Lis Smith is a Democratic campaign communications specialist and co-founder of 50 State Communications in New York. Lets just blow it out. Theres the article in the Atlantic where the writer met the mayor of South Bend, Indiana for a chicken tempura lunch in Manhattan. Is it your relationship with reporters and cable bookers? Fantasy football we were competitive about that. I think that she gets a lot of unfair criticism. It obviously leads to a lot less accountability for politicians. This page contains a select list of Pete Buttigieg's national campaign staff and primary state directors. Shes on her phone talking to another Buttigieg aide. Because even power needs a day off. And you dont know who is actually going to attack you. Smith: One of the things Ive learned over my time in politics is that youve got to let your candidates be themselves. I thought everybody knew that.. Theyre in the agencies. Wren: One of your legacies is the coaching tree, to use an apt football metaphor, that you left behind on the Pete campaign. The Covid pandemic. width: 100% !important; The table below shows the candidate's 2020 early primary state directors and state communications directors. What else was the oppo they were dropping? Hes been a guest on BuzzFeeds morning news show, been featured on Vices nightly news show and sat down with a couple of the guys from Barstool Sports. James Devaney/Getty Images. A few weeks ago, a couple of hundred people expressed interest in this event. @lynnsweet, @kaitlancollins, @Lis_Smith and @PriscillaWT are talking how do we avoid rookie mistakes on the campaign trail. Her plan is to emulate maybe the best-known and most successful insurgent move of recent campaign history: John McCains 2000 Straight Talk Express. It wasnt just the biggest names, people you know, Smith says. Liz Smith, shown here keeping crowds under control during Elliot Spitzer's campaign to become New York City Controller, is entitled to her privacy and dignity. Policy: Christopher Nelson Caitlin Styrsky Molly Byrne Jimmy McAllister Samuel Postell Operations: Meghann Olshefski Mandy Morris Kelly Rindfleisch The speed with which Buttegieg emerged has been astonishing, which happens to be the speed at which Smith works. And someone needs to be. She most recently served as the Deputy Campaign Manager for Martin He was a once-in-a-generation talent, someone who perfectly met the moment. There may be nobody more central to Mayor Petes media successbesides the candidate himself, and arguably his social-media-savvy husband, Chasten Buttigiegthan Smith, who serves as a communications adviser and all-around aide. Smith: Joey Burrow is an incredible leader. She knew Axelrod from 2012, when she worked as director of rapid response for President Barack Obamas reelection effort. There is only so much you can do to bare your soul over a beer, but hopefully people get to know you on some level and more than they would one gaggle at a time. She ran it like he was trying to be president, getting him in front of as many microphones as she could. That means that shes held to a different standard than sometimes other candidates. She most recently worked as a senior advisor in communications to presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. Read More . For a complete timeline of Buttigieg's campaign activity, click here. Wren: What do you look for in a candidate? Smith: Youve got to meet voters where they are. And those are the people that we should be elevating. The guy didnt have time to say hello before Smith could hear screaming over the line. . John Edwards comes to mind. Smiths Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story, out July 19, is an irreverent, intimate and honest look behind the curtain of modern political image-making including her own. Wren: When you started working with Aftab Pureval did Pete feel like you were two-timing him with another Midwestern mayor of a river city with a funny name? Smith: We check in here and there. @media only screen and (max-width: 400px){ Now, I understand that sounds completely sick. In 2012, Smith served as President Barack Obama's director of rapid response, a similar role she'll play with Cuomo and the state Democratic Party's coordinated campaign this year. Smith had moved to New York in 2013 to work for Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former governor who had stepped down in a prostitution scandal. She had served as a senior aide on OMalleys 2016 bid and with the Maryland governor when he was head of the Democratic Governors Association. What is Lis Smiths secret sauce? They just get swallowed up by the next news cycle, and never reach the voters who matter anyway. She is practically shaking with excess energy. Did it worry you that he might not be the candidate with whom people most wanted to have a beer or should we say, get lit with? 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. Rather than going after Pete, Harris trained her fire on Biden.. They have grown to like and trust each other. "I basically blacked out for the next ten minutes as he talked about everything from Fiorello La Guardia to Buddhism," she wrote of her first job interview with the future mayor. It wasnt an ideal situation, but it taught me a lot, Smith says. It was by no means an obvious career move for Smith. I want Republicans to read this book. 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. Candidates often appoint elected officials and other important figures in their party's coalition as chairs of their national campaign and state-level campaigns.