Campaign Trend Podcast

Our guest is Jason Thielman , Executive Director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, where he is tasked with leading the GOP’s efforts to elect more senators in 2024. Jason served as Chief of Staff to Senator Steve Daines prior to his election as NRSC Chairman for the cycle. Jason has a background in both business and politics.  In our conversation today, Jason shares with us the stra...

Today, we’re talking with Jon Seaton , Managing Partner of Camelback Strategy Group , a full-service political consulting and public affairs firm. Jon was Associate Director of Political Affairs for President George W. Bush and served as Regional Campaign Manager for Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign. Jon and I dig into the changing nature of the campaign ground game, how data and techno...

David Broockman is an associate professor of political science at UC Berkeley. He is the co-author of a study published in the American Political Science Review last month titled “How Experiments Help Campaigns Persuade Voters: Evidence from a Large Archive of Campaigns’ Own Experiments.”   In our conversation, we discuss the research and learn what campaigners should do in light of the findings. ...

Our guest today is Kurt Luidhardt , co-founder of the Prosper Group , one of the leading digital strategy firms for Republicans. Kurt and his team have worked for candidates across the country, including Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and many more.  In today's episode, we're talking about the future of digital strategy, online fundraising, and what recent shifts in...

Our guest is Patrick Wohl , author of the new book Down Ballot: How A Local Campaign Became a national referendum on abortion. Patrick is a Washington, DC-based public affairs professional and also has extensive experience on the campaign trail up and down the ballot.  In our conversation, we discuss the small race that became a big deal, the long-term impact of the outcome, and we even dig into t...

Today we’re sharing the audio from a recent webinar hosted by the Center for Campaign Innovation discussing the 2023 Virginia Post Election Survey they did with the State Government Leadership Foundation. The full survey, including the slides referenced in the discussion are available at the link in our show notes. The webinar was moderated by Eric Wilson and participants were David Kanevsky from...

Our guest today is Scott Brennen , head of online expression policy at the University of North Carolina’s Center on Technology Policy. He and his colleagues recently published a set of policy frameworks for political ads in the age of artificial intelligence. We discuss the current state of AI in political ads, what should be done about it, and recommendations for protecting voters from the harms...

Today we’re joined by Sean Topham , co-founder of Topham Guerin , a global creative and digital agency. Sean and his team have worked on campaigns around the world, from Australia to the UK, where they’re always bringing cutting edge, envelope pushing creative ideas to the table.  Sean’s fresh off a big win in his native New Zealand where TikTok played a major role in the political conversation. W...

On this episode, we’re taking a look back at the stories that shaped the world of digital politics in 2023 and are setting the trends as we head into 2024. These are the stories I drew from Learn Test Optimize, my weekly newsletter on all things digital politics. Subscribe at LearnTestOptimize.com if you aren’t already. I’m joined today by Mitchell Porwoll , Digital Strategist at Invictus Strategi...

Our guest is Bob Maranto , he’s the 21st Century Chair in Leadership in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. He’s a founding member of the Society for Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences. In our conversation today we discuss the field of political science and the effect of polarization in academia on political science. Visit our website: CampaignTrend.com

Our guest today is Robert Moran. He’s a futurist, a management consultant, and a pollster. He began his career in political consulting and polling. He recently wrote a fascinating article at Campaigns & Elections about a thought experiment where an AI runs for office.  In our conversation, we dive deeper into his vision of an AI politician, what it would mean for our politics, and more near-te...

**Support the Business of Politics Show by becoming a member for just $10 per month (click here)** Today we’re speaking with Ryan Lyk , CEO of WinRed, the official secure payments technology designed to help Republican candidates and committees raise more money and win. Since launching in 2019, WinRed has processed more than three billion dollars. Ryan has been with WinRed from day one and became...

Sylvie Légère is a civic leader, social entrepreneur, and advocate for women in Leadership. She’s the founder of Candidate Pathways , a software platform to help political organizations with candidate recruitment by building, tracking, and developing a pipeline of candidates to run for office. In our conversation we discuss the challenges of candidate recruitment, how software can help political o...

