I know of one person in particular who said you were making a catastrophic career mistake working for a total nobody. They need to understand how the political process works. 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. Click here. You write: Here we go said Larry Grisolano, Petes media consultant, stating the obvious. The one thing you saw on our campaign in 2020 is that everywhere we went, he was introduced by young leaders, young mayors. She has extensive experience in public affairs, media relations, and crisis communications at the local, state and national levels. Kinzinger: GOP's abortion stance is 'terrible' for the party External Relations: Moira Delaney Hannah Nelson Caroline Presnell Theres a public Terry and a private Terry. Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. But Joe Biden is president today, and Kamala Harris is his vice president. Its a super-aggressive thing to do. 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. [The vice presidency] is probably the toughest, most thankless job in Washington D.C. Ahead of the release of her highly anticipated political memoir (which Politico Magazine excerpted last week), that includes figuring out how to get her computer to record our phone interview ammo to use in the event that its needed to set the record straight. David Freedlander writes about politics and culture. I mean, for God's sake, we don't even pay that much attention to governors. But they did teach me the importance of always making sure that candidates are reflecting the values of their voters. He weighed in after the Supreme Court decision. Its really hard to do a hit piece on a guy who you are going to see the next morning over coffee and donuts, says Weaver. When I stood up and left the table, Buttigieg stayed, and I recognized a woman sitting at the bar. It took THREE journalists to come up with this throwaway article: Lis Smith, senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg's 2020 presidential campaign: ".I think it's probably something we have no idea about." https://politi.co/427TvyH via @politico. But he is also the kind of person journalists tend to like: bookish, somehow earnest with a sense of irony, and willing to talk the way journalists like people to talk, playing the pundit and getting into the political process and discussing his own ambitions. Youve got this hard-nosed New York-style political operative and this friendly Hoosier mayor, he said. I tell her that I have been calling around to former coworkers and associates, trying to get a sense of how she operates. The book gives an unvarnished behind-the-scenes look at campaign strategy and press relations. Theres just no one who can do a TV interview like Pete Buttigieg. Schmuhl, his campaign manager, says a typical scene from the trail for the three of them is arriving 10 or 15 minutes early to the airport gate, and while he and Buttegiegwho hes known since 8th grade in Indianatake a moment to relax for a minute before boarding, Smith will head to the airport bar with her laptop and phone and begins texting and emailing reporters and clapping back to critics on social media. He announced he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination on January 23, 2019, and formally kicked off his campaign on April 14, 2019. You dont reach out to the 35-year-old gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana, because you think it will be an easy ride.. In 2018, she served as the political press coordinator for Pete Buttigieg's campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Click here. And you know what their problem is? He hung up and looked at me in horror, and then my phone started ringing. Of course, then I would, Id get a tepid reception and she would never let me hear the end of it. Smith: Mayor Pete is where Mayor Pete is now because Mayor Pete is just one of the most uniquely talented members of the Democratic Party. Lis Smith - Ballotpedia 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. Wren: Youve worked in a lot of red states South Dakota, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio. @lynnsweet, @kaitlancollins, @Lis_Smith and @PriscillaWT discuss! 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?. Weve seen a lot of cataclysmic things happen. Alums [of the campaign] are on the Hill. Traveling Press Secretary at Lunsford-Stumbo 2007 from February 2007 to . I want him on everything, she told me. Lis Smith on Twitter: "RT @UChiPolitics: How do we avoid rookie Hold on, Im sorry. I have a really close-knit group of friends who have nothing to do with politics. I remember in Iowa, we had all these young mayors for him. Are you kidding me? Buttigieg reignited Smiths love for politics, she says, after a really difficult 2015 and 2016 due to her breakup with former New York Gov. Buttigieg recently started getting savaged online when it surfaced that he had told an audience in 2015 that all lives matter, and as it happened, he was due to speak at Al Sharptons annual National Action Network convention. 