‘Mailbox Money’: Tennessee’s Kickback Culture Allegedly Involved Sitting Lawmakers, Not Just Casada

Evidence suggests that between 2016 and 2020, some Tennessee Republican lawmakers routinely solicited business from their peers’ campaigns, allegedly offering kickbacks on at least one occasion.

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by Sarah Grace Taylor, Nashville Banner [Creative Commons] –

In May, former Speaker of the House Glen Casada and his then-chief of staff Cade Cothren were each found guilty on more than a dozen charges related to their infamous political kickback grift. In the scheme, Cothren and Casada established a political mailer company, Phoenix Solutions, and operated the out-of-state LLC under the pseudonym Matthew Phoenix, as a source of income after Cothren resigned over a series of other scandals.

The convictions offered a sense of delayed justice in the political scandal that spurred FBI raids and Republican party rifts, all of which defined the last decade of Tennessee politics. 

But as the Casada-Cothren saga appears to draw toward a close, new evidence suggests the scope of alleged kickback schemes by some Tennessee House Republicans in the 2010s was broader and may have involved multiple current lawmakers. 

In 2014, a staffer of one top Tennessee Republican lawmaker’s campaign said he was approached by another sitting lawmaker, Rep. Matthew Hill. The staffer was told that Hill and his brother, Rep. Timothy Hill, operated a campaign services business known as Right Way Marketing. If the staffer agreed to use Right Way for the campaign’s business, Matthew Hill said the staffer would receive “mailbox money,” or a cut of the campaign funds spent at Right Way.  

The staffer — who agreed to talk to the Banner on the condition of anonymity because of his involvement in the potentially illegal scheme — was initially surprised by the overt offer of a kickback and did not participate while working for the 2014 campaign. The alleged scheme may have skirted or violated state campaign finance laws — which have since changed, influenced by the Casada case — but took place long enough ago that the statute of limitations has likely expired. 

“I mean, it was crazy. I got a cold call from a sitting legislator offering me a kickback,” the staffer said in April.

In 2016, while working for a pro-school voucher PAC in another Tennessee election, the staffer decided to cash in on the kickback scheme, directing at least $10,000 in business to Right Way and receiving around $2,000 in checks from the Hill brothers afterward.

One $500 check from 2016 shared with the Banner was written to the staffer on behalf of the company and signed by Timothy Hill. The memo line reads “consulting.”

The staffer, who describes himself as low in the pecking order and only tangentially involved in the scheme, said he also profited off of business conducted with a company associated with Cothren, Casada’s former chief of staff who was convicted in May of 19 charges related to the Phoenix Solutions scandal.

Both Timothy and Matthew Hill denied offering or participating in any version of kickbacks when asked last week. 

“Emphatically, no. I didn’t ever offer any kickbacks or anything like that,” Matthew Hill said when asked outside of the family’s Sullivan County radio office on Friday. “What we offered as a company was political campaign services, and we provided those, and were paid for our work.” 

When presented with a copy of the check — partially redacted to protect the source’s identity — neither Hill brother questioned its authenticity, but both said they could not recall details of the payment made nearly nine years ago. Matthew Hill said he did not recall doing business with the PAC.

Timothy Hill, whose signature is on the check, said last week that he would try to identify the source and reason for the check using bank records, but forwarded a letter from the bank saying that records over five years old were not retained.

Asked whether he or Right Way had maintained records that could illuminate the purpose of the check, Timothy Hill said that “because of the length of time that has passed and lack of information provided there is no reasonable way I can determine what the transaction was from nine years ago.”

“For 17 years, I’ve run my small business with integrity, providing campaign services to conservative Christian candidates across the country. This will get you enemies along the way,” Timothy Hill said in a subsequent text message.

“Obviously, someone somewhere has an old political bone to pick and is stretching desperately to try to hurt me and my family,” he added. 

Asked why the staffer would admit to profiting from a kickback scheme that did not occur or misrepresenting the check, both Hills said they believe it is politically motivated, accusing the “establishment” Republicans of targeting Timothy Hill, a conservative, who is up for reelection next year.

“It’s that time of year when people are trying to drum up business on the backs of people in office,” Timothy Hill said.

“Now you’re starting down establishment vs. conservative politics, and that war never ends,” he added. 

Neither Hill could cite a specific person or group they believed would be targeting them.

