston City Council and first deputy Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and Doris E. (Johnson) Ahearn.

He grew up in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

At age 9, he handed out circulars promoting Boston Democrats; as a teenager, he organized crowds for political rallies.

He attended Boston Latin School, graduated from Brighton High School, and studied marketing at Boston College.

His first political job was for Mayor John Collins.

In all, he served five U.S. presidents and six vice presidents, and aided 14 presidential campaigns from 1968 to 2016.

At the age of 19, he worked on the presidential campaign of Democratic vice president Hubert H. Humphrey, advancing the nominee's September 1968 rally in downtown Boston with Senator Kennedy.

At 21, he worked for Republican governor Francis Sargent.

He again aided Humphrey in his 1972 Democratic primary campaign; however, Ahearn (raised in a devout Catholic home) was revulsed by the liberalism of eventual Democratic nominee George McGovern, and switched his allegiance to Republican Richard Nixon.

He left college to serve as executive director of Democrats for Nixon in New England (under Collins), and later to organize Democrats for Nixon in California.

After the Republican's landslide victory, he continued his political work for Nixon, working in the White House as a political aide in several special Congressional elections in 1973 and 1974.

In 1976, Ahearn served as Northeast regional political director for the President Ford Committee, alongside Haley Barbour (who oversaw the South).

In 1979 and 1980, he served as advance man for candidate Ronald Reagan.

He is best known for his long service as lead advance man for Ronald Reagan, as a candidate in 1979–1980 and for most of his two terms as president; he was standing close to Reagan during his attempted assassination on March 30, 1981.

He first joined the Reagan Presidential Advance Office on January 20, 1981, as a staff assistant to the President.

In November 1981, President Reagan appointed Ahearn as chairman of the Federal Regional Council of New England.

Ahearn was the lead White House advance man for President Reagan's speech to the AFL–CIO at the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1983.

In the now-familiar video footage and photographs of the attempted assassination on Reagan, he is seen (in light-grey suit, striped tie and spectacles) preceding the President and then standing beside him while shots are fired by John Hinckley, Jr.

Ahearn stayed at the scene, cradling the head of wounded Press Secretary James Brady until medics arrived.

He then proceeded to George Washington University Hospital, where he ushered the First Lady to the emergency room, then was the first aide to brief reporters (though before network cameras arrived; he can be glimpsed in the background of some later on-camera briefings).

Ahearn was often an advocate of spontaneous appearances by Reagan with ordinary people; he personally scouted and arranged for a memorable January 1983 visit to a Dorchester, Mass.

workingmen's bar (the Eire Pub) where the President hoisted a mug of beer with patrons.

He served in this capacity, as well as regional representative of the Secretary of Labor, Raymond Donovan until August 1984.

He then left the administration to join President Reagan's re-election campaign staff, picking sites and helping arrange (among other events) the October 1984 whistle-stop tour of Ohio, aboard the same train as used by Harry S Truman in 1948.

Following Reagan's re-election, Ahearn served as a deputy director of the 1985 Presidential Inaugural Committee.

In February 1985, he resumed his post as Regional Representative of the Secretary of Labor in Region I. Ahearn eventually rejoined the Presidential Advance Office, in February 1986, and was appointed deputy director of Presidential Advance in February 1988.

This paralleled Gorbachev's unscheduled walk through Washington in 1987; Ahearn's arguments won the Reagans' approval, over Secret Service objections, and the Moscow tour was a success.

After aiding with the Transition of the two Republican Administrations, Ahearn accepted an offer from Jack Kemp, incoming Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, to serve as deputy assistant secretary.

In this capacity, he coordinated Reagan's final campaign trips as president, on behalf of the Bush-Quayle 1988 campaign and the entire Republican ticket, and aided Reagan's communication efforts in general.

In 1988, Ahearn argued for a Reagan walkthrough at Moscow's crowded Arbat shopping area, during his visit to sign the INF Treaty with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

After President Bush's defeat in 1992, he continued with Kemp, serving as senior advisor to him at Empower America, a public policy organization founded by Kemp, Education Secretary William Bennett and former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.

When Kemp was chosen in 1996 as nominee for vice president by Robert J. Dole, Ahearn went to work for the Dole-Kemp Committee.

Ahearn was deputy campaign manager for the Steve Forbes for President Committee in 1999–2000.

Forbes was defeated for the GOP nomination by George W. Bush.

In 2001, Ahearn was interviewed on CNN's Larry King Live, and later appeared in a History Channel documentary, concerning the Reagan assassination attempt.

Ahearn was also a senior adviser and planner for the presidential funerals and burials of Reagan (in 2004) and Gerald Ford (in 2006–2007), as well as Jack Kemp (in 2009) and First Lady Nancy Reagan (in 2016).

In 2009, when Kemp died, Ahearn was in charge of arrangements for his memorial service at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

In 2015, Ahearn was one of those publicly objecting to the release of assassin John Hinckley, Jr. from custody.

He told NBC, "I think it's important to remember what this man did. He shot the President of the United States. He condemned Jim Brady to a lifetime sentence in a wheelchair, a life of pain. I feel he's a threat to society if he should be released from treatment without supervision of any kind."