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. Disappointing debate ratings spark Democratic campaign complaints Research: Josh Altic Vojsava Ramaj Not surprisingly, her politics are establishment liberal. Smith: One of the things Ive learned over my time in politics is that youve got to let your candidates be themselves. What is this new phase of your career about? She is most well known for being the senior advisor for Pete Buttigieg's 2020 presidential campaign and the director of rapid response for Obama's 2012 campaign. Honesty is really, really important to handling a crisis because you have to have all the facts at your disposal. He doesnt yell and scream, take the most extreme positions on issues, or tweet incendiary things. And I talked about that in the book. The story of American presidential politics is in part the story of the consiglieres who steer the candidate along the path: The person who pushes them forward, comforts them when the campaign flails, plots long-term strategy and tactical short-term advantage, bends the ear of the press corps and makes the public case for a candidate in ways the candidate cannot. [10] O'Malley announced his presidential run on May 30, 2015. If you are not someone who is an established name, it's really hard to break through. Staff are presented alongside their positions in the campaign, their most recent positions prior to the campaign, and their Twitter handles. Any Given Tuesday: Lis Smith on Cuomo, Spitzer and a political life Smith: In my experience, the best working relationships between candidates and their top staff often depend on a sort of yin-yang dynamic. Elliot Spitzer (pictured), the election of Donald Trump and former Maryland Gov. 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. Lis Smith on rapid response to attacks in political campaigns I think thats probably the biggest misconception about me. Political Hotshot Lis Smith Talks Women in Politics, Democrats' Future and the Secret to Buttigieg's Success. Show this thread. Its a role that clearly lends itself to his skill set. Smith is a fierce New York City-based Democratic operative who helped engineer the plan to get Buttigieg in front of not just national political reporters, but anybody with a camera or microphone. Adam Wren is national politics correspondent at POLITICO. .center-table-mobile { Pete helped pull back that part of me, because while that might work when youre dealing in the New York tabloids, that doesnt sell as well in the Des Moines Register. She figured that Buttigiegs sexual orientation and impossible-to-pronounce last name rendered him dead on arrival, but started researching the 35-year-old Indiana mayor and promptly took an eight-hour fall down a Google rabbit hole. It will codify Roe v. Wade. 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. Wren: I want a window into how you advise candidates amid a crisis. Smith: So with John Edwards, I was a college student. That means that shes held to a different standard than sometimes other candidates. [12], O'Malley suspended his presidential campaign on February 1, 2016.[13]. She became obsessed with the idea of working for him, then became further obsessed when she actually met him, and developed the notion that once people got to meet him they would start to like him. Smith: Democrats love to bitch that we dont have a bench. That maybe once he double-dipped his fry at Barnabys? 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. 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? Lis Smith Says the Path to Trouncing Ron DeSantis Is Straight Through He was a once-in-a-generation talent, someone who perfectly met the moment, says Smith. A Democratic candidate in West Virginia is going to look very different from a Democratic candidate in New York, and we cant impose this one-size-fits-all thing and think that the Democratic Party is going to be a majority party. There is a huge bench of mayors, of governors, of state legislators, like Mallory McMorrow, who we should be lifting up, we should be using as spokespeople for the Democratic Party. 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 . Wren: This book is in some ways a tell-all about the role of a political consultant. No, actually, it shows a fundamental disrespect for the people who consume their news on this platform if you arent willing to go where they are.. 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]. [2] Smith previously worked on campaigns for former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D. Otherwise, I would kill myself. Which is to say that Buttigieg may know seven languages and carry around Ulysses and sit in with the South Bend Orchestra on piano, but as far as his top aide is concerned, it is only because he has an extra year on her. 'Queen Cleopatra' Director Slams Criticism of Casting Black Cleopatra Its really hard to do a hit piece on a guy who you are going to see the next morning over coffee and donuts. And you just like have this moment, where youre like, Maybe this is it. Smith also. It will hopefully make the cost of prescription drugs go down, or cut the price of insulin. After 20 campaigns flacking for candidates such as Transportation Secretary and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill,. 