 Hi. Good afternoon. It's nice to be with everyone. I'm Broderick Johnson. I'm a Toesley Foundation policymaker and residence at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. On behalf of Dean Michael Barr and the students and faculty at the Ford School, it's my pleasure to welcome you all to this important policy talks event this afternoon. I should also say that I am a very proud Wolverine, graduated from the law school some decades ago, so it's always a great pleasure to do an event that brings out the best in the University of Michigan. Today we'll be talking about managing presidential campaigns and lessons learned from this 2020 elections season. Then there are lots of lessons that we're learning and that we will continue to learn, but nevertheless, like our panelists and everyone else watching the session today, I've certainly found it hard to sleep over the past several weeks, maybe the past months in fact, but whatever the outcome you prefer at the end of the selection cycle, I suspect we would all agree that this has been the most bizarre presidential transition in our lifetimes thus far, but we'll leave that for another discussion. Before I introduce the panelists, I want to recognize the Towsley Foundation, which generously enables the Ford School to bring individuals with significant policymaking experience to campus each semester. As I said, I'm currently one of those policymakers in residence and so on behalf of myself and the Ford School, I want to thank the Towsley Foundation for their support. So let's go on to get on to today's discussion. Joining me today are two campaign veterans from opposite sides of the political aisle, Katie Packer Beeson and Greg Schultz. Katie is a founding partner at Burning Glass Consulting, which is a first-of-its-kind all-female consulting firm. It does public relations, political consulting, and issue management with an emphasis on messaging to women. She has worked on political campaigns across the country since 1988, and she has managed campaigns at every level from state legislatures and to governor races to the U.S. Senate and to the U.S. presidency. In fact, in 2012, she was deputy campaign manager of Governor Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. Our other panelist is Greg Schultz, who was the general election strategist and senior advisor to the Biden campaign. He served as campaign manager during the 2020 primaries, Democratic primary, in fact. Greg is a veteran of the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns in Ohio. Greg also worked as the senior advisor to Vice President Joe Biden and a special assistant to President Biden, President Obama, in the White House during the second term. I've had the pleasure of working with Greg for a number of years, especially in a 2012 campaign. And I know he and I both share a mutual appreciation and gratitude for the fact that we were able to help win the state of Ohio for President Obama in 2012, which was a carryover from the victory in 2008. And Ohio is a difficult state for Democrats to win, so we're both very proud of that. Before we dive into this discussion today, a couple of quick notes about the format. We'll of course have some time at the end of the event today for audience questions. We have, in fact, received some in advance, but you can also submit your questions in the live chat on YouTube or tweet your questions to hashtag policy talks. So with that, welcome, Katie, and welcome, Greg. Let me first ask both of you to respond to this question and putting aside outcomes. What did you find most challenging and difficult about serving in presidential campaigns? Katie, why don't I start with you? Okay. Thanks, Broderick, and thanks to the University of Michigan for having us today. I think for me, the hardest thing about presidential campaigns and, you know, recognizing that this isn't like serving in combat or being a long haul truck driver or some other jobs that are certainly more physically grueling than a presidential campaign. For me, the all-consuming nature of a presidential campaign is mentally a grind. The notion that you literally can't escape from it, even really when you're sleeping, you sometimes dream about it, but you wake up in the morning and even before we had cell phones, you know, you turned on the news and they were talking about a campaign. It was on the radio in your car. It was on the front page of the paper. It was, you know, on a TV in the airport as you're walking through. There literally is no reprieve. And kind of within that is the idea that everybody is an expert on politics. And so, you know, you get on a plane and somebody asks you what you do for a living. And in the middle of a presidential campaign, you never, ever tell them. My go-to was that I was a National Geographic photographer. Nobody knows anything about that. And so they don't offer you advice. But I used to joke that if I came back in another life, I was going to be a brain surgeon because nobody tells a brain surgeon how to do their job. They just cross their fingers and hope that they're trained. And in politics, everybody is an expert. So those are the two things that I think are difficult about presidential politics. Excellent, excellent. And you, Greg? Well, no, Katie is right. Those campaign dreams are the worst, because you don't escape it. I will say this is one thing that has gotten increasingly more challenging with the rise of social media. But that is separating noise to what is actually important. I remember during the primary having a conversation with a leading expert on disinformation and misinformation about what you would see on social media. And she said, 98% of what you see online, you don't want to lift up or acknowledge because you are doing their work for them. And then she said, but 2% of it you have to pay attention to. And because it can't, it will become a problem for you. So I said, very P follow up question. I said, okay, well, what's the difference? And she said, that's the hard part. We don't