We’re joined today by Caitlin Huxley , a campaign strategist, certified project manager, and history buff with a passion for empowering new candidates to overcome challenges and achieve success in their campaigns. She’s also an author, and her new book is Ancient Wisdom for Modern Campaigns: Lessons from Sun Tzu’s Art of War.   In our show today, we dig into why this text is still relevant thousan...

We’re diving into the current state of affairs for political programmatic advertising. Where do major tech platforms stand in terms of their policies on campaign ads, what alternatives exist, and what can campaigners do to prepare for further disruptions? Joining us to discuss this and more is  Matt Hedberg,  the COO of RepublicanAds.com – our sponsor for this episode. Republican Ads is the only s...

**RSVP for Business of Politics Show LIVE** Bubba Atkinson is Co-founder of Monarch Media Ventures, a digital media consulting and video production firm. He was employee number 10 at Axios where he led audience growth and video strategy. Prior to that, he was editor in chief of IJ Review, the viral political news website. In our conversation, we discuss the state of news media, audience building,...

This episode was recorded during a live, in-person event on Tuesday, September 12, 2023. Click here to RSVP for our next in-person event on Tuesday, October 3 in Washington, DC. In this episode we discuss the Iowa Caucuses – the first nominating contest in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. We’ll dig into what they are, how they work, and what candidates need to do to win. We’re joined by t...

Our guest today is Paul Allen , founder of Citizen Portal , an AI-powered platform that helps citizens, elected leaders and other stakeholders be informed and engaged in our representative democracy.  He’s also the co-founder and former CEO of Ancestry.com. He’s also served as the chief evangelist for Gallup’s Strengths finder. In our show today, we learn more about Citizen Portal and what's...

Today we’re talking with Michael Duncan , a founding partner at Cavalry , an issue management firm that works with Fortune 500 companies, trade association, political and non-profit clients. He’s had an extensive career in digital campaigning, but he’s also the host of the Ruthless Podcast , which has taken the GOP political world by storm over the last 3 years. They were just tapped to provide th...

*** NEW: Visit BusinessOfPoliticsPodcast.com/join to become a supporter of the show. *** This episode is all about programmatic digital advertising in the political space. You’ll learn more about how it works, the risks and benefits, and what new technology is doing to make it more efficient – especially for political campaigns. To guide us on this discussion, we’re joined by a pair of industry ex...

We’re talking with Hunter Schwarz, a journalist whose Yello website chronicles everything related to politics and design.   He’s been a reporter at CNN, the Washington Post, IJ Review, and Buzzfeed. In this episode, we discuss the role of branding in modern politics, what he thinks about the 2024 Republican logos, and the design trends he hopes cross over into politics.  Visit our website: Campaig...

We’re joined today by Josh Klemons a Digital Storyteller/Strategist and the founder of Reverbal Communications , helping progressive campaigns, organizations and brands of all shapes and sizes find, hone and tell their stories online. Our conversation today is about the state of email marketing in the 2024 Republican primary and Josh has an interesting outsider’s perspective as a Democrat and he w...

This episode is all about how campaigns can create media for their ad campaigns on a low budget. Despite an increase in political spending – especially when it comes to media – the need for campaigns to create content is growing every day. So campaigns of all sizes need to think about how they balance output and costs. Our focus today is going to be on video creative since it’s the most in demand...

Mike Nellis is the founder & CEO of Authentic, a digital-first fundraising and advertising agency with an impressive list of Democratic clients, including President Joe Biden. Mike was an advisor to then Senator Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in 2020 and he’s a serial entrepreneur. His latest company is Quiller , an AI copilot that helps Democratic campaigns and allied organizations draf...

Our guest today is Adam Belmar , founder of Advocacy Content Kitchen , a media production studio catering to organizations with important stories to tell. Adam has a background in journalism – he was a Senior Producer on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. He went on to serve President George W Bush as Deputy Director of the Office of White House Communications. After the White House, Adam...