Hired to Fight, Hired to Win

Hired to Fight, Hired to Win

Dennis W. Johnson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317553281
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

When it comes to elections, campaigns matter. And despite the ever-increasing role of volunteers and amateurs, modern American political campaigns are a professional affair. Understanding how they are run and how campaign strategies are set requires an in-depth analysis of what political consultants do, from opposition research to public opinion polling and from directing media strategies to mobilzing voters--with fundraising a priority at all stages. At all levels of the electoral arena, modern, sophisticated campaigns cannot hope to be effective without the guiding disciplines of professional consultants.

This thoroughly updated edition of Dennis W. Johnson's classic text, originally titled No Place for Amateurs, highlights the growing importance of social media, targeting and analytics, Super PACs and dark money in a post- Citizens United world.

Part I Professional Campaigning: New Realities, New Challenges

1Political Consultants and Professionally Driven Campaigns

DOI: 10.4324/9781315731872-1

There is nothing political consultants love more than celebrating their own genius.

–Barack Obama in a 2013 video tribute to David Axelrod and David Plouffe¹

I want to thank my superb campaign team … I want to thank the architect, Karl Rove.

–George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection victory speech²

I don’t want to read about you in the press. I’m sick and tired of consultants getting famous at my expense. Any story that comes out during the campaign undermines my candidacy.

–Bill Clinton to his 1996 reelection consultants Dick Morris and Doug Schoen³

For years, David Axelrod, a Chicago-based political consultant, was known in Democratic circles as the operative who understood big city politics and could help African American candidates win mayoral elections. Axelrod, known by friend and foe as “Axe,” had helped Dennis Archer (Detroit), Michael R. White (Cleveland), Anthony Williams (Washington, D.C.), Lee Brown (Houston), and John F. Street (Philadelphia). Axelrod also helped John Edwards in his 2004 presidential bid, Deval Patrick

Political Consultants and Professionally Driven Campaigns running for Massachusetts governor, and Eliot Spitzer in the New York gubernatorial contest. By 2008, David Axelrod and his media Chicago-based firm, AKPD Media and Message, had worked in over one hundred and fifty state, local and national races. When Democratic candidates started vying for the 2008 party nomination, Axelrod could count five as former clients: Tom Vilsack (former Iowa governor), John Edwards (former U.S. senator from North Carolina), and three current U.S. senators, Hillary Clinton (New York), Chris Dodd (Connecticut), and Barack Obama (Illinois). Axelrod took a chance on the youngest and least experienced, the senator from Illinois. In 2002, Illinois state senator Barack Obama sought out Axelrod, seeking his assistance in a run for the U.S. Senate seat. Axelrod advised Obama to wait, possibly run for mayor of Chicago later; but Obama was in a hurry. “My involvement was a leap of faith,” Axelrod later told an Obama biographer.⁴

Obama was also assisted by Axelrod’s business partner, David Plouffe, who earlier in his career had helped Iowa senator Tom Harkin run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992. In 2003–2004, Plouffe was senior adviser to Missouri congressman Dick Gephardt’s presidential nomination bid. For Obama, Plouffe took on the most important and visible job of his career, the senior strategist and campaign manager of the 2008 campaign. Plouffe worked behind the scenes; he was remarkably low-keyed and hardly known to the public. Few even knew how to pronounce his last name (hint: Pluff). Plouffe, Axelrod, and the team of consultants, advisers, and staffers, ran one of the most remarkable and efficient presidential campaigns ever, first defeating Hillary Clinton in the long, drawn-out primaries, and then defeating John McCain in the general election.

When Obama became president, Axelrod joined the White House as senior strategist, assuming a role similar to that filled by Karl Rove during the George W. Bush administration. After Axelrod left the White House in early 2011 to prepare for the Obama re-election drive, he was succeeded by Plouffe as senior adviser.

A third member of the Obama team was Jim Messina, who worked for Senator Max Baucus of Montana, also worked as chief of staff for New York representative Carolyn McCarthy and then Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota. During the 2008 election, Messina was deputy to David Plouffe, and when Obama won, he headed up Organizing for Action, the Obama grassroots advocacy program. Messina was tapped by Obama to lead the reelection campaign in 2012.

A New York Times reporter described Axelrod as “lumbering, sardonic, and self-deprecating”⁵a far cry from the attack-dog frenetics of James Carville or the good-ol’-boy-with-a-hand-grenade-in-his-back-pocket persona of Lee Atwater. Nevertheless, Axelrod made the rounds of television talk shows and Sunday press show appearances, in defense of the president and his policies. David Plouffe remained relatively invisible, despite writing a best selling memoir of the 2008 election, The Audacity to Win.⁶ Jim Messina, while also appearing on many news outlets, like Plouffe, is still relatively unknown to the general public.