know. And so and I have seen in the primary cycle, I remember something started on a far right wing tweet, and then it was on a right wing website. And then it literally was in conversation on ABC Nightly News that night. And it was it was not I don't remember actually right now what it was in the middle of the heat of the primary. But whether it is, you know, for the Biden campaign, you had the loud part of the party dominating social media. And as Katie mentioned, we were called idiots every day for our primary strategy, which one. But I will say like it is hard with social media. It is hard with no longer 24 hour news cycle, you now have 24 one hour news cycles. And it's like, okay, is this going to last two one hour cycles, or isn't going to tomorrow? And that is there's no good answer. But that is increasingly a more stressful part about these campaigns. Well, I appreciate what both of you said about the experts that you run into who have like they've never run a campaign ever, but they're going to tell you what you all you know what you need to do to turn the campaign around and you you have to be polite because those are voters, right? Have either of you have had so free for certainly more than a decade and not suggesting that I didn't have the greatest law firm law school experience. But if you or campaign experiences, have either of you had the nightmare though, I used to have this nightmare that Oh, I didn't finish the exam. You have ever had the nightmare of Oh, that state we forgot to have one more event in that state. Do you have those nightmares because you all done campaign so much? You know, I didn't have actually one of my recurring, I guess nightmares during the campaign was I would step into a room and have a test and have no idea what was on the test. And so essentially, you mentioned that test, I literally had that nightmare multiple times in the middle of the campaign. So I don't know if there's any what it actually means, but yes, probably yeah. Katie, you I've had the nightmare that somebody put the wrong speech up on the podium. Oh, Canada walks up to the podium to give this and it's and just starts talking. That's where it's going to work for Joe Biden. He's already got already got his speech ready to go whether it doesn't read the speech on the teleprompter anyways. So hey, Greg, what have you found most rewarding? I mean, again, putting aside the outcome, the most rewarding for me, it's the the now the pandemic has made it much more challenging. So I'll kind of reference this more in the primary when you were physically with people. But you know, Katie, Katie will understand that you will understand Broderick, but a campaign week is like six months in real life. And so you work on these campaigns, whether it's a presidential campaign, which, you know, we started six, almost 600 days ago, or state rep race or whatever it may be, the crucible of a campaign atmosphere is just the the emotions, the intensity, it's the highs and the highs and the lows are the low. And so the community builds in a real way. I've worked on campaigns where you work with someone for four months, and it's like you went to college with them, because you feel like you've had so many life experiences. And so I've always been attracted to campaigns because of the team building part of it, the shared experiences. Now at the end of COVID, you basically had all the stress of the campaign, but none of like the normally being a campaign office hours, and you look like next you at 1am, and there's 10 people there, as tired of stress as you but now you're like on a zoom and it's just not the same. So it's the community building that I have always really taken the most out of a campaign. And the good food in the campaign offices, especially field offices, when you get to headquarters, you know, it's not good anymore. It's no one brings you food, but a field office, you get the best home cooked, you know, brownies and cookies and all the pizza you could eat at the end. Right. Right. And Katie, for you, again, putting aside the end result during the, for example, the Romney campaign, what, what you know, what was the most exhilarating for you? And especially around that campaign, but other campaigns? Well, I married our political director. So I think that just reinforces what Greg said. But for sure, the sense of family, I mean, I, you know, if you are in sort of the cycle of presidential politics, you have these families over the years. You know, I have a family of people I worked with for Bob Dole. I have a family of people I worked with for George Bush, you know, and then, you know, certainly my Romney family, you know, I was, I worked for Mitt on his pack before he ran in 2008. And, you know, so that was sort of a family, a core family that endured for six, seven years. But without a doubt, the sense of camaraderie and the sense of family. And one thing that I think all of us who were in leadership roles on the Romney campaign would say makes us all feel very proud is that for most of the people that worked on the Romney campaign, it was the best campaign experience they had, which is a lot to say when you actually lose in the end. Usually, you know, people kind of want to forget the losses. But we had a great candidate who made us proud. You know, he and his wife instilled a sense of family on that campaign. And all of the team that was, you know, kind of the smaller team that, you know, slogged through the primaries. And then the larger team in the general really felt a closeness and a sense of family. And we still have reunions and get together and, you know, very much, you know, those are ties that bind us together, I think forever. Yeah, you get to see people's kids grow up. And then, in many cases, become the campaign aides themselves, right? And yeah, that's it. Yeah, it can be really exhilarating that that sense of family and deep friendships that are lasting. So could you describe for us kind of the difference between, you know, running a primary campaign and a general