Right Way vs. RightWay

The potential link to Casada and Cothren goes beyond the similarity in the alleged kickback arrangement. Right Way Marketing, the Hills’ company, bore a striking resemblance to RightWay Consulting, a passthrough company used by Casada in the Phoenix Solutions scheme, which was named during the recent trial.

According to both Hills, the name was a coincidence.

Timothy Hill said they formed the company to do direct sales around 2008, noting it was “just [their] luck” to start a sales company around the ensuing economic crisis. Later, the brothers pivoted to political work, making robocalls, hosting virtual town halls, conducting polls and sending out mailers for fellow conservatives, who he says could not get quality campaign services because of their beliefs.

Some of the Hills’ clients noted that the brothers were also known allies of Casada, whose 2018 bid for speakership defined two distinct sects of Tennessee Republicans during this timeframe. Former Rep. Barry Doss (R-Leoma) was in office and contracted with the Hills’ Right Way once, spending $550 with them during his 2016 campaign, but generally kept his distance from that pro-Casada group of Republicans.

“I made no bones about it, I didn’t respect Glen Casada and everyone knew it, and I was not going to vote for him for speaker,” Doss told the Banner last week, describing Casada and Cothren as “bad apples.” 

“[Casada] tried to urge a lot of us to use his connections on campaigns. And they actually brought them into my office,” Doss said of Casada’s preferred campaign vendors, though he could not recall if those were Casada-run companies or third parties. “He was wanting to run my campaign to tank it.”

While Doss had a more amicable relationship with the Hills, he said they — especially Matthew Hill — similarly solicited business and allegiance from lawmakers. 

“Matthew was the brains,” Doss recalled, noting that Matthew Hill had offered him a discounted version of some campaign service, he believes branded pins or some similar merch, though his disclosure listed the expense as “polling/research.” 

“I do know that him and [Casada] were close. And I do know politically, when we had an issue that there was a big battle on, they would be on the same side,” Doss added. “And Matthew scratched and clawed to make a living, it’s not like the [legislature] paid a lot of money.” 

According to Doss, Matthew Hill would frequently solicit members of the legislature to contract with him, like he had done with Doss, and the Hills’ business ventures were well known. 

“He would openly say, ‘Hey, I’m in business. I do this. I got a campaign company, if you need my services. Here I am,’” Doss said. “I think that was common. I think everyone knew.”

Timothy Hill said that business from their peers in the legislature was only a small portion of Right Way’s business, noting that much of their work involved out-of-state clients. 

Asked about the characterization of Matthew Hill and whether it was possible his brother had solicited kickbacks without his knowledge, Timothy Hill took a noticeable pause before saying, “I wouldn’t think so.”

The line between RightWay and Right Way was blurred in 2016 when former Rep. Martin Daniel reported using Right Way Marketing, but listed the address as a Franklin condo repeatedly linked to Casada’s PAC and listed as Casada’s personal address on legislative records.

Notably, disclosed expenditures to both Right Ways stopped completely once the Casada investigation started in early 2021, though Timothy Hill still claims Right Way on statements of interest. He told the Banner that the company is still technically active, but that they haven’t done political business in Tennessee in years. 

“When I left office, I left politics as a whole,” Timothy Hill said, though he only left state office to run for congress in 2020, but lost in the primary. He ran for a newly drawn state district in 2023 and has been in office since. 

A major difference between the Hills’ operation and Casada’s criminal version is that the Hills routinely disclosed income from their campaign work, unlike Casada and company, who fabricated a person, Matthew Phoenix, to operate Phoenix Solutions. Timothy Hill reported interest in Right Way as recently as April 2025. 

Political observer Joel Ebert, a former Tennessee reporter who covered Casada and co-authored a book on Tennessee political corruption, said the parallels between the Casada scheme and the potential Hill scheme should raise alarms, even if the two aren’t connected.

“With the dust still settling on the corruption convictions of Glen Casada and Cade Cothren, the notion that there could be additional wrongdoing in the state legislature, involving a potential kickback scheme no less, should be a significant concern for House Republicans, the FBI, the US Attorney and the taxpayers of Tennessee,” Ebert told the Banner, adding that “it would behoove those interested in ferreting out wrongdoing to further examine the issue.”

