I figured he was special and it couldnt hurt if everybody knows who he is.. Even people like Terry McAuliffe and Claire McCaskill, who both have outsized personalities. Smith also. John Edwards comes to mind. Some are even in the White House, like Deputy Press Secretary Chris Meagher, who briefed the press not too long ago. Smith has been exploring the idea of renting a bus, and just as McCain did, inviting reporters aboard to travel and fire away at Buttigieg with any question they want, all day, day after day. There was only one path for us to break through. This is how we stop there from being a day three. UChicago Institute of Politics (IOP) | The good candidates have humility. border-radius:50%; Maybe theres still time for me to choose a new life path because I felt extremely disillusioned. And so much of my book is about the power of belief and the element of belief that it takes to succeed in professional football, in politics, and hes the one who brought that belief back for me, and brought my love my pure love of politics back for me. He was out there. It felt like we connectedwe went over our allotted time, and I had another beer, and by the end I had shifted from very skeptical to only moderately skeptical, just maybe seeing a lane for his candidacy. | Elijah Nouvelage/REUTERS. I consider him a friend . But there have been a few times when Ive been around him when I knew something, a factoid or something he didnt know, and let me tell you, I fucking lord it all over him. And it was a running joke between us: I was like, I cant listen to you talk about smart sewers one more time, or I will lose my mind. He loves that stuff. It is 5:15 on a Monday evening. He announced he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination on January 23, 2019, and formally kicked off his campaign on April 14, 2019. Policy: Christopher Nelson Caitlin Styrsky Molly Byrne Jimmy McAllister Samuel Postell She was the deputy campaign director for Martin O'Malley's 2016 presidential campaign. Lis Smith is recording this call. Whats especially important to me, is, you know, making sure to take a lot of young women under my wing. I think now more than ever, people need to understand how the media works. The New York tabs may have sharpened her game, but people who've known her for years say Smith came ready for the fight. I think we saw that Kamalas attack on Biden was obviously was pretty pointed. Youve got this hard-nosed New York-style political operative and this friendly Hoosier mayor, he said. Theyre out in country working on campaigns. None of those races were particularly easy. Pete made us all show up to give our 100 percent at work made us all better at our jobs. I remember hearing from other consultants, Why is he going out there speaking seven languages? Martin OMalley, who shed worked for, performing poorly in the Iowa caucuses. Because he was a badass. She ran it like he was trying to be president, getting him in front of as many microphones as she could. How much of his success was because of you, and how much was because of him? The table below shows a sampling of the candidate's 2020 national campaign staff members, including the campaign manager and some senior advisors, political directors, communication directors, and field directors. Lis has absolutely no fear, said Jeff Smith, a former Missouri lawmaker who dated Smith for four years and considers her one of his closest friends. Wren: Youre often credited with vaulting Pete from the mayor of Indianas fourth-largest city to a member of Bidens cabinet. Its that everyday when I go into work to try and get these people elected its because it will impact lives. That is not the typical relationship of adviser to political principal, but typical is not a word people use about Smith. Wren: Youve worked in a lot of red states South Dakota, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio. Gripping reads, smart analysis and a bit of high-minded fun. I see Donald Trump win the White House, which like everyone else, Im flabbergasted. Pete Buttigieg emerges as Democratic rock star proclaimed Business Insider during the race. Stay up to date with what you want to know. Candidates and the people around them can get so spun up about things, and when you get spun up you make the worst mistakes, she says. We are humble and kind, to quote Tim McGraw. What do I get if I pay for your consulting services? Smith: All the good candidates are comfortable in their own skin. Its about hustling for opportunities. Wren: How is Harris doing as a communicator? She puts the word fuck through every part of speech the word can be bent into: noun, pronoun, gerund, verb, term of endearment, sobriquet, epithet, honorific. Honesty is really, really important to handling a crisis because you have to have all the facts at your disposal. And its going to be really important to have a woman sort of leading the charge on these issues, who is able to really empathize with the despair a lot of women are feeling. The attack we had been dreading was coming. The one thing you saw on our campaign in 2020 is that everywhere we went, he was introduced by young leaders, young mayors. In real life, I have a really close-knit family. On the flip side of that, the most established, the most convention conventional political consultants werent going to go work for Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend. Smith previously worked on campaigns for former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D. He did. After 20 campaigns flacking for candidates such as Transportation Secretary and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, former Virginia Gov. I think thats always been part of Joe Bidens appeal. It also includes each staff member's position in the campaign, previous work experience, and Twitter handle, where available. I want political people