campaign, just in terms of maybe even the the issues, the challenges, but you know, the differences, Katie, can we start with you about the differences? I mean, there are many, many differences. And in some ways, it's like a different kettle of fish all together. I mean, the biggest difference, obviously, is that you don't win the primary on one night, you know, you win and you put everything out there and you leave it all on the table. And then you got to, you know, drink a glass of champagne and then wake up the next morning and start a whole another campaign. Yeah. You know, so there's sort of a marathon sense to it that you are maybe even like an iron man, you know, that you have to compete in a lot of different ways. I mean, a campaign in New Hampshire feels completely different from a campaign in South Carolina, which is a totally different kettle of fish from Nevada or Florida. And so, you know, you really have to become experts at a lot of different campaigns. You know, you have Chuck Grassley, who's been running, you know, for most of our parents' lifetimes in Iowa, and he would be considered an expert on campaigning in Iowa. But I don't think I would consider him a presidential campaign expert. Right. And then, you know, sort of more specifically, you know, there are challenges in that you're fighting within the family in a primary. You know, a lot of the people working on other campaigns are your friends, sometimes your family. And they're people that you know pretty well. And so you're, you know, you're kind of fighting this battle of, you know, do I go with everything that I have? When I know that, you know, I'm going to have to break bread with these people, you know, six miles down the road and pull together to win a general election. And then further complicating that is that the issues are microscopic. You know, you're trying so hard to find daylight between, you know, in our case, a bunch of conservative candidates that used to all believe the same thing prior to the age of Trump. You know, they might have like microscopic differences on military policy or on, you know, family leave. But, you know, generally speaking, they're all really locked up. And you're not, you know, and so that's a complicating factor. So it's a totally different kind of campaign than a general. Yeah. And Greg, we'll go to you on this. You've been, you were in 08, you went through this and then obviously very recently as well. I do want to make note of the fact that like, I'm already so much enjoying this conversation, because this could have been if different panelists had been chosen, particularly Republican panelists, we could have had this kind of Trump versus Biden show, which could have been, I think, certainly less warm and inviting. So I really appreciate that. And I think it's important that that we've been able to shape it this way. So Greg, talk about primary versus general from your experience. Well, Roger, you also invited two midwesterners to be on the panel. So I think that helps as well. I will say one of the pieces is the ability to raise money. You know, in a primary, we could raise $2,800 per individual. In the general election, by the time our joint victory funds were done, we could raise, now this is somewhat of a seem number, but it was like $850,000 per person we could raise. And that was available for Donald Trump and others as well. So just the ability to raise money. So money raising is hard, and you don't have friends in the primary. You just don't. And like for us, we had, I would tell reporters, we were attacked by the far left, the far right, Trump, Russia and 22 Democrats every single day. And we had a candidate who was not going to attack another Democrat. We also had a campaign strategy that the country did not want division. They didn't want division in the country. They didn't want division in the party. They just wanted to be brought together. And so that was a very stressful part of the campaign, because we were being attacked, and the strategy and the candidate were not to exasperate that. So the money, no friends or allies, I mean, the day after Super Tuesday, we had, I mean, many big new friends and lots of money. And then the general election, obviously. And then to Katie's point, just the calendar, I do think we've seen the end of the caucus, but a caucus is impossible. It's, it's not democratic. There's a whole bunch of things about a caucus, which is a separate conversation. But to go from a caucus to a primary to a caucus to a to a primary, but within the Democratic Party, in particular, to go to a white rural electorate to a white, very college educated, well off electorate to a black and Latino electorate to a almost all black electorate. And we have this pressure from all these, you know, the constituency of the Democratic Party, we're in a cornfield in Iowa, they're like, Well, why aren't you talking about like this issue? It's like, because no one that's not relevant in Iowa, general election, you can kind of talk about anything you want or everything you want, because it resonates somewhere, you can make it useful. So those are just a few of the many differences. And I think a primary in general, they are, they're night and day in many ways. