The Scarlet Letter
Campaign Insider
Occhiogrosso rejoins Global Strategy Group
by Dave Nyczepir / Jan 07 2013
Roy Occhiogrosso’s rejoining Global Strategy Group on January 14 as managing director of the Hartford, Conn. office.
He spent seven years with the public affairs firm before leaving in 2010 to serve as senior adviser to Gov. Dan Malloy (D-Conn.). A consultant on Malloy’s 2010 campaign, Occhiogrosso headed up the governor’s communications operations the last two years—also acting as a speechwriter.
Prior to working at GSG, he was a communications and political
Bader in at RSLC
by Dave Nyczepir / Jan 07 2013
The Republican State Leadership Committee announced Monday that Jill Bader is taking over as communications director.
Bader most recently worked with the Romney campaign in Tampa as Florida communications director for the Republican National Committee. Prior to that, she was senior public policy and communications advisor to Girl Scouts of the USA, and she’s worked on both the Hill and numerous statewide campaigns—including Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-Wis.) and Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-Tenn.).
Click & Pledge acquires Donor Town Square
by Dave Nyczepir / Jan 04 2013
The software and fundraising firm Click & Pledge has acquired one of its competitors in the fundraising space. The company announced on Friday its acquisition of Donor Town Square, which will transfer its customers to Click & Pledge by mid-February.
Late last year, Click & Pledge released a mobile credit card reader, Swiper1, to compete with market space hegemon Square—the hardware of choice for the Obama and Romney campaigns. Now the company
Chism forms new communications firm
by Dave Nyczepir / Jan 02 2013
Consultant Brad Chism has formed a new political communications firm that’ll look a lot like his old firm Zata|3—sans business partner Chad Gosselink.
According to a source close to the firm, the new company will have offices in Washington, D.C. and Jackson, Miss., and Chism will reveal the name of the new venture sometime this month.
In a December email to friends and clients, Chism and Gosselink announced Zata|3’s closure and their
The best and worst of 2012
by Ben Donahower / Dec 31 2012
As the year comes to a close, it’s time to take stock of what went well and what went horribly wrong in the art and science of campaigns and elections.
A number of other politicos contributed their own lists of the year's best and worst, and I've included many of them below. Have a look and let me know what we might have missed in the comments section.
First, my
The Obama team's 5 best strategic decisions
by Michael Moschella / Dec 27 2012
During the 2012 presidential campaign, I had the opportunity to participate in many functions of the Obama campaign—organizing and constituency work with the Veterans and Military Families team, helping with GOTV in Ohio, fundraising, and working foreign policy surrogate operations.
From the perspective of a political director, who saw a wide variety of campaign functions in action, here are the top five winning strategic decisions made by President Obama’s team.
5. Latino
On social media, sometimes less is more
by Bill Murphy / Dec 18 2012
Social media has become a valuable part of campaigns large and small. But in order to be effective, your reporting should rely less on vanity metrics and more on substance.
In other words, your total “Likes” are less important than the total number of engaged followers.
On Facebook, the simplest way to judge the effectiveness of your content is by the “People Talking about This” number. This number
The Democratic urban surge
by Chris Palko / Dec 14 2012
Ever since the New Deal, the Democratic Party has been known as the party of big cities. Perhaps the most basic fact of American politics is the divide between Democratic cities and Republican rural areas.
This has been true regardless of the relative strength and weakness of the two parties. When Ronald Reagan was winning landslide victories in the 1980s, he couldn’t win, or even come close, in major northern cities
Benenson's polling lessons from 2012
by Dave Nyczepir / Dec 13 2012
President Obama's lead pollster, Joel Benenson, didn't mince words when talking about why he thinks Republicans lost the presidency at an Inside Politics breakfast hosted by Third Way earlier this week.
"If Republicans approach this [election] as if they have a Latino problem, I think they are missing a larger dynamic that's in place right now," said Benenson. "I believe that the Republican Party has a tolerance problem. I think when
Partners at Democratic firm Zata|3 moving on
by Dave Nyczepir / Dec 13 2012
Brad Chism and Chad Gosselink, partners at the Democratic firm Zata|3, announced their decision “to move onto other pursuits” in a Thursday email to friends and clients.
The Democratic communications firm served thousands of campaigns and advocacy projects in its 13 years of existence. Its fate remains unclear with the departure of partners Chism and Gosselink, who were mum as to future plans.
Here’s the full text of
Mobile firms vie for last word on text spam
by Dave Nyczepir / Dec 11 2012
Feuding mobile firms Revolution Messaging and ccAdvertising filed final comments regarding text message spam to the Federal Communications Commission on Monday.
When anti-Obama text messages hit the phones of several D.C.-based journalists in late October, ccAdvertising was linked to the domains the messages originated from. CcAdvertising has defended its method of email-to-text messaging—whereby cell numbers are collected without consent and messaged via created email addresses—as an exercise of free speech
Politicking during the holidays
by Erik Nilsson / Dec 10 2012
For countless months you’ve campaigned, shaken hands, created a phone bill a mile long and asked supporters to donate to your campaign. Now that you’ve had about a month to settle in since Election Day, it’s time to head back into the real world so that voters can feel they made the right choice in checking the box next to your name (or the wrong choice by choosing your opponent).
The holidays are
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