to read this book, because I think its fun. during the height of his sexual harassment scandal, Lis Smith spoke to Insider about her new book, "Any Given Tuesday.". I know of one person in particular who said you were making a catastrophic career mistake working for a total nobody. What the decline of local media means is that the way that voters will get their information about candidates will come increasingly from paid media, from mail pieces and TV ads, and we all know that is not where you get the full truth. Theres just no one who can do a TV interview like Pete Buttigieg. I fucking love John McCain. From 2006 to 2010 she stayed busy, participating in numerous gubernatorial campaigns, and then in 2012 being named the rapid response director for the Barack Obama . Alums [of the campaign] are on the Hill. It is, she says, the only newspaper she subscribes to. She most recently worked as a senior advisor in communications to presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. She knew Axelrod from 2012, when she worked as director of rapid response for President Barack Obamas reelection effort. [2] He suspended his campaign on March 1, 2020. It was Lis telling me I need to fire my campaign manager, that the guy is a fucking idiot. I was a field organizer for him in Keene, New Hampshire, and a bus of New Yorkers came up and the "New York for Edwards" delegation was led by none other than then-City Councilman Bill de Blasio. Terry McAuliffe and former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, and mostly survived the cauldron of New York politics, working on both ends of the long-simmering feud between former New York Gov. Smith: Democrats love to bitch that we dont have a bench. Visit Presidential election key staffers, 2020, to see our coverage of staff on other campaigns. [2] You never get in a fight with someone whos trying to promote a book. After the fundraiser, Buttigieg is going to rush off to 30 Rock to do Maddow, then in the morning New Day on CNN, and then fly to Iowa, then do Morning Joe when hes back. Mistakes Ive made in my professional life. Spitzer spokeswoman Lisa Linden said the break-up was amicable. ELIOT AND DeBABE blared the cover of the New York Post, which ran several photos of the pair on its inside pages and in a column from the acid-tongued Andrea Peyser which called Smith not just any ordinary bimbo and called her an ambitious, youngish cookie who presumably does not charge Eliot for any services rendered., Eliot Spitzer and Lis Smith at a Philadelphia 76ers vs. New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden in 2014. When you do more interviews, it reduces that gotcha instinct with the press, it reduces that cat and mouse game. At the newsstand around the corner, you could buy a New York magazine with Buttigiegs beatifically smiling face splashed across the cover, and a New York Times with an A1 story about his time at Harvard. With Bill de Blasio, that was a different situation. | Scott Olson/Getty Images, Lis has an insurgent mentality, said Axelrod, a top aide for both of President Obamas campaigns. Buttigieg campaigns in Iowa shortly after officially announcing his bid for the Democratic nomination for president. Id worked for former [Former Maryland Gov.] Im realistic here. Were just not looking for them. The national security site has found fresh energy as a savvy, progressive attack dog in national politics. My advice is just go out there more, communicate more. Your Bengals fandom and their Super Bowl run is a part of the book. Smiths mother is a descendent of a signer of the Mayflower Compact, and a cousin of lead Watergate investigator Sam Ervin. What is Lis Smiths secret sauce? Hes someone who is involved fighting childhood hunger. This sign-up form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Not possible, Smith says. Rather than going after Pete, Harris trained her fire on Biden.. Traveling Press Secretary at Lunsford-Stumbo 2007 from February 2007 to . Buttigieg focused his campaign on policy issues that he implemented as mayor, such as connecting with the global economy through investing in advanced industries, data, technology, and higher education.[4]. People read about my personal life in Page Six, and they think Im going to be sort of an out-there type of person that is attention seeking and all of that. Its sad, but our politics isnt built to deal with people who are reasonable. But there may be no political couple odder than that of Buttigieg and Smith. What makes him such a magnet for criticism on both the left and the right? Shes on her phone talking to another Buttigieg aide. Bill de Blasio, too. In the past several months, Buttigieg has been not just all over cable and in the newspapers, but in Our Daily Planet, an environmental morning newsletter with just over 5,000 Twitter followers; in a financial planning podcast called Pete the Planner; and on West Wing Weekly, the obsessive episode-by-episode podcast breakdown of The West Wing. | Maybe a story that would be 80-20 bad you can get down to 60-40 bad, and that little bit is worth it.. Each was the political id the candidate couldnt, or wouldnt, express. Eric Appleman of Democracy in Action describes candidates' efforts to hire staffers as a "race for talent, both nationally and in key early states." Let Pete be Pete. There is this thing that I have to be very honest with, because maybe I had been seen as a little radioactive because I had unwillingly had my private life spread all over the tabloids, more established candidates might not have hired me. Smith, the campaign's senior communications adviser, has proven to be a political star in. She is 36, a year younger than Buttigieg, which, Thank God. Weve seen a lot of cataclysmic things happen. When Smith signed on to help Mayor Pete run for DNC chair, it was a part-time gighelping a candidate