DAVID HANS SCHMIDT begins each day staring at the wall above his couch, where the Great News Volcano hangs. It is a six-foot-tall painting, which Schmidt commissioned, of a volcano in fiery eruption. Rising from the plume, painted in large letters, is the word News."
Every morning I play the Electric Light Orchestra and I look at that and I know it's time to grab the Republic and spin the news media and charge into the day," says Schmidt. Run my clients up the flagpole, hassle the editors, hassle the producers or reporters...it is very, very inspirational."
It is also telling that Schmidt, 31-year-old owner of a Phoenix public relations firm, conducts a daily devotional to a Vesuvian News God of his own creation.
In the seven years since he hitched a ride into town, the son of a successful Minnesota grain farmer and land developer has tried, with limited success, to create an image of himself as an explosive force in the local public relations business.
He has indeed developed a reputation for hassling people, and is known by many as an arrogant pest who brags often about himself, money, women and famous people he's had his picture taken with.
Although shunned by much of the profession as a showoff, Schmidt claims that DHS Public Relations, a company made up of himself and a couple of secretaries, has hundreds of clients. He says these include politicians, aspiring nude-centerfold models and various Phoenix attorneys and businesses.
Although some of his claims are suspect, Schmidt has had some success elbowing his way into the public eye. He managed to inject himself into the futile 1990 reelection campaign of impeached governor Evan Mecham, and surfaced in a sideshow to the Bill Clinton- Gennifer Flowers disagreement over the presidential candidate's marital fidelity.
But Schmidt gained his greatest exposure to date when he became, as best anyone can recall, the only area public relations man ever to solicit clients with assurances that he is anatomically equipped to serve them best.
Last month Schmidt took out a full-page ad in the Sunday edition of the Arizona Republic. It prominently featured a picture of a bare-chested Schmidt-an old college photograph, he says-and a headline that screamed, Meet a PR Practitioner Who Has a Pair."
A pair of what? The ad's text went on to say a pair of objectives-to make his clients rich and famous. But Schmidt does not deny the obvious inference.
I've heard it time and time again. [My clients] say, `Schmidt, you've got balls, man,'" Schmidt explains. I've been hearing this for five years now and I figured, you know, it's time the rest of the community knew about this."
Critics, unconvinced that Schmidt's anatomical correctness is a matter of community concern, saw the ad as further proof that he is a self-aggrandizing embarrassment to his field.
The way he presents himself is totally contrary to the ethics and the standards we've established as professionals," says Laura Jordan, president of the Phoenix chapter of the Public Relations Society of America, which turned down Schmidt's application for membership several years ago.
The ad's topless nature aside, Jordan was most offended by Schmidt's statement in the ad that, Every day I wake up to put people in the news... and every night I go to bed having made someone famous/rich somewhere."
The ad went on to invite people who are sick and tired of anonymity and impoverishment" to call me in my Porsche."
One of the Code of Ethics [provisions] says that we don't guarantee results beyond our control," Jordan says.
Schmidt says he received many negative telephone calls about the ad, all of them anonymous. I got a message for them," he says. `You pussies.' You can quote me on that. I look people in the eye when I do business."
Others, though, found the ad hilarious. I laughed my socks off," says David Bach, a dinner-theatre producer and friend of Schmidt's. I thought it was the funniest thing I had seen in a long time."
Whatever their reaction, friend and foe agreed that the ad captured the essence of David Hans Schmidt, an unashamed self-promoter who is convinced that with enough balls, moxie, fire, chutzpah, all the synonyms," he can make himself a wealthy and famous man.
ONE OF TWINS, the first children born in a strong German Lutheran family, Schmidt grew up in Rochester, Minnesota. His parents, later with the help of Schmidt's two brothers, built prosperous businesses in grain farming and land development.
Early on, Schmidt says, it was clear that he was the family's problem child. His father, Fred Schmidt, agrees. David always has been and probably still is quite hyperactive," Fred Schmidt says. It was really a distinct effort to raise the child. Basically what I did was ignore the other two and concentrate on Dave."
Schmidt says as early as elementary school he was given prescription drugs to control his hyperactivity. Even so, he was the hellion of the school system," and fought often with his father.
I was in complete fear of my father. Let's put it this way. He flogged me with coat hangers and with steel-wire fly swatters and left welts on my entire body," Schmidt says. If parents did this shit to their kids today, they'd lock him up."
The elder Schmidt acknowledges that he disciplined David for being disruptive, but attributes the troubled times to his son. He made it that way, honestly," Fred Schmidt says. There wasn't any reason for it. He came from a strong Christian home. He just made life really pretty rough for everybody."
The two men each say that they have put the past behind them and are now friends.
In his early teens, when the local school could no longer deal with him, Schmidt was sent away for about two years to a series of detention homes and hospitals.
I was a real small kid, and I got in a lot of fights with some really bad kids," Schmidt says.
After returning home to finish high school, Schmidt says, his first epiphany came while watching the movie Rocky. Schmidt decided he was going to get himself under control and prove that he was not just a hyperactive delinquent.
It really influenced me," he says. And it was boxing that really turned my life around."
Schmidt fought in Golden Gloves competitions, almost making it to the national tournament. He finished high school and then went into the military.
