Guy Dufault is probably Rhode Island's most ubiquitous political consultant, and is a familiar presence at the State House as a lobbyist for the Narragansett Indian tribe, which wants to build a casino in West Warwick with Harrah's Entertainment.

He is an ally in the casino battle with J. Michael Levesque, who works as a community outreach specialist for Harrah's.

Dufault, the former chairman of the Rhode Island Democratic Party, is now the owner of the Cornerstone Communications Groups, which has represented a long list of clients, including the American Nurses Association, New England Institute of Technology, and the Rhode Island AFL-CIO. He produces The Real Deal as a paid political advertisement that airs Sunday mornings on UPN's Channel 28.

Describing himself in a Journal column in March 2000 as an "extraordinarily partisan person," Dufault has worked on campaigns for many Democrats, including former U.S. Rep. Robert A. Weygand and Eva Mancuso, who lost to Sheldon Whitehouse in the 1998 Democratic primary for attorney general. He's a contributor to Lt. Gov. Charles J. Fogarty, according to records from campaign donations from July 1 through Sept. 30.

This is not Dufault's first public tangle with Governor Carcieri, a vocal casino foe. In October 2004, Dufault was the architect of a major radio and TV assault on Carcieri's record. The union-backed campaign was an attempt to block the GOP from gaining seats in the overwhelmingly Democratic General Assembly. Carcieri's staff responded that the ads were "deliberately misleading and filled with misstatements."

J. Michael Levesque is a former Republican State Central Committee chairman, former West Warwick mayor, and onetime gubernatorial candidate.

Since leaving political office, he has worked in real estate and consulting, but is mostly in the public eye for his work related to the casino proposal.

He was a founder of West Warwick 2000, a pro-casino group that wooed the tribe to bring its casino proposal to West Warwick.

Harrah's Entertainment, a Las Vegas-based company, hired Levesque in March 2004, as a $5,000-a-month community outreach specialist.

Levesque is also the public affairs director for O. Ahlborg & Sons, a Cranston contractor.

Levesque left his post as Republican committee chairman to be West Warwick's first mayor. He was elected in 1988 and reelected in 1990. He ran for governor in 1992, losing in a primary to a relatively unknown candidate, Elizabeth Leonard.