nobody had ever heard of run for an insider position, the kind of job decided not by the public, but in backrooms by the most hardcore party loyalists. Hes someone I ask for advice. She often mentions others in her tweets and sometimes gets into multiple tweet disputes with people she disagrees with, which are always fun to watch. I love him. It wasnt an ideal situation, but it taught me a lot, Smith says. Wren: You and Pete have very different brands. Lis Smith Retweeted. Staff are presented alongside their positions in the campaign, their most recent positions prior to the campaign, and their Twitter handles. He was attempting a comeback by running for the modest job of New York City comptroller, and when the vote came in, he pulled in a respectable 48 percent, even though the entire citys political establishment was against him. I mean, for God's sake, we don't even pay that much attention to governors. As for their interactions with reporters, it's a good question, but if you look back on the Biden campaign's outreach during the general election, I think it actually increased his number of interactions with local press with the number of interviews he did remotely in states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Mistakes that Ive made with media. Lis Smith was just a college student when she worked on her first political campaign. I think hes a really good person. .circle { This 35-Year-Old Mayor From Indiana Is Wowing National Democrats The New Republic declared. Elliot Spitzer (pictured), the election of Donald Trump and former Maryland Gov. When Smith opens her laptop, there are saved tabs about Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton, a YouTube video of a facial massage routine, kale recipes, a Time Out City Guide to Dubai and a 2012 Huffington Post article about how the Obama and Romney campaigns used Twitter. if(document.getElementsByClassName("reference").length==0) if(document.getElementById('Footnotes')!==null) document.getElementById('Footnotes').parentNode.style.display = 'none'; Communications: Alison Graves Carley Allensworth Abigail Campbell Sarah Groat Erica Shumaker Caitlin Vanden Boom That's helped him to make a strong case for himself for 2024, said Democratic strategist Lis Smith, an adviser to Pete Buttigieg in his 2020 bid. You know what people are going to react to, and you know that the tabloids, just like the political press, oftentimes just wants a little scalp and then they will move on., How the Intercept Is Fueling the Democratic Civil WarBy Steven Perlberg. And it was the first time Id worked in politics that Id ever felt that way. What else was the oppo they were dropping? Shes a Black half-South-Indian woman. } The most important thing is theres no one way to be a Democrat no matter what any of these lefty groups in Washington say, and we cannot expect candidates in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Ohio and Arizona and North Carolina to check off every box on the progressive party purity test. Smith: One of the reasons I wanted to write this book was because when I was thinking at 19 or 20 about getting into this world, [a book like this] didnt exist. In that moment, in retrospect, it seems like Harris couldve ended Buttigiegs campaign. Wren: This book is in some ways a tell-all about the role of a political consultant. It gives me so much joy when I sit down for a Zoom with Mallory McMorrow which is supposed to be 15 minutes and it turns into two hours, and I get goosebumps again. Wren: What is your relationship with Pete like now? It might not get you the votes, but I am not the political director. Wren: One of your legacies is the coaching tree, to use an apt football metaphor, that you left behind on the Pete campaign. | The great media disruption comes for the Des Moines Register. Click here. And if people like me dont get involved, then Im scared about the future of our country. She signed on as a consultant when he was laying the groundwork for a long-shot campaign to become the chair of the Democratic National Committee. Weve got that Joey Burrow swag, but he does have humility to him. . She is the most competitive person I have ever known.. He weighed in after the Supreme Court decision. They feel like if they dont respond within two minutes, that the crisis is going to fester. "What that looks like is going to a county that may be 80-20 . [12], O'Malley suspended his presidential campaign on February 1, 2016.[13]. But its not just about the 18-year-old girl. I am humbled and flattered and appreciative of when people recognize the hard work I put in on our media strategy, and the fact that we employed a media strategy that was radically different from everyone else in the field. And especially on far-leftist DSA Twitter, Im basically just depicted as a mix between Lady Macbeth and Rasputin in a wig, that Im like some soulless political operatives. So what I try to do is to meet candidates where they are, and to help work with them on what their strengths are and not to erase the things in them that are quirky or not, but see if we can use them as assets. They are doing things that are more directly relevant to peoples lives. She is a talented communicator. And you just like have this moment, where youre like, Maybe this is it. Wren: Theres a part of Pete that is a little wonky, a little square. Buttigiegs rise from unlikeliest of contenders to actual top-tier presidential candidate has been fueled in part, maybe in large part, by his astonishing success courting the press. But as long as its just like that one percent that you need to have the confidence that you can go out and rally thousands of people, and that its just that 1 percent and not 70 percent, then its all good. Wren: He rehabilitated you and taught you to love the political process again.
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