GOP media firm SGM spreads wings

The upstart GOP consulting firm that guided Rand Paul, Todd Akin and other lightning-rod conservatives in their insurgent campaigns plans a major expansion in 2013, strategists with the group told POLITICO.

The Ohio-based Strategy Group for Media, already a large-scale TV firm, is branching out into other fields of political consulting by acquiring two other vendors: the Missouri-based research company John Hancock & Associates and the voter contact firm Front Porch Strategies.