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. 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. Over a tumultuous two decades in politics, Lis Smith has seen a thing or two. which Politico Magazine excerpted last week. I fucking love John McCain. Chuck Kennedy/PFA. One thing I find incredibly admirable about him is what you see is what you get. But there's no doubt that there is no substitute for being in a scrum, and for having a traveling press corps with you every day, lobbing questions at you. And yet you signed on anyway. Lis Smith is currently a Deputy Campaign Manager at O'Malley for President from May 2015 to February 2016 (10 months) in Baltimore, Maryland Area. They lead with emotion. My observation, said Axelrod, who worked with Smith on Obamas 2012 reelection campaign, is that she is the quiet hero of his emergence.. Buttigieg adviser called Christine Blasey Ford 'looney tunes' - Fox News Except then it didnt. Wren: What is your relationship with Pete like now? Click here to contact us for media inquiries, and please donate here to support our continued expansion. On a cornier side, I think because he is such a good person, he made a lot of us better people throughout, because politics can be sort of a nasty business. [2] He suspended his campaign on March 1, 2020.[3]. Does something like Buttigieg Derangement Syndrome exist? 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. Hes someone who is involved fighting childhood hunger. She ran it like he was trying to be president, getting him in front of as many microphones as she could. during the height of his sexual harassment scandal, Lis Smith spoke to Insider about her new book, "Any Given Tuesday.". Wren: Much has been made about Trump Derangement Syndrome this idea that, true or not, he scrambles rational political responses from otherwise reasonable people. Lis Smith was just a college student when she worked on her first political campaign. 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. It wasnt an ideal situation, but it taught me a lot, Smith says. From the second I met Pete, I knew that there was something special about him. I was coming off some New York races where everything is just all-day personal attacks getting in the mud. Tech: Matt Latourelle Ryan Burch Kirsten Corrao Beth Dellea Travis Eden Tate Kamish Margaret Kearney Eric Lotto Joseph Sanchez. She most. 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. I think it forced them to up their game in terms of their digital campaigning, and they understand I think more so than the Trump administration did that a lot of the ways you reach people now is not just through traditional big legacy media outlets. These results are automatically generated from Google. Pete has no battle scars. And you are going to pay me to be really quick and really aggressive and to take on Mitt Romney? Hes someone who is very special to me, and I hope hes always a part of my life. I had a beerhe stuck to waterand we talked about his political ambitions and the state of the Democratic Party and why Trump won. He didnt feel the need to go out there and be the coolest guy or the hippest guy on stage. Through the DNC race and afterward, Smith treated the national political press like it was another constituency that needed to be courted. }. This is how we stop there from being a day three. Smith: We check in here and there. Pete made us all show up to give our 100 percent at work made us all better at our jobs. Mistakes that Ive made with media. Weve got that Joey Burrow swag, but he does have humility to him. Im realistic here. Yeah. Policy: Christopher Nelson Caitlin Styrsky Molly Byrne Jimmy McAllister Samuel Postell And it drives me crazy because you see the Republican Party elevating governors left and right, like Ron DeSantis or Kristi Noem. TV news executives are calling, she says, emailing, now complaining that Buttigieg isnt doing their shows often enough. Sign up for our newsletter. From her days as a college intern for John Edwards to her own brush with the New York tabloids, the book traces her entertaining path to the height of the American political consultant class. It is, she says, the only newspaper she subscribes to. Wren: Fair enough. ", Before they get in the car, I ask Buttigieg if Smith is being helpful in his campaign. 