Following his father's footsteps, he joined the 82nd Airborne Division as a paratrooper, he says. When his stint was up, he attended Augsburg College, a private Lutheran school in Minneapolis, majoring in English.
It was tough growing up," Schmidt says. But it made the military a cakewalk. It made boxing a cakewalk. All the rest was painless compared to growing up under a dictatorship."
When Schmidt tried to follow the expected path and join the family business after finishing school, relations with his father again did not go well. It didn't work out," Schmidt says. You just can't have two chiefs in the same tent. We're full-blooded Germans. The old man said, `My way or the highway,' so I chose the latter."
Fred Schmidt says David, unlike his other two sons, couldn't be a team player."
David is much more of the individualist," his father says. He had a hard time taking direction... . Being on his own is really the best thing for him."
So, in 1985, Schmidt grabbed a ride with a busted farmer heading for Phoenix, which he'd heard was booming, and set out to prove that he could win a few rounds on his own.
For his first two years here, Schmidt knocked around on the mostly closed doors of Phoenix journalism. He says he wanted to be an investigative reporter, but no one would have him. Instead, he freelanced articles and kept his eyes open, looking for an opening where a hungry young man of his unique talents could land a knockout punch.
Public relations seemed the place.
I hated PR people. I was a journalist just like you," Schmidt says. [But] I figured, hey, if these bimbos can get away with it, and show up in a sports car and take me to lunch and grease me for a story, why the hell can't a journalist with a pair of nuts, you know?"
In 1987 Schmidt started DHS Public Relations out of his apartment. I asked my rich dad if he'd finance me and he said, `Sorry son, I'm not into deficit financing.' So I went to a few banks and they laughed even more," Schmidt says.
FIVE YEARS LATER, Schmidt has an office, a mobile phone, a nicely furnished town house and a Porsche with a thunderous sound system and vanity plates that read PR PRO." He claims he is worth almost $1 million, and that he is thinking about buying houses in Marina del Rey and near Camelback Mountain.
Maybe so. What Schmidt definitely does have is a credibility problem-and the reputation for sacrificing reality on the altars of money and self-promotion.
He's a stereotypical PR hack of the 1950s, the original ugly American. David doesn't know that he's pissing off people he oughta be selling," says a radio-station executive who asked not to be named in order to avoid renewed fights with Schmidt.
Doug MacEachern, who also encountered Schmidt's rage after writing an unflattering column about him in the Mesa Tribune, says Schmidt goes beyond the bound of any size ego I've ever known. It's staggering. There's nobody even close to him on the obnoxious scale."
Beyond his overbearing personality, other public relations professionals say, Schmidt makes promises to clients far beyond proper ethical bounds, such as telling them that for a certain price he's got the connections to get their names in the newspaper or on radio.
We find that revolting," says Jim Taszarek, vice president and general manager of KTAR radio, where Schmidt has a history of trying to get clients onto talk shows. We don't feel David is a part of the mainstream public relations community."
Those characterizations don't jibe with Schmidt's view of his success. Clearly, the fast-talking former Golden Gloves boxer thinks he's got the world by the whatever.
I'm an agent now for girls to pose in Playboy and Penthouse. I've got politicians on retainer right now," says Schmidt, sitting on the couch beneath the Great News Volcano.
I don't make brochures. I don't do ads and I don't sit here and con journalists and twist their arms and take them to lunch. They take me to lunch. I'm the one that's got real news. I got Mecham. I got [Congressional candidate Arnie] Zaler. The list goes on. Gennifer Flowers.
There's a lot of people I can make famous out there. I have no doubt I've made people a lot of money in this business. I know I have."
Perhaps. But Schmidt's boasts, and there are many of them, have a tendency to wither under scrutiny.
Mecham, one of the clients Schmidt most likes to name, says he never actually hired Schmidt to do anything for him. After his impeachment, Mecham says, Schmidt just sort of surfaced and offered to do some work.
Dave's not a bad guy. He's all right. He's trying to promote himself," Mecham says. Anything he did for me was just volunteer work. He was never my agent, so to speak."
Reporters who covered Mecham's futile reelection bid recall Schmidt inexplicably appearing and presenting himself as a spokesman. He was always the oily presence standing off to the side," says columnist MacEachern.
Another client" of whom Schmidt likes to boast is Arnie Zaler, who until recently was running for Congress. Zaler hired him to handle the Congressional campaign, Schmidt says. I'm real proud of that one."
Zaler, however, says Schmidt was a supporter and volunteered to work in the campaign. But he wasn't paid, and, in fact, contributed $1,000, Zaler says.
As for Gennifer Flowers, she and Schmidt are suing each other. Schmidt claims Flowers-the little bitch"-reneged on a contract he had negotiated for her to pose in Penthouse. Flowers is countersuing, saying Schmidt misrepresented himself to her.
Discrepancies such as those help account for Schmidt's low standing among his peers.
David Schmidt is the opposite of everything we want the profession to be. Just dreadful," says Francine Hardaway, who says she first encountered Schmidt when he tried to steal away one of her clients several years ago. He's a sword swallower. But that doesn't help me, or the community, or, probably, his clients."
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HAVE HUEVOS, WILL TRAVEL THE LONE GUNMAN... v5-27-92