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So Katie, you can sort of talk to Greg, in a sense, directly on this one. And that has to do as you were watching, right, the Biden campaign, the ebbs and flows, and then finally quite the flow. Were you surprised? Sort of say that, I mean, look, this is this is factually true that it was a real, it was a real struggle at the beginning for the for the campaign. I mean, there were so many different candidates. And and yet, then we got to South Carolina. And as you looked at it, though, what did you think as an outside observer, you know, of how the Democratic campaign for Joe Biden was developing? Well, it, it's, it's complicating, because you would look at somebody like me, who's been doing presidential politics going back to 1988, and think, Oh, well, I know how this stuff works. But I really don't know how it works for the Democrats. It's a very, very different process than it is on the Republican side. You know, the Republican electorate is far less broken up by demographics like gender and race than the Democrat primary electorate is. And so it's a really different kind of campaign for us. And I was actually very hopeful that Joe Biden would be the one to emerge from the primary, because I did not think that it would be in the best interest of our country if the general election came down between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. I didn't think that that would be a healthy, good campaign for the country to watch. And I was nervous about what that could mean. So I was hopeful that it would be Joe Biden. And as I was watching those early primaries develop, I was thinking to myself, you know, isn't it just like the Democrats, you know, snatched feet from the jaws of victory? So, you know, I did, of course, know that Clyburn is somebody who has a lot of influence. And so I was very optimistic when that development occurred. I think it had a similar impact. And I won't I won't speak too much about the specific impact, because like I said, that's not my expertise. Yeah, you know, we did see a momentum shift with President Obama, when the Kennedys, for instance, joined his effort. And it was something that I think transcended just race. But I think Clyburn, what it was such sort of a weather vein, I guess is is a good word for Democrats, you know, beyond just African American Democrats, that it, you know, he's kind of over statesmen. And it meant something to the party that he stepped forward in a way that was unique. And it caused, you know, a lot of the party to kind of coalesce. And there is one thing that I think we've seen in primaries on both sides, it's that that voters like to be with winners. And so if somebody looks like the momentum is starting to shift, there's almost nothing that can be done to stop it. And so I was surprised, because it was starting to feel like it was getting away from Joe Biden, but having done enough, or I should say President elect respectfully, Joe Biden, you know, I've seen enough of these campaigns to see that something like that can, you know, flip a switch and the momentum then becomes too strong for anybody to prevent it. Yeah, Greg, and just to build on that, right? So of course, South Carolina is so important. But did you sort of did, did you all see that perhaps as like, okay, so we, you know, the vice presidents got into sea lakes back now, we've won and then we're going to move on. But then you took off like a rocket ship. Yeah, was that kind of surprising in a sense? So I'll start with a few things. One is, you know, all strategy starts with some assumptions and some data. We made some assumptions that the Democratic Party as a whole is a much more moderate, moderate or middle than it is then then Twitter or some of the other candidates would represent. We felt the country actually didn't want to think about their next president, they wanted they prioritize stability over everything else. Joe Biden was that candidate. We also knew Iowa, and in the frustrating thing for I think a lot of us had been on since day one, we couldn't have been more clear, we're going to compete in Iowa in New Hampshire, but we're going to get through those states, we're going to get to South Carolina. And we told people we're going to get to South Carolina, it's going to be a two person race after Super Tuesday between us and Bernie Sanders. We monitored I remember after every debate, after Iowa, after New Hampshire, I would call our South Carolina State Director, who had an informal group of happened to be, I don't know, a dozen black women 50 or 60 years old. And after every debate, I'm like, okay, where are they? After Iowa, where are they? And every time I'd call our State Director in South Carolina, and he said they're with us. In fact, sometimes they were more with us because they're not going to let Iowa speak for them, or they're not going to let some candidate attack Joe Biden in a primary in a debate and get away with treating Joe Biden like that. And so we kept saying, you know, I mean, the black support and the way the delegate math works in, you know, it's all wrapped up in COVID hits. So no one I think is fully appreciated that, you know, the more democratic a district is, the more delegates it has, the more democratic it is, the more likely it's also more diverse. Only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were getting any, any sizable portion of the Latino or black vote and Biden overwhelmingly, and it consistently no matter what, that was remaining constant. So for us, it is, get to super get to South Carolina, we're going to in South Carolina, we are then going to win a plurality of Southern Congressional, you know, Super Tuesday is pretty Southern heavy, or disproportionately Southern heavy. And we talked about, I think the Alabama 7th congressional district for two years, we said, and you know what, we got more, we got every delegate there, I think we got eight delegates in that one district, every other district you basically divide and everybody gets one. And so, so for us, it was stay the course, survive the Super Tuesday, I mean, survive the South Carolina, a two person race after Super Tuesday. And that actually all happened. Now again, the highs were higher and the lows were lower. But it was like, just get to the vote of that actually represents the party. And we said it again, we are like, no one should decide this election until the broad diversity of the party has a voice. And we said that well before Iowa and even louder post Iowa. And, you know, now the way these strategies work, if you're right, you're smart, if you're wrong, you're an idiot. So it worked out for us. But yeah, I will also say Super Tuesday, you know, so South Carolina is at Saturday, you then have Sunday, Monday, and then Super