Rep. Todd Akin may not be exiting the Missouri Senate race. But he has, apparently, exited the state: According to Politico, the Republican candidate behind the “legitimate rape” boo-boo is shacked up in the Ohio headquarters of his longtime political consultant, adman Rex Elsass.

And therein lies a story.

Elsass, the man Akin chose to helm his challenge to Sen. Claire McCaskill, represents the perfect place for the beleaguered right-winger to turn after having been abandoned by his party. A free agent with a preternatural knack for pissing off fellow Republicans, the Lee Atwater acolyte also possesses the necessary skills for the Akin campaign’s unique challenge: Enabling a guy who has marginalized rape victims to go negative on his female opponent.

Even within the mean-spirited world of political attack dogs, Elsass is known as an unpleasant sort, a reputation he sealed in the early ’90s. His first major undertaking, a 1990 campaign to unseat the Democratic Ohio House speaker, was so venomous that it unnerved even many of his fellow Republicans. The effort, which Elsass dubbed “Operation Kill The King” painted the speaker as the “conductor of the pay-to-play orchestra” over the public objections of Republicans who had long and collegial relationships with him. After the election, rumors circulated that Elsass and his cohorts had left a dead cat on the victorious speaker’s front porch. A local Democratic consultant dubbed Elsass and his crew the “nasty boys”—and it stuck.

Even Elsass’s mentor, state GOP chair Bob Bennett, recommended him to a colleague with a warning: “You keep the string tight on Rex. In other words, keep an eye on him,” according to a 1993 interview Bennett gave to an Ohio paper. A call to Elsass’s office was not returned.