[1]. We are humble and kind, to quote Tim McGraw. 4. Smith: I think its been great. He was an incredible leader at Louisiana State University someone that team could rally around, and such a maturity to him. She was the spokesperson for Pete Buttigieg's 2020 presidential campaign. He was going up against George Bush, who had $50 million and he had $4 million, and so he just decides to tear up the playbook and put himself out there. That even in the age of Twitter, that especially in the age of Twitter, people dont really care about gaffes. She orders a beer, downs it and orders another. "Joe Biden has had one of the most successful. She has advised New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Montana Governor Steve Bullock, people who on paper at least are far more likely top-tier presidential contenders, and she served as a top aide for a number of Senate and gubernatorial races. This section featured five news stories about Buttigieg and his presidential campaign. What do I get if I pay for your consulting services? Its really fun. I like to call myself the Forrest Gump of politics but in a positive way because I feel like I have been a random witness to just so many seemingly insignificant things that then turned out to be like big historic events. Terry McAuliffe, and President Barack Obama, Lis Smith is finally flacking for Lis Smith. We should start thinking about what prominent national Democrats we can use to help raise money and help campaign for them to do things like flip the Michigan state Senate. After the Obama campaign, Smith moved to Eliot Spitzer's run for Controller of New York City. 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. Wren: One of the theses of Petes campaign was that mayors are on the front lines of democracy. I dont know if that delegate from Oklahoma is going be reading the Elle.com profile, but a lot of people are, and they should get to know Pete Buttigieg, she says. Most people do have earnest sides to them. Now, to go back to the premise of your question, I think what we should be looking for is I'm not breaking any news here by saying that the leadership in Washington right now is a bit on the older side we should be elevating young candidates, elevating millennial candidates in their 30s and 40s. POLITICO Weekend flies into inboxes every Friday. [7] When Spitzer lost the primary election, she was hired on the communications team for Bill de Blasio's New York City mayoral campaign. I first met Bill de Blasio in December of 2003, when I was a field organizer for the Edwards campaign during a term off from Dartmouth College. Wren: Youre a very competitive person. I know that the media loves to pick up on a gaffe here or there but the more comfortable you are, the more interviews you do, the more comfortable you get in front of the camera, and the less little slip ups matter. What we did is fucking ridiculous. Theres just no one who can do a TV interview like Pete Buttigieg. Smith now works as the deputy campaign manager for former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley in his campaign for the 2016 election. He was a once-in-a-generation talent, someone who perfectly met the moment, says Smith. Smith ended up dropping most of her other clients, politicians and nonprofits alike. And it makes it especially difficult for challengers. You get a sense of the news, what is going to get picked up, she said, reaching into her bag for her copy of the Post, which she said she was saving for Buttigieg. On Sunday, Bill de Blasio put out a statement in a New York Post story in his own name defending himself against the portrait you paint of him in your book as obsessively paranoid. If you were working for him, and a book like yours came out authored by someone else, how would you have advised him to address the situation? It might not get you the votes, but I am not the political director. The whole saga also taught her the rhythms of the New York tabloids, which have similarities to the national political press. Hes someone I ask for advice. Eight hundred have showed up. Running for politics theres got to be a little element of narcissism or whatever you want to call it in you. Smith: So with John Edwards, I was a college student. And the fact that hes everywhere, from cable TV to Ebony to your local NPR show to your favorite sports podcast, means that a guy with no name recognition is suddenly hard to avoid. Smith has been studying the effort, reaching out to reporters who were there, and has been in regular contact with John Weaver, who helped engineer it. Your Bengals fandom and their Super Bowl run is a part of the book. "What that looks like is going to a county that may be 80-20 . Your knowledge of the process? Shortest-ever serving Prime Minister Liz Truss is locked in a row over missing dressing gowns from a country estate where she planned her tilt at Number 10. I think thats always been part of Joe Bidens appeal. But is it undermining its own side? I consider him a friend . [1] She was the deputy campaign director for Martin O'Malley's 2016 presidential campaign. Click here to contact us for media inquiries, and please donate here to support our continued expansion. Smith did not let anyone featured in the book read it ahead of time, not even former principals like Buttigieg or Cuomo, whom she levels in the book in the way her beloved Cincinnati Bengals new right tackle Lael Collins might decimate an opposing player. She worked on campaigns