Tuesday. Oh, yeah, that Monday morning, I would say Monday morning at 6am, we had no endorsements locked. That night, we had in person Beto, Pete, Mayor Pete, and Senator Klobuchar. Wow. Yeah. So that is when so I think we expected a two person race after Super Tuesday between us and Sanders and I would tell people I would go into the donor meetings or political meetings in December, I say, whoever you like, it's going to be Donald Trump, Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders, the only three choices of the next president, whether or not Sanders could beat Trump or whatnot. I just, you know, and then, you know, I think the pace at which the party consolidated, we felt it would after Super Tuesday. We felt once it was a two person race, the further left of the party will consolidate with Sanders, which mostly already had and we would start getting the rest. I don't think any of us fully appreciated the speed at which that would happen. Right. But we didn't have faith that it would. Right. Yeah. Well, it happened because there's no other alternative for the Biden campaign. And we we saw this on the Republican side in the 2016 campaign, where all of these candidates were thinking to themselves, we just have to get it down to me and Donald Trump. And then I'll start taking Trump on. And so if you look back in the fall of 2015, and even, you know, leading into Iowa, not one of our candidates was aggressively going after Trump, because they all believed that their path to victory was the last man standing with Trump. Point about the momentum, the problem is, by the time it got to that point, it was too late. The momentum had pushed. And I believe that if Joe Biden had not won South Carolina, I think he would have been in the same position that Ted Cruz was in in 2016. The momentum. And again, you know, I may be wrong, because I, you know, I don't really know Democratic primary politics, but the momentum would have become too strong, I believe, for Bernie, going past South Carolina, that it would have been very hard for them to come back from that. And, you know, in the 2016 primary on the Republican side, there wasn't really an 800 pound gorilla like Joe Biden, you know, that was comparable to Joe Biden. We had a lot of governors and senators and congressmen. And but we didn't have, you know, a former vice president that was sort of, you know, the big dog, which kind of interesting that Nevada really hasn't gotten the attention it should have, because we really didn't believe Iowa and New Hampshire voters, the electorate of South Carolina, we didn't assume that they were going to listen to white, rural New Hampshire or Iowa. But the fact, if we had not gotten second in Nevada, maybe we would have won South Carolina, but it wouldn't have been convincing. And the Katie's, you know, which Katie rolled out with with standards that they could have come to pass. So the fact that we got second in a caucus, which is just hard, you have to remember caucus goers are further left. They're further left. And Iowa in particular just wants to always pick the next Obama, which is why Mayor Pete did so well there. Yeah, right. Very ideologically pure. Yes, yes, on both sides of the party. Obviously, if you look at who's won Iowa for the Republicans over the years, it's also a, you know, I would say terrifying list, but yes, it's a scary list of ideology on both sides. Let's talk about October surprises. And I'll go back a bit actually to the 2012 campaign, because I can't remember when the first debate was Greg, the debate in Colorado. But let's just say that may have in some sense been our October surprise in that, you know, and Katie, you tell us how you all thought, because, you know, let's just say President, that was not President Obama's strongest debate performance. No question. And he always bounces backs. We saw that that kind of felt like a little bit of an October surprise in a sense, right? How did you all see that? What do you remember about that debate performance and whether it felt like that was, you know, the beginning of a pivotal change in the momentum in the campaign? You know, I think I don't think that we viewed it internally as a big swing moment only because, you know, we had spent a long time watching debate and you know, he he has so much knowledge just in his brain that we didn't even though, you know, certainly President Obama is, you know, a formidable debate opponent. We didn't, you know, view Mitt Romney as unequal to the task. We knew that he would go in. He would be over-prepared. You know, Anne Romney, I remember telling her telling me one time that the entire time Mitt was in college and in grad school, he was convinced that he was about to flunk out. He was just so hard on himself and he over-prepared and was always convinced he wasn't going to have the information he needed at the, you know, the moment he needed it. And every time he was on Dean's List and, you know, excelled, and that's the level of preparation that he always brought to the table. So I don't think we viewed that as, you know, a big swing moment for our campaign. It was just the job of the boss and hit it out of the ballpark and he'll do it again. Let me talk to you both then more generally about October surprises, right? Because I don't know where that came from, but it's a staple of presidential campaigns now, right? It's all the media certainly talks about it. And but inside of campaigns, Katie, I'll start with you first. You sort of sit and say, what's going to be the October surprise? And, you know, you sort of have people saying, oh, whispering, we think it's going to be that or it's going to be that. But do you find yourself sort of waiting to see what did you find yourself waiting to see what might be that October surprise? Well, you know, I think we we used to view October surprises differently in the age prior to social media because you work about what was the surprise that was going to come after you know, four o'clock on a Friday when it was too late to respond with