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? Rather than going after Pete, Harris trained her fire on Biden.. Shes a Black half-South-Indian woman. And so my advice would just be, get out there more, especially with Kamala, go out there more. Liz Truss locked in row over '12k bill at Chevening country retreat' Deciding to get into politics for me, and in the world of political operatives, was like jumping off a cliff. And I have a nice, quiet life where I dont live in Washington, D.C. Cuomo recruits former de Blasio campaign aide who dated Eliot Spitzer [11] Smith, who worked as a spokesperson for the PAC since her hire in 2013, then transitioned to the role of deputy campaign manager. In 2012 Lis directed President Barack Obama's rapid-response team for his re-election effort. So I wanted to write a book to tell people, Hey, if you want to know what politics is like the ins and outs, the good, bad, and the ugly this is a book for you.. She texts the buzziest bits to her sprawling network of journalistic contacts, who tweet them out. Smith: I dont know, because I think one thing we saw was that he was pretty good about handling stuff. Im horrified. And when I began asking around to figure out who was behind that strategy, the same name kept coming up: Lis Smith. Her plan is to emulate maybe the best-known and most successful insurgent move of recent campaign history: John McCains 2000 Straight Talk Express. Chuck Kennedy/PFA. a bigger long-shot project than Mike and succeed," Lis Smith, a . Tim Miller, my friend, wrote a great book weeks ago, where he talks about the danger of getting sucked up in the game. Politics has a bias toward the status quo, she says. Why would a Pete Buttigieg hire me? This is what day two looks like. She wants to know if Id seen Buttigieg answer a question about the Notre Dame fire from a French TV station, in French. Why that works with Pete, whatever you want to call it the earnest side of him, this nerdy side of him, the wonky side of him was because it was authentically Pete. 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. Smith: Thats hilarious. How consequential was that looking back? Also how many, like, mind-games campaigns are playing with others. I should know: Last October, I had my own intimate, off-the-record encounter with Mayor Pete. That cut both ways during the campaign for Buttigieg, particularly when a white police officer killed a Black man in South Bend. as well as other partner offers and accept our. 'I Had Been Seen as a Little Radioactive': Lis Smith - POLITICO I know youre asking it in good faith, but I am declining to answer it in good faith. President Biden announces he's running for reelection in 2024 : NPR To Know Mayor Pete, Look at His Top Adviser's Underreported Past - Vice It wasnt really until 2012 when I worked for Barack Obama that I did find a really strong female mentor in Stephanie Cutter and I learned so much about my job, so much about politics, so much about how to effectively communicate from Stephanie Cutter. Ive always tried to be very grounded. 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. 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. Based on that experience, how should Democrats make gains in those kinds of states in 2022? "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. [Smiths voice breaks here.] In the car, wed go back and forth on random trivia, and pulling up things on Google. That is not the typical relationship of adviser to political principal, but typical is not a word people use about Smith. Like we saw with Hillary Clinton, women are sometimes held to a different standard. 'I Want Him on Everything': Meet the Woman Behind the - POLITICO She worked on campaigns for Jon Corzine, for New Jersey governor; Terry McAuliffe, for governor of Virginia; and. Our meeting was part of a strategy, one run with surprising sophistication and efficacy for a candidate whose highest-profile gig so far is a local office in the fourth-biggest city in Indiana. Smith: It made me want to be better at my job. 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. 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 I really did feel he treated me as an equal. It was a reporter from BuzzFeed News, waiting to take my place. Just before he was sworn in, de Blasio yielded to Peysers prodding and cut Smith loose just before he moved into the mayors office. But there may be no political couple odder than that of Buttigieg and Smith. Smith: I think a lot of people get a very one-dimensional view of me. God, you fucked that up. But I dont know whats inside him. Whats that like? 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. Since a lot of your book is about relationships in politics, could you start out by telling me about the time you met Bill de Blasio when you were volunteering for the John Edwards 2004 presidential campaign in New Hampshire? Well, of course someone running for president would need to talk about it with me first, right? Buttigieg's Ex-Campaign Manager Is Showing Democrats How to - Insider Do you think the lack of in-person events hurt them later on in building a relationship with the eventual White House press corps? Read More . Its a local-politics mentality to find the people that are going to be telling this story, and if nothing else, making sure they have a real understanding of who you are. How badly," she asks me, are you trying to fuck me over right now?, Interactive: The Lo-Fi Voices That Speak for AmericaBy M. Scott Mahaskey and Zack Stanton. Smith had no mentors. None of those races were particularly easy. My advice is just go out there more, communicate more. Oh really, you didnt know that? She most recently served as the Deputy Campaign Manager for Martin 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? 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.