The National Republican Congressional Committee announced Tuesday that Joe King is joining the committee as senior adviser. 

The Ohio-based consultant is expected to direct the committee’s independent expenditure efforts once the wall goes up between NRCC’s official and outside spending arms in 2018. 

King is the founder and president of King Strategic Communications, based in Gahanna, Ohio. He’s served as executive director of both the Pennsylvania and Georgia Republican parties in the mid to late 1990s. He’s also worked for the Ohio GOP. 

“The experience he’s gained over 27 years working on campaigns across the country will be invaluable as we defend and expand our historic Republican majority,” NRCC Executive Director John Rogers said in a statement. 

King met Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, who chairs the NRCC, at Ohio State University, from which they both graduated. They worked together on Stivers’ first state Senate campaign and have remained friends.

“Chairman Stivers has assembled a team of outstanding political professionals at the NRCC,” King said in a statement.  

In recent years, it’s been unusual for the NRCC’s IE director to come from outside the committee. Last cycle, the NRCC appointed Jessica Furst Johnson to the role of IE director in January 2016. At the time, she was in her second cycle as deputy executive director and general counsel, and had been leading the committee’s legal department for four cycles. 

In an interview with Politico, King cited his outside perspective as an advantage.

“Campaigns aren’t won in the District of Columbia, they’re won in districts of America,” he said. “I’ve got 27 years of working all over the country for Republican candidates running for all kinds of offices, and I really think we need a little grass-roots experience.”