Political consultants are supposed to operate offstage, letting their clients, usually candidates seeking election, take center stage. After he helped Bill Clinton win the presidency in 1992, James Carville, who became an instant celebrity and media presence, decided not to work in the White House, but concentrated on international clients, giving speeches and writing books, and becoming one of Clinton’s staunchest defenders during his battles with Congress and the special prosecutor’s office. Dick Morris, who had aided Bill Clinton during his 1980s gubernatorial campaigns, secretly worked for Clinton’s reelection, then during the spring of 1996 became a media target, leading to Clinton’s complaint that Morris and pollster Douglas Schoen were grabbing too much attention. Morris grabbed too much attention, as it turned out. In September 1996, Time magazine dubbed consultant Dick Morris as “the most influential private citizen in America.”⁷ Just days before the 1996 Democratic National Convention, a smiling, confident Bill Clinton was featured on the cover of Time, and pasted on Clinton’s shoulder was a cutout photo of Morris. Time was sending its readers a backhanded pictorial message: here is the most powerful man in the world, who fought his way back from political oblivion, and perched on his shoulder is the reason why. Suddenly the once-secretive, behind-the-scenes consultant was a household name and a political celebrity. But just a few days later, on the eve of Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, word came out that Morris had been involved with a prostitute and that he shared sensitive White House information with her. Morris abruptly left the campaign, one step ahead of being fired. Morris, an early and ardent defender of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, later turned against both, in a series of books, through frequent appearances on conservative cable television shows, and through his own website and online communication.

Another major political consultant, who had labored behind the scenes, but became increasingly visible and controversial during the Bush II years and into the Obama years was Karl Rove. In the early 1990s, when George W. Bush first thought about running for governor, Karl Rove already was known as the Texas Republican Party’s fiercest and most successful political consultant. Few Texans had ever heard of Rove, but those in power and those seeking power knew him well. Years earlier, Rove was the “boy genius” of the Republican Party, tapped by the senior George Bush to head the national College Republicans. Once settled in Texas in 1977, Rove became a political consultant. That year, Republicans held just one of the thirty statewide offices; by the time he left in 2000 to become senior adviser to the new president, George W. Bush, Republicans held all twenty-nine statewide offices and dominated both houses of the state legislature by substantial majorities.

Many of those Republicans who won statewide office were clients of the influential consulting firm of Karl Rove and Company. His company specialized in the new field of direct mail: identifying likely voters, dividing them into hundreds of subgroups, crafting messages specifically appealing to their concerns, and sending millions of pieces of mail asking for donations and their vote. But Rove did more than simply churn out direct mail pieces. He foresaw the fundamental, tectonic shift in Texas politics and knew how to take advantage of new opportunities.

Karl Rove also had a reputation for rough, “no holds barred” politics. That reputation went all the way back to 1973, during the Watergate era, when The Washington Post reported that young Karl Rove was teaching “dirty tricks” to college Republicans.⁸ In Texas, both Republican and Democratic opponents accused him of fighting dirty, and going for the opponent’s jugular in ways never seen before, even in rough-hewn Texas politics.

In the Bush administration, Karl Rove sat at the pinnacle of American power as senior political adviser to the president. He’s been on countless magazine covers, the subject of a PBS Frontline documentary, hailed by loyalists, and grudgingly acknowledged by critics as the most important political operative in the country. Years ago, he was the brilliant, aggressive political consultant who hand-picked the neophyte George W. Bush out of a crowd of potential candidates for the Texas governorship and masterminded an upset victory over the popular incumbent governor Ann Richards. Rove became well known today because of George W. Bush, and Bush reached the Oval Office thanks in large part to Karl Rove. In the current era of unlimited and unreported money, the aptly called “dark money,” Rove has reappeared as co-founder and major adviser to American Crossroads, Crossroads GPS (Grassroots Policy Strategies). Of all the major political consultants during the past thirty years, Rove remains controversial within his own party, feared by his opponents, and a major force in American politics.

For years, Americans had been unwittingly exposed to campaign posturing and manipulation engineered by political consultants. In the 1990s, they grew curious about the manipulators. Suddenly, political consultants were hot properties. Movies, documentaries, and books gave us a glimpse of consultants at work. A film documentary, The War Room, made media stars of James Carville and George Stephanopoulos in Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign headquarters. Reporter Joe Klein’s best-selling roman à clef, Primary Colors, detailed with unnerving accuracy the seamy side of the presidential quest by an ambitious young Southern governor and his avaricious campaign team. Later John Travolta starred as the silver-haired, young presidential candidate in the inevitable movie version.⁹Vote for Me, a PBS documentary, showed hard-charging New York media consultant Hank Sheinkopf patiently coaching his candidate, an Alabama Supreme Court judge, on the fine points of camera angles and voice projection. Another film documentary, The Perfect Candidate, chronicled the highly charged campaign of conservative lightening rod Oliver North and his consultant Mark Goodin as they battled and lost to the uninspiring, wooden Charles Robb in the 1994 Virginia Senate race.