a television ad because you couldn't be add up on the air any longer. So that was kind of the true October surprise. You know, with George Bush, it was you know, the DUI that came out in the final weekend of the campaign. You know, I think we all remember Donald Trump's October surprise. You know, we didn't worry about any big scandals with Mitt Romney because he was just such a pure guy that we I mean, if anybody had come forward with, you know, a bimbo eruption as Mary Madeline would have put it, everybody would have just been like, yeah, no, not this guy. So we didn't worry about those kind of scandals. Our October surprise really was Hurricane Sandy, which was an act of God completely out of our control. You know, we felt really good about the momentum that we had and then all of a sudden the hurricane hits and you know, Mitt Romney is a fixer. He's not a feeler. So he doesn't do well in settings where you're called on to go and hug people and, you know, show a lot of empathy. I mean, he's the guy that says, OK, what do we got to do to fix it? He's not the guy that's, you know, Bill Clinton feeling your pain. And so, you know, and compounded by the fact that he wasn't president, so he didn't have a natural role. So you had this act of God that was tailor made for a guy like Barack Obama to go and hug on people and and at the same time be able to deliver them substantial policy relief. You know, it sort of left Mitt Romney kind of standing there going, well, what do I do now? And that's a very tough situation for a candidate that's not a sitting office holder. Oh, yeah. Can I just mention one one little story? We'll go to Greg then about a few surprises. So I was with President with President Obama when he was at the then I forgot what the dinner is called in New York. With the A.S. Yes, the Al Smith dinner. And, you know, we were in the receiving line. Both candidates were in the receiving line. Katie, you may have been been in fact, been back there. And I remember they were, you know, both using hand sanitizer, both President Obama and Governor Romney and Romney said something like, you know, you know, Barack, I actually I actually drink this stuff sometimes. And it's sort of his play on, right? This is this is like, you know, this month, this is the this is the like the extent of the alcohol I would drink. This guy is great. This is absolutely great. So great. October surprises. I mean, especially in this campaign, right, you were. So I would say our October surprise was September of 2019, when the Ukraine effort hit, you know, I think Trump. So I would say the October surprise was a year early. And for us, it validated everything we'd been telling everybody. Donald Trump does not want to run to go run against Joe Biden. He's the only person that can win. And for us, it actually validated that our we had had a fundraising, I guess, slump since that first debate from the summer and then end of August, September, when the, you know, the Trump accusation started coming out on us. It again, that's when that's when we saw like everything start to pick up. Yeah. And, you know, with Trump, one of the things that they aren't that he's not that disciplined in some ways he's very predictable, but he just can't he can't help himself like he will tweet something he'll see something he'll tweet on it. And we knew with Joe Biden, you know, there's a couple, I don't say vulnerabilities, but there's a couple areas you can go after him. He has been in Senate for a long time. That's true. He's older. It's true. But so is Trump. But he's, you know, he was born when he was born. You know, well-documented families, you know, struggles and challenges that a lot of American families, you know, work through. And so the fact that by the time we got to October of 2020, they had already done. I think people are starting to wear on like in the fact that Trump had like Giuliani is one of his main like surrogates on these issues. I just don't think outside of a small part of his base and the people who watch OAN, like that that part always, I think reads it. But in by October of 2020, I honestly think. Now, I think media also learned. They should have learned in 2016 and we were afforded or Trump was not afforded what he was in 2016. I mean, he was able to play the media. The media has never covered Trump wrong. I think they finally are starting to realize he's lying and just cut him off. And that's that's all. So there was not a after Ukraine and the impeachment were like, OK, we know what he's going to do. He's going to try it in different ways. You saw with this laptop, which, you know, Hunter lives on the West Coast, why he would drop up something in a crowded, you know, why it was just it was all laughable. I mean, obviously the far right networks and social media were like running with it. But by that point, middle America that we actually had to communicate with, I think he had already done it. Sure. Sure. Anything. So let's talk about about changes and campaign tactics then for thinking about for future campaigns for both of you. It's been this because of the of course, because of the pandemic, the emphasis on getting voters to mail in ballots and to vote early. Do you think that that could signal because there was great success with it, certainly on the Democratic side in terms of mail in votes and vote and early voting. That these may be sustainable changes in the future. And and Greg, something, for example, and then Katie, to build into, you know, campaign tactics and strategies going forward to maximize that because it gives people greater flexibility, perhaps, to be able to make sure they can cast their votes. I mean, I do think that we're going to be moving in that direction. You know, the the even on the Republican side, the people that are most involved in these campaigns, the local clerks that you talked to and the secretaries of state know that there's very little fraud. That's just the truth. And you see states like, you know, my new home state of Colorado that have