As campaign stunts go in this spring’s race for the Tony Award for best musical, Operation Liza went like clockwork.  Rick Miramontez, the press agent for the Tony-nominated “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” arrived at a recent performance just in time for the final number. As the curtain call began, he swooped down to Row E and crouched beside a hooting Liza Minnelli, to whom he’d provided complimentary tickets. Ms. Minnelli followed him backstage where, minutes later, she greeted the show’s star, Jessie Mueller, a Tony nominee for best actress in a musical.  “You’re so good — not one false moment,” Ms. Minnelli told her. Mr. Miramontez nudged them closer for a photographer whose pictures — Broadway legend embraces rising star! — would end up on theater websites read by some of the 800 Tony voters. Other cast members took selfies with Ms. Minnelli that would appear on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, creating more buzz for “Beautiful.”  Photo ops aren’t enough to win awards, but, as with political campaigns and red-carpet events, they help keep contenders in the spotlight and on voters’ minds during the six-week race for the Tonys next Sunday, which is more wide open than usual. And no one is in the thick of the campaigning more than the 51-year-old Mr. Miramontez, who is the press agent for three of the best musical nominees and a consultant for the fourth.  “Fab!” Mr. Miramontez said, using his signature phrase, as he watched Ms. Minnelli in action. “Liza loving a show about a complex, amazing singer punctuates our campaign narrative for ‘Beautiful.’ Voters will get that.”  Producers of the best musical nominees said they were not concerned about any divided loyalties on Mr. Miramontez’s part. Nor were any of them aware of his personal preferences. (On that topic Mr. Miramontez is mum.) One reason no one raises a fuss is because a larger publicity firm, Boneau/Bryan-Brown, regularly represents multiple nominees.  But mostly it’s because the producers are impressed with Mr. Miramontez, a Champagne-loving bon vivant who stands out not only for his wardrobe (blue suits, pocket squares, brightly colored socks, white Y-3 Adidas sneakers), but also for his old-school vision of Broadway as a movable feast of parties and gossip. Mr. Miramontez’s hustle has helped his shows triumph with nominations over bigger-budget musicals like “Rocky” and “Bullets Over Broadway: The Musical.” Even if some of his shows aren’t selling well at the box office, they have Tony glamour about them. And Mr. Miramontez loves glamour.  For “After Midnight,” a revue of Cotton Club numbers, he passed on a juicy item to Page 6 of The New York Post about the police crashing a raucous party that Tommy Tune, nine-time Tony winner, gave to celebrate the dance-heavy show. Mr. Miramontez has reinforced the dominance of “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder” — its 10 nominations are the most of any show — by having its nominees pose as a pack for countless group photographs. He persuaded the “Beautiful” producers to spend about $12,000 on a vinyl cast recording to play on voters’ affections for the Carole King era. And as a consultant to Disney Theatrical Productions, whose nominee is “Aladdin,” Mr. Miramontez has encouraged its relatively low-key Tony campaign.  The best musical Tony is the most coveted prize in the theater world, because it can help boost a show’s ticket sales and improve its marketing for road tours. Mr. Miramontez’s biggest success came last season with “Kinky Boots,” as he organized near-daily events featuring its colorful creators, Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein. Mr. Miramontez also made sure that the thigh-high red boots of the show’s title kept showing up on cast members during media appearances. “Kinky Boots” went on to an upset win for best musical over “Matilda the Musical.”  “Rick saw that the two of us together were pretty funny,” Mr. Fierstein said of himself and Ms. Lauper. “It’s his job to do whatever he can to make Broadway cool.”  No show did Mr. Miramontez buck up more than the problem-plagued “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” He persuaded producers not to try to fight an unprecedented run of bad news reports about cast injuries and backstage sniping, because he believed the maelstrom would make the musical a must-see event. One of his most memorable stunts came when “Spider-Man” was largely overlooked in the 2012 Tony nominations: He persuaded the producers to give free tickets to anyone named Tony for the performance on the day of the awards.  “Nothing would make us prouder than to have more Tonys than any other show on Broadway,” Mr. Miramontez wrote in the producers’ statement.  Thomas Schumacher, the president of Disney Theatricals, said that Mr. Miramontez, a close friend for 30 years, struck a balance between outrageousness (which draws attention to his shows) and frankness (which gives him the reputation of an honest broker).  “Does Rick know what we’re doing on ‘Aladdin,’ Tonys-wise? Yes, and I’m mindful he’s representing the other nominees,” Mr. Schumacher said. “But what I talk to Rick about is how to turn things into opportunities. Who else but Rick would have thought of arranging the photo of eight ‘Spider-Man’ actors strutting down 42nd Street in costume? So I ask him: ‘We might do this. What do you think?’ ”  Not everything has gone smoothly for Mr. Miramontez. He was fired from Broadway’s “The Pee-wee Herman Show” in 2010; the producer, Scott Sanders, said in an interview that Mr. Miramontez’s “rogue energy” was not a good fit with “a star who was very particular.” And his lips can also be a little loose. Mr. Sanders, who hired him for “After Midnight,” said he was blindsided when The Post reported that he was trying to get Shirley Bassey to be in the show.  “I called him and said, ‘Rick, you’re the only person who knew I was going to do this, we’re in an initial offer period, it isn’t cool,’ ” Mr. Sanders said. “And Rick said, ‘Look, she’s going to read this and invite you to lunch.’ ” The lunch never happened, and the talks with Ms. Bassey have ended for now. (Mr. Sanders nevertheless remains high on his press agent.)  Planting gossip is just part of showbiz to Mr. Miramontez, a world he longed for as a kid. The grandson of Mexican immigrants and the only child of a gardener and a secretary, he grew up in Los Angeles but had a subscription to New York magazine at the age of 12. A few years later, reading an article about the musical “Working,” he found his role model: the Broadway press agent Betty Lee Hunt, who seemed to have a hand in everything — producing, show doctoring, advertising — as she sought to “sell, sell, sell any show,” as he put it.  Mr. Miramontez started volunteering at small theaters, promoting them to The Los Angeles Times; his first New York paycheck came from Joseph Papp of the Public Theater, for publicity when Papp’s production of “The Pirates of Penzance” headed west, in 1981. Mr. Miramontez worked for years at Center Theater Group, then moved to New York in 1996 to help with publicity on “Rent.” He eventually took a year off to pursue his dream of becoming a professional singer. He worked cabaret rooms and teamed up with the actor Taylor Negron in a revue featuring Mr. Miramontez as a romantic Latin balladeer. They got as far as the Sands Hotel in Atlantic City, but never really took off.  “That year helped me understand that whenever someone’s onstage, it’s far from an incidental thing,” he said.  In recent years, Mr. Miramontez and his company, O&M, have joined the big leagues of Broadway publicity, partly because of high-profile work on “Spider-Man” and “Kinky Boots” and also after the recent retirement of Michael Hartman, whose company represented several Broadway shows each year. Mr. Miramontez said that O&M has now had at least $2 million in billings annually, its most ever; he declined to comment in detail on the firm’s finances. O&M doesn’t get bonuses for winning clients Tonys, and the extra expenses for Tony-related campaigns are determined by the shows’ producers. Broadway press agents, who are unionized, receive a minimum base salary of about $2,000 a week per show, although producers usually pay more.  “Spider-Man” was Mr. Miramontez’s biggest paycheck: He declined to say how much he earned over the three-year run of the show, though O&M’s expenses totaled in the seven figures, setting a record for the press agents’ union.  “Spidey didn’t make me rich, but thanks to that show, there’ll be a big house for us someday — a big house,” said Mr. Miramontez, who is married to Jamie DuMont, an event planner.  His strategy for “Spider-Man” — “take the bad stuff and make it your best stuff” — didn’t thrill the show’s original director, Julie Taymor, but the producers liked it, he said. (Ms. Taymor declined to comment.) His lobbying even included taking Michael Riedel, the theater columnist for The Post and an archenemy of “Spider-Man,” on a road trip to Tijuana, Mexico (and a four-hour lobster dinner), when they were each in San Diego. (The two men also happen to be good friends.) When reviewers came to the show while it was in extended previews and largely eviscerated it, Mr. Miramontez called it “totally uncool,” a quip producers weren’t sure about initially but one that kept media relations friendly.  “The lightness and sense of humor of ‘totally uncool’ was interesting because the producers had many millions at stake,” said Sam Corbett, a former press agent in Mr. Miramontez’s office who worked on “Spider-Man.” “Occasionally, I wondered if the hatchet would come down on him, but he never worries much about that.”  Mr. Miramontez runs a freewheeling office of 19, most in their 20s and 30s, who sit around him in an open-air bullpen configuration. The vibe is informal, droll, but focused: People speak on headsets, browse the web and type email at the same time. (Still, they keep their Tony campaign strategies to themselves and Mr. Miramontez.) Weekly office meetings take place in a conference room decorated with keepsakes, like two superhero action figures custom made to resemble Mr. Miramontez and his creative director, Andy Snyder.  At one recent staff meeting, Mr. Miramontez dispensed two pieces of advice about Tony season: Pace yourself, and reach out to clients in person, a lesson in T.L.C. that he cherishes as an old-school virtue in an era of email and texting.  After the Minnelli photo shoot for “Beautiful,” Mr. Miramontez huddled for a minute with Ms. Mueller. She had an Associated Press Television interview up next, media attention she’s still becoming comfortable with. Mr. Miramontez said that giving talking points to clients, especially actors, can stiffen them up and backfire. His strategy is simple reassurance.  “How you feel?” he whispered to Ms. Mueller.  “Good, good,” she said, a little haltingly.  “Fabulous, babe. Fab,” Mr. Miramontez said. “You’re the best.”  His hug brought forth a dazzlingly wide smile, one she would flash for the television interview an hour later.  A version of this article appears in print on June 1, 2014, on page AR6 of the New York edition with the headline: Whoever Gets the Tony, He Wins. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
The press agent Rick Miramontez is thick in the campaign for all four nominees for best musical in this year’s Tony Awards.