In the movie Wag the Dog, the president’s spin doctor (Robert De Niro) and a high-powered Hollywood mythmaker (Dustin Hoffman) conjured up a wartime incident in Albania to cover up the president’s sexual indiscretions with a twelve-year-old girl. The long-running television drama, The West Wing, featured earnest, energetic White House aides scheming with political consultants.¹⁰ During the 2008 presidential contest, Republican vice-presidential choice Sarah Palin drew immediate press attention, and soon the backroom drama of the campaign was portrayed in the HBO movie Game Change, starring Julianne Moore (Sara Palin), Woody Harrelson (Republican consultant Steve Schmidt), and Ed Harris (John McCain).¹¹

Bookshelves were filling up with insider accounts by political consultants. Well-traveled, controversial Republican consultant Ed Rollins skewered many of his campaign rivals and former clients in a book entitled Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms. ¹² On the dust jacket was the middle-aged, balding Rollins, poised with his boxing gloves, ready to take on the rough and tumble of politics. Ray Strother’s memoir settled some political scores and told how a “redneck” helped invent the business of political consulting. Lee Atwater was the subject of a biography appropriately entitled Bad Boy. Carville and his Republican-operative wife, Mary Matalin, teamed up on the lecture circuit, hawked credit cards and aspirin in television commercials, and wrote a best-selling memoir, All’s Fair: Love, War, and Running for President. ¹³

Carville, Stephanopoulos, and Paul Begala reappeared during the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment hearings. Begala and Carville later teamed up to write several best-selling books urging Democrats to defeat Bush and his policies, and to contribute their collective wisdom to “shout” television through CNN’s Crossfire. ¹⁴ Stephanopoulos, meanwhile, singed by the president’s betrayal, distanced himself from the White House, and publicly criticized Clinton’s behavior in his memoir, All Too Human. ¹⁵ He then went on to become a chief Washington correspondent for ABC television. Dick Morris, too, resurfaced on talk shows, wrote political columns, advised Clinton on how to deflect criticism during the Lewinsky scandal, and later turned on both Bill and Hillary.¹⁶

Karl Rove wrote his memoirs, Courage and Consequence, so have Democratic media consultant Robert Shrum, David Axelrod, and Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, and several other political consultants. All have their stories to tell, their sides of issues to defend, and their own perspectives on politics and high-stakes elections.¹⁷

Despite the notoriety and self-promotion of Rove, Morris, Carville, and others, the celebrity consultant is the exception, not the rule. Most political consultants toil in the background, content to ply their craft in anonymity. Even at the presidential campaign level, consultants generally labor in obscurity. Few Americans recognize the names of influential consultants like Matthew Rhoades and Russ Schriefer (Mitt Romney, 2012), Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis (John McCain, 2008), Tad Devine and Bob Shrum (John Kerry, 2004), Mark McKinnon and Matthew Dowd (George W. Bush, 2004), or Donna Brazile and Carter Eskew (Al Gore, 2000).

Political consultants, both controversial and anonymous, have become essential players in the increasingly technological, fast-paced, often brutal world of modern elections. Through it all, they have changed the face of modern American politics.

Political Consultants at Work

In earlier decades, campaigns were financed and run by local or state political parties. Campaigns were fueled by local party activists and volunteers, by family, friends, and close political supporters. By the early 1960s, presidential campaigns and statewide campaigns for governor and senator began seeking out media and polling firms to help deliver their messages to voters. During the next two decades, there emerged both a new industry (political management) and a new professional (the campaign consultant). By the 1980s, every serious presidential candidate, nearly every statewide candidate, and a large number of congressional candidates were using the services of professional political consultants.¹⁸

The 1990s witnessed yet another transformation. Candidates for office below the statewide level were beginning to seek the advice of professional political consultants. For many candidates, the dividing line was the $50,000 campaign: those who could not raise that kind of money had to rely solely on volunteer services, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• LIST OF TABLES
• PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
• INTRODUCTION: CANVASSING THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE
• Part I: Professional Campaigning: New Realities, New Challenges
• Part II: Weapons of Modern Campaigning
• Part III: Wider Reach of Political Consulting
• APPENDIX: CITIZENS’ INTERNET RESOURCE GUIDE
• INDEX