She orders a beer, downs it and orders another. She is practically shaking with excess energy. Through the DNC race and afterward, Smith treated the national political press like it was another constituency that needed to be courted. My advice is just go out there more, communicate more. 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. (The rapid-response job, Smith says, was for her like being a pig in shit. I have talked to all the guys who see in the shots. [2] Read More . They have one man to thank. I remember in Iowa, we had all these young mayors for him. How has it turned out so far? This is what day one looks like. Usually, it was all good-natured. 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. . Trail Blazer | Dartmouth Alumni Magazine [2] Smith previously worked on campaigns for former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D. 90 minutes with one of Americas top political consultants. 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. Not to be cheesy, but it is one of my proudest accomplishments. Lis Smith is an American campaign manager affiliated with the Democratic Party. 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? I see Donald Trump win the White House, which like everyone else, Im flabbergasted. At 37, Smith is already a campaign-worn strategist and Washington, D.C., folk hero, credited with launching the 38-year-old mayor to, if not the top tier of the presidential race, its second. 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. Its about hustling for opportunities. Everyone thought I was crazy. They also build organizations in individual states that are overseen by state directors and staffed by party activists and political professionals well-versed in the particular politics of the area. These results are automatically generated from Google. Click here to contact our editorial staff, and click here to report an error. Smith starts texting me, wanting to know if Id seen the celebrities in the audience, including George Takei, Kal Penn and Kate McKinnon. You deploy the F-bomb like Picasso used drypoint. ), Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. People get stuck in a rut because something worked last cycle, and so they think it will work this cycle and it doesnt. 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? Theyre just not looking in the right places. From the second I met Pete, I knew that there was something special about him. The two of us talked this week about Buttigiegs political future, whether Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow could jump into politics, and the ingredients of a good political candidate. [1] She was the deputy campaign director for Martin O'Malley's 2016 presidential campaign. So many flacks lose their mind over inconsequential things, and have no sense of, This is good press, this is mediocre press, and this is awful press. That is something you know once you have been through awful press., As a flack, you dont always understand what it feels like to be a principal, what it feels like to be under scrutiny. POLITICO Weekend flies into inboxes every Friday. Your Bengals fandom and their Super Bowl run is a part of the book. Just before he was sworn in, de Blasio yielded to Peysers prodding and cut Smith loose just before he moved into the mayors office. I think hes a really good person. 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. [The vice presidency] is probably the toughest, most thankless job in Washington D.C. | Mark Peterson/Redux, Yuki Iwamura/Redux. Whitney Whitis. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles. Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images. Andrew Cuomo and former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. first campaign in 2006. She has a 3-day-old copy of the New York Post in her bag. 4. Shes had some very forceful moments as vice president. In that same vein, I know that there were people in the transportation secretarys inner circle that thought his taking that position wasnt the best idea. I had gone through this awful breakup [with former New York Gov. She is 36, a year younger than Buttigieg, which, Thank God. ), President Barack Obama (D) and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D). You've talked a bit about identifying talent, particularly candidates who might get overlooked, like a Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg has gotten a number of lavish long-form features, so many that some have jokingly wondered whether Smith is getting paid by the profile. And I agree with him that you cant get sucked up in the game. You can unsubscribe at any time and you can contact us here. The more people see Bill de Blasio, the less they like him. She ran it like he was trying to be president, getting him in front of as many microphones as she could. as well as other partner offers and accept our. 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. The good candidates have humility. If there is one thing that makes Smith unique, its not her knowledge of great apes or her particular skill eviscerating her opponents on Twitter; Its that her skin was toughened by a stretch of time in the rawest, roughest media environment of all, the NYC tabloid scrum. Kinzinger: GOP's abortion stance is 'terrible' for the party Click here. Jeff Smith, her former boyfriend, recalls one time when he was running for office, his campaign managers phone rang. Democratic strategist: Lis Smith goes from 'pro' to 'bimbo' in one day "Joe Biden has had one of the most successful. Wren: Fair enough. The speed with which Buttegieg emerged has been astonishing, which happens to be the speed at which Smith works. It will codify Roe v. Wade. They just get swallowed up by the next news cycle, and never reach the voters who matter anyway. 