for Jon Corzine, for New Jersey governor; Terry McAuliffe, for governor of Virginia; and. But to me it was more just revealing [the] nature of the sliding doors of campaigns, and I think thats what youre getting at. Pete and I, you can probably tell are pretty laid-back, pretty low-key, I guess what you would call pretty Midwestern, said Mike Schmuhl, Buttigiegs campaign manager, who sounds like the host of a classical-music radio station who just returned from a yoga retreat. The national security site has found fresh energy as a savvy, progressive attack dog in national politics. Visit Presidential election key staffers, 2020, to see our coverage of staff on other campaigns. Most people do have nerdy sides to them. Lis Smith: My favorite was one person asking me if I lost a bet or something. Retail politics matters much less if there are no local papers or local TV stations to go out and capture you on the campaign trail. Lis Smith is a Democratic campaign communications specialist and co-founder of 50 State Communications in New York. Everyone thought I was crazy. And he is as squeaky clean behind the scenes as he is in front of the camera. And so my advice would just be, get out there more, especially with Kamala, go out there more. 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. ), Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo. I think thats probably the biggest misconception about me. Youve got this hard-nosed New York-style political operative and this friendly Hoosier mayor, he said. It is, she says, the only newspaper she subscribes to. Are you kidding me? This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. I wasnt born yesterday. Smith managed communications for de Blasio throughout the campaign and in his transition to office; she was slated to do the same when de Blasio took office. Martin OMalley, who got like 1 percent in the Iowa Caucuses. I tell her that I have been calling around to former coworkers and associates, trying to get a sense of how she operates. "She would just get in her car and drive to wherever," says Nina Edelman '05, a friend and college roommate. first campaign in 2006. The first time people saw Pete, it was the same as the reaction I had when I first met him, which is where the hell has this guy been my entire life?. Now a veteran Democratic strategist, Smith is the woman credited with propelling the . A lot of people thought that to beat Trump, you had to be Trump. But its not just about the 18-year-old girl. I was blindly ambitious, versus blindly loyal, and where the shiny object of being a New York City press secretary was more alluring to me that I was willing to overlook his very clear deficiencies. If Im going to be honest about other people and their shortcomings, its really important for me to be honest about myself and my own shortcomings, Smith told me. You deploy the F-bomb like Picasso used drypoint. Smith, the campaign's senior communications adviser, has proven to be a political star in. That's why you've seen them lean on people like Olivia Rodrigo, Matthew McConaughey, the Jonas brothers. A better response that is informed by all the facts is the most effective way to respond. Keep in mind she was 22 at the time, Smith said. 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. And it was the first time Id worked in politics that Id ever felt that way. She was a field representative in South Dakota for then-Sen. Tom Daschle's unsuccessful re-election campaign in 2004 and press secretary for Sen. Claire McCaskill's (D-Mo.) He has a clear social consciousness to him that you dont see in a lot of professional athletes. [2] Smith previously worked on campaigns for former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D. Because he was a badass. In 2016 she was deputy campaign manager for Martin O'Malley, the Democratic governor of Maryland who ran for the White House. But it has a clear parallel to Smiths relentless scheduling of meetings between Buttigieg and reportersan audaciously direct way to connect with reporters that bought the campaign pretty good press. These results are automatically generated from Google. }. 2022: Hell of a Week with Charlamagne Tha God as Self: 2021: Mayor Pete: 2003: Real Time with Bill Maher as Self: Clear; } border-radius:50%; "He has been dismissed and discounted at every turn, and still overperformed expectations. Click here. Smith: All the good candidates are comfortable in their own skin. Wren: He rehabilitated you and taught you to love the political process again. | So I would obviously advise him not to respond. The one thing you saw on our campaign in 2020 is that everywhere we went, he was introduced by young leaders, young mayors. I remember in Iowa, we had all these young mayors for him. Tech: Matt Latourelle Ryan Burch Kirsten Corrao Beth Dellea Travis Eden Tate Kamish Margaret Kearney Eric Lotto Joseph Sanchez. The thing with Terry McAuliffe is that hes in on the joke. Whats that like? Adam Wren is national politics correspondent at POLITICO. Her phone is literally exploding. There is a top political reporter for a major national newspaper apologizing for blowing off a meeting with Buttigieg earlier and trying to get one now, asking Smith, Will you ever forgive me?. Now that they have achieved liftoff, as it were, Smith is preparing for the next part of the campaign. Its a role that clearly lends itself to his skill set. If you had any balls you would have said what I told you to say..

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