One morning last summer, Jim Banks—an Indiana state senator who dreams of becoming a congressman—woke before dawn and set off on the three-hour drive from Fort Wayne to Columbus, Ohio. He was going to see the wizard. He was going to see Rex Elsass.

Elsass is the founder and CEO of the benignly named Strategy Group for Media, a political consulting firm with a knack for launching a certain sort of politician—and a track record of recent success that has turned Elsass into one of the richest, not to mention most controversial, operatives in Republican politics.

While you've likely never heard of him, chances are good you know his clients. Name a conservative firebrand and Elsass has likely been on his or her payroll. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich—he's worked with all of them, as well as a slew of Republican agitators who aren't yet household names but are doing everything in their power to change that. Elsass now counts more than 60 members of Congress on his client roster, many of whom belong to the rebellious Freedom Caucus that last fall hounded the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, into early retirement. This year, while most eyes are ﬁxed on the presidential race, he's quietly obsessing over the Republicans' control of Congress, guiding the fortunes of 15 ﬁrst-time candidates whom he hopes will join his small army already wreaking havoc in Washington.

Rex Elsass is the founder of The Strategy Group for Media which runs a political strategy business as well as a production facility for the production of political and public service adds. He was photographed on January 9, 2012 at the Gooding House. (Chris Russell/Dispatch Photo) THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Not surprisingly, Elsass's electoral success has made for a lucrative business, as the fleet of late-model Mercedes sitting outside his firm's headquarters attests. During the 2014 elections, the Strategy Group grossed more than $150 million—a figure that would be stunning even if the firm was located in the Beltway and not out among the mega-churches and big-box stores of exurban Columbus.

On this morning, Jim Banks pulled his Chevy Malibu alongside those luxury sedans in front of the tastefully restored 19th-century mansion out of which Elsass's firm operates. The Gooding House—named for the prominent Ohio family that once owned it—today features state-of-the-art television production facilities, sure, but also a chef who serves meals in a wainscoted dining room that, with the help of Elsass's historical preservationist, was decorated to resemble the White House, right down to the china. The intended effect of all this stagecraft seems transparent enough: If an ambitious state legislator from flyover country isn't dreaming impossibly big before he meets Rex Elsass, he will be afterward.

Banks was cooling his heels in the Gooding House's conference room when Elsass barged in with a couple of his lieutenants. Elsass is a large man made less large by a couple of lap-band surgeries, so that he now resembles a two-day-old balloon—both bloated and deflated at once. His personality, however, is impervious to shrinkage. (In Rand Paul's recent presidential-debate prep, Elsass played the part of Donald Trump.) He was wearing a royal blue suit with blue alligator shoes and a gold Rolex. His voice was just as loud as his wardrobe. "How are you, man?" Elsass bellowed as he enveloped Banks in a bear hug. The candidate flinched with every one of Elsass's vigorous backslaps. The consultants quickly got down to business.

"We're not gonna break you down and build you back up like in Hoosiers," Brian Berry, the Strategy Group's chief creative officer, told Banks. "We're gonna help you maybe adjust some things."

"You've got raw talent," Elsass reassured his new client-cum-pupil.

Indeed, the 36-year-old Banks does have the résumé of a Tea Party winner: He's got the most conservative voting record in the Indiana senate and last year finished an eight-month deployment to Afghanistan as a member of the Navy Reserve. (With a future campaign commercial in mind, Elsass had shrewdly dispatched a cameraman to capture Banks's homecoming.) But as Banks sat across a long table from the Strategy Group brain trust, sipping from a Starbucks cup, he seemed to realize there still was a lot to learn.

Elsass and his team had drawn up a battle plan that would focus on selling Banks in three phases: (1) “Here's who I am.” (2) “Here's what I believe.” (3) “Here's why I'm the best choice.” It sounded simple enough, but to execute it properly, Berry warned, the state senator would have to "throw out the normal models of political campaigns that you've been involved in."

For one, Banks, who had been the president of the College Republicans at Indiana University, needed to get a lot less wonky. "You don't need to impress people with your intellect," Elsass told him. "Smart is overrated."