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? Spitzer spokeswoman Lisa Linden said the break-up was amicable. Smith: I think its been great. The problem with a lot of people, not just candidates, but anyone in life who is caught up in a crisis is that they react. Weaver says that recreating that atmosphere in the days of Twitter, and in the days when the national political press corps has metastasized into a constantly hungry and multiheaded beast equipped with cell phones, is 10 times harder than when his team tried it in 1999. This section featured five news stories about Buttigieg and his presidential campaign. 36. Lis Smith - Wikipedia 27 Apr 2023 19:44:36 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. "[1], Presidential candidates will typically have a national staff, which is overseen by a campaign manager and assisted by political consultants, senior advisors, professional polling firms, and key stakeholders such as interest group leaders and major financial supporters. 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 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. And it makes it especially difficult for challengers. [2] He suspended his campaign on March 1, 2020.[3]. How much of his success was because of you, and how much was because of him? Wren: You and Pete have very different brands. | Scott Olson/Getty Images, Lis has an insurgent mentality, said Axelrod, a top aide for both of President Obamas campaigns. Smith previously worked on campaigns for former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D. Smith also. 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. What is Lis Smiths secret sauce? Now she has carefully orchestrated her own books launch doling out choice anecdotes to her beloved New York tabloids: De Blasio didnt trust NYPD security to keep secrets, ex-aide Lis Smith claims, blared one headline, which elicited an on the record statement from De Blasio himself. It was a long shot. How did that manifest itself with Pete, the first candidate youve ever advised who was approximately the same age as you? Wren: What is your relationship with Pete like now? Because it would drive me nuts during the campaign hearing all his wonky, wonky talk about infrastructure, about roads, about smart sewers. Jason Bergman for POLITICO. Gripping reads, smart analysis and a bit of high-minded fun. That was my philosophy. The candidate and the campaign manager dutifully board the aircraft, and just when it seems the door is about to close, as they start looking around nervously, in comes Smith, sunglasses and coat still on, laptop and cords dangling from her arms, phone pressed against her ear. Martin O'Malley presidential campaign, 2016, Martin O'Malley's 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign key staff, Donald Trump presidential campaign key staff, Lincoln Chafee presidential campaign key staff, Martin O'Malley presidential campaign key staff, Bernie Sanders presidential campaign key staff, Ben Carson presidential campaign key staff, Chris Christie presidential campaign key staff, Carly Fiorina presidential campaign key staff, Lindsey Graham presidential campaign key staff, Mike Huckabee presidential campaign key staff, John Kasich presidential campaign key staff, George Pataki presidential campaign key staff, Rand Paul presidential campaign key staff, Rick Perry presidential campaign key staff, Marco Rubio presidential campaign key staff, Rick Santorum presidential campaign key staff, Scott Walker presidential campaign key staff, https://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=Lis_Smith&oldid=8905524, Pages using DynamicPageList3 dplreplace parser function, Martin O'Malley presidential advisors and staff, Martin O'Malley primary election influencers, Martin O'Malley former presidential advisors and staff, Conflicts in school board elections, 2021-2022, Special Congressional elections (2023-2024), 2022 Congressional Competitiveness Report, State Executive Competitiveness Report, 2022, State Legislative Competitiveness Report, 2022, Partisanship in 2022 United States local elections. }. So it was just sort of the perfect confluence of all these things where that yin and yang dynamic got us together. Lis Smith is a veteran of twenty political campaigns. But I understand that what I do isnt just a game. But I love politics because it touches everything in our lives. Smith a Bengals fan believes quarterback Joe Burrow is a great leader with a clear social conscience, and she wouldnt rule out the possibility of him having a political career. I want political people to read this book, because I think its fun. The writer from Indianapolis Monthly who went for a jog with Buttigieg three months before his feature landed, the Washington Post Magazine writer who sat down in a Virginia soul food joint with Mayor Pete long before he declared his presidential bid and the Yahoo News feature writer who crammed into the corner seat of a midtown Manhattan caf with him months ago. "[9] In January 2013, Politico reported that Smith had joined O'Malley's political action committee, O'Say Can You See PAC. 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. Smith earned plaudits in the 2020 campaign for her work as Pete Buttigieg's communications advisor. The spotlight turns to Kamala Harris, the only Black candidate on stage. That means that shes held to a different standard than sometimes other candidates. This is so funny, because I was just saying to Mike Schmuhl, Pete's 2020 campaign manager and now chairman of the Indiana Democrats, that my dream project would be to take off an entire year and go to the big Democratic fundraising dinner in all 50 states. Lis Smith (born October 15, 1982) is an American political strategist affiliated with the Democratic Party.

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