Client list

The Hills’ companies appear dozens of times in campaign finance disclosures between 2016 and 2020, with more than two dozen Republican politicians, including sitting lawmakers, 2018 gubernatorial candidates and others reporting expenditures with Right Way Marketing, which is occasionally listed as Right Way Media, and a separate company, Marathon Strategies. 

Between 2016 and 2020, Right Way made more than $90,000 in reported expenditures and included payments from several sitting lawmakers and 2018 gubernatorial candidates. The largest expenditure was by former U.S. Rep. Diane Black, who gave $50,000 in a one-time payment to Right Way during her failed bid for governor. Right Way stopped appearing on disclosures in 2021, around the same time the federal government began raiding lawmakers’ homes and offices over the Casada kickback scheme. 

These numbers reflect two instances where the vendor is listed as Right Way Media, but the address listed is the same East Tennessee P.O. Box that repeatedly appears with Right Way Marketing, the company operated by the Hills. The numbers do not include any expenditures listed as RightWay Consulting, the Casada-linked vendor.

Marathon only appears on 2018 disclosures, but had more than $360,000 in business from two candidates, both of whom were first elected to the House that year and are still in office. The campaign of Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) made eight payments to Marathon for advertising, polling and professional services, totaling more than $320,000 and Rep. Rick Elridge (R-Morristown) paid nearly $40,000 in six payments, all listed as professional services.

Asked if he recalled doing business with the Hills or Van Huss, Bulso hedged.  

“I recall that we filed our campaign disclosures and disclosed whether we paid them there,” Bulso said.

Eldridge told the Banner that he remembers the Hills doing two or three mailers for him during that campaign, noting that one was erroneously sent to the wrong district. When asked, Eldridge said he was not approached by either of the Hills or Van Huss, adding that he didn’t know the Hills personally when he first worked with them. 

“I was not solicited by either one of them; in fact, it was through someone else who knew them … who I had a former relationship in government with when I was on the [Hamblin] County Commission,” Eldridge said, declining to share the identity of that third party. 

Throughout the disclosures, the Hills’ companies are linked to a couple of different commercial addresses, a Blountville P.O. box and a vacation rental shared between them and former Rep. Micah Van Huss, which a source described as “the Hill compound,” a well-known meeting place for Republicans.

According to both of the Hill brothers, Van Huss worked with them on Marathon Strategies but did not participate in Right Way. Van Huss did not return multiple phone calls or respond to a written request for comment left at his Greene County residence. Multiple lawmakers confirmed that Van Huss was openly in business with the Hills and worked with Matthew Hill to solicit business from other legislators while at the Capitol. 

Timothy Hill said Marathon was short-lived and had higher-paying customers because it was focused on consulting and “campaign work is very cyclical.” 

The Banner attempted to contact each of the 25 Republicans whose campaigns listed either of the Hills’ companies as a vendor. In many cases, these were one-off, low-dollar expenditures.

Doss, Rep. Dennis Powers (R-Jacksboro), Rep. Bud Hulsey (R-Kingsport), Rep. John Crawford (R-Bristol), Rep. Gary Hicks (R-Rogersville), Rep. Jeremy Faison (R-Cosby), Sen. Dawn White (R-Murfreesboro), former Rep. Jimmy Matlock, former Rep. Eddie Smith, former Rep. Andy Holt, former Rep. Jimmy Eldridge, former Sen. Jon Lundberg, former Rep. Martin Daniel, and Metro Council candidate Davette Blalock — whose campaign business with Right Way amounted to under $3,000 — each acknowledged their campaign expenditures, but denied any sort of kickback or other business arrangement with the Hills.

“The Hill brothers had a way to do a cheap poll back in the day,” Faison remembered, offering that he never heard any rumors about kickbacks involving the Hills, but kept his distance from anything that bordered on Casada. 

“If you remember, I’m the first Republican who called Glen out and said he needed to resign. I figured out pretty fast that he was no good,” he said. 

Black, Rep. Tim Rudd (R-Murfreesboro), Sen. Rusty Crowe (R-Johnson City) and 2018 gubernatorial candidate Randy Boyd also used Right Way for $3,000 or less, but did not respond to requests for comment.

House Republican leader Rep. William Lamberth’s campaign and PAC reported $9,300 in business with Right Way in 2018. While Lamberth acknowledged the expenditures, he declined to comment for this story.