been doing mail in voting. Mail in voting with great success without, you know, fraud allegations, you know, that was one of the first states that got called on election night. Corey Gardner lost his seat. He didn't, you know, go demanding a recount. He, you know, just sort of accepted that he had lost the campaign. And I do think it's the wave of the future. The the notion of online or mail in voting, as long as we can continue to protect the integrity of the process. As a campaign professional, my worry about it is that it totally changes the arc of a campaign. You don't really know when election day is because election day is different in every state. You know, I, you know, almost a month before the election. So nothing that happened, you know, after the first week in October could have an impact on my vote. And, you know, who knows if there's information that comes out. Maybe, maybe we shouldn't be at the whim of October surprises. And maybe we should be voting with the information we have in the first week of October. I don't know what the right answer is, but it does change the arc of a campaign. And, you know, I'm all for lots of people voting, but I'm also for a lot of people voting with all the information about both candidates. Right. I think it was a little different this year because I think there weren't a ton of undecided voters. I think people were going in having made up their minds. But I do worry down the road and less about presidential than then, you know, more localized races where information is a little harder to come by. I do sort of worry about how the arc of a campaign is affected when you have people voting so early. Yeah, Greg. Yeah. And I certainly we want to celebrate, you know, expanded opportunities for participation in democracy. But as Katie mentioned, it also is going to make campaigns more expensive. What in a normal, well, traditionally you kind of work backwards. So like week one is the week of election. Week two is like two weeks out from election day. And normally your paid media spend ramps up into election day. And now with people voting five weeks ahead of time, you have to basically spend what you would normally spend in week one, a few days for election, five weeks earlier. And so, you know, Katie talks about the arc of just messaging information, but therefore also fundraising and the need to spend more money early, which, again, we want to find ways to expand the electorate. So that's not it. That's just a reality. And I think it's a it's a good thing, but it will change. You know, in particular, and Katie mentioned, a state rep race, people, you know, look it up in the newspaper the day before the election day to find out who actually are candidates. So that will change that a lot. And presidentials will just get, you know, of the current financing system remains just more expensive. Yeah. You know, so we saw two very different campaigns and approaches. And of course, for Trump, it was the big rallies or whatever size of rallies were, but certainly they seem to have driven record numbers for him. Katie, were you surprised by that and how effective that seemed to be? Was there something else that was going on that led to the kind of turnout that he got? You know, with that campaign style? I'm not sure we have enough scientific controls to know if one is connected to the other. You know, I had a lot of people saying, you know, I know he's down in the polls, but, you know, he sure has these big rallies. And I would remind them that, you know, in the final weekend of the 2012 campaign, you know, Mitt Romney was pulling rallies of 40, 50, 60,000 people. So, you know, even a guy that's as vanilla as Mitt Romney, as much as I love him, I recognize that he's vanilla was still pulling, you know, these massive rallies. And I remember pulling into Bucks County, Pennsylvania on the bus and we just couldn't, I mean, the crowds were, like, down the highway. And Mitt's big brother, Scott, turned to him and said, man, look at this. Who are they here to see? And he was totally serious. He thought we must have some rock band or somebody pulling this kind of crowd. He couldn't believe all these people were there to see his little brother. You know, I think that crowd sizes are a good indicator of the depth of support and sort of the enthusiasm of your base. I'm not sure they're very related to how many voters you end up pulling at the polls. I just think it's a totally different kind of measurement. And certainly, if you had no crowds, that would be a good indicator that, you know, you're not heading into a winning campaign. But I, you know, I'm not sure the difference between a crowd of 30,000, 60,000 and 80,000, you know, necessarily means, you know, great turnout. You know, obviously, he had big, huge crowds and he still lost to a guy who was doing campaigns at drive-ins and, you know, practicing social distancing. So I just don't know that they're related. So, Greg, who came up with the idea of the drive-ins? Oh, our advance. We have an advance team is really good. We've got the guy named Sam Salk has been running it and we've added a bunch of people from other campaigns. And there is amazingly creative. The amount of times I'll watch something on a video and I'll text our advance team. I'm like, who came up with that? And they just, they're super creative. Whether it's getting a bunch of red, white and blue pickup trucks, they are in the age of COVID, they've really thought outside the box. They're, but they're, yeah, it was very fascinating to see. There had to have been times though where you all were like, if we could just get the vice president and Senator Harris out. Well, that's for Biden. We talk about, you know, Biden or Biden's strongest asset is his empathy, you know, and he is a people person and he's a tactile politician and he like feeds off of crowds, which is, you know, so it was, but you know, when you are the candidate and the campaign that respect science and public health, you have to be the campaign that respect science and public health. And it would, yeah, and it was another one of the many times we were called idiots and dumb and, and, you know, you try to follow the science. You don't want to get your volunteers sick. I will also say to Katie's point on crowd sizes, look at the primary Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren had huge crowds. You know, I will say one of the best uses of actually getting crowds. I remember how the Obama team, we did it so effectively in 08 and 12 is you get these crowds and then you sign up volunteers. And so while, yes, they're going to vote for you, it's more like, okay, can you get a phone shift or a canvas shift out of the five people that showed up? And if you can do that, that's worth more than just actually the actual crowd size day up. Yeah, definitely. And Greg, you know, I think it was fascinating to me to watch how you all were able to turn something that had become a little, a little bit of a vulnerability for the vice president in terms of how closely he likes to communicate to people, right? And then there was a time that was like, oh, he gets too close to people. And yeah, as I watch the ads develop, you know, that became you all use that as an asset because I think it expressed empathy. And it's the biggest contrast we have with Donald Trump. Now, there's a ton of policy. But Joe Biden is as human, his humanity, his humanity is what defines Joe Biden and everything. His faith, how he thinks about his family. And I'm not saying, you know, and in some ways I would say maybe artfully, but Donald Trump's inhumanity or some of what people would say his callousness is just the biggest. And so any way we could show the humanity of Joe Biden, he doesn't like talking about his faith. Biden is someone who would live it, but not preach it. Yeah. He tried to lift that up, you know, and Broderick, I know you know that the strength of the Catholic vote in the industrial Midwest in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. And so that, again, is something we tried to highlight tying in with the empathy piece. Yeah, yeah. Well, it certainly came across. So Katie, you've, let's talk about kind of the future of particularly the efforts that you're involved in. And I'm certain you look at the success of the Republican Party, particularly congressional and maybe at state and legislative levels and getting more women Republicans elected. Can you talk a little bit about your view of that and what it may say about what the party needs to do to continue to build that, but also to make sure that other other populations that have, you know, for certainly to some degree abandoned the Republican Party for a while anyway, can move toward it. Well, just, you know, in the interest of full disclosure, my efforts to recruit women and to promote women were really put on pause when Donald Trump became the nominee of our party in 2016. And I made a personal decision that that was not a party that I could continue to work and promote and build, you know, for a lot of reasons that I was very public about, so I won't go into them all here. But I do think that in terms of the future of the party overall, you know, there are a couple of big steps that have to happen. We have to see, you know, how Donald Trump continues to react to the loss of the presidential election and then to see what he decides to do with regard to the future. I think as long as he's flirting with the idea of running again in 2024, I think it sort of paralyzes the party in this moment, this party that's very beholden to President Trump and to Trump-style politics and campaigning, which is not particularly philosophical. I mean, for the first time, you know, definitely in my lifetime and I don't know in how long the Republican Party opted not to even have a platform this year, which was something that was unthinkable to me, you know, that it could ever occur. And so the party, I do think, is sort of paralyzed in place until, you know, Trump decides, you know, what his plans for the future are, because a lot of people do feel very beholden to him and it sort of locks it in place. If he does decide to, you know, formally concede the election and makes clear he's not going to run again, then, you know, the future of the party is really up in the air. And I do think that there will be a lot of soul-searching and you'll have a battle between, you know, from the Pence wing and to the Nikki Haley wing to, you know, the Cruz wing and, you know, so many candidates that are going to vie for the nomination and potentially be vying against somebody else named Trump, you know, but without the same sort of retail gifts that Donald Trump has. So, you know, I think that there's just a giant question mark over the letters GO right now. Yeah, yeah. Greg, sort of, I guess somewhat similar as you look at, you know, the Democratic Party and as much as being made, certainly by the media, but it's not a media fascination that's bringing us about. There really are some tensions within the Democratic Party that are gonna largely affect, you know, what the new president and vice president administration will be able to succeed at. How do you think that President Biden will address trying to bridge those gaps? Yeah. Well, I think just the temperament of Joe Biden, he is, you know, respected on the Hill. I mean, he's got good relationships with a number of sitting Republican senators and House members because he listens. You can look at it throughout his career and you will find people on the right and the left who have said, I came to Joe Biden with an idea. He helped me implement it. He, I think we will talk a lot about getting things done and actually showing action. You can list not picking at any one Democrat, but there's a few that ran for president that had many of years of service and no bills to their name. So it's one thing to talk and it's another thing to govern and lead. And you're gonna see Biden, he's, you can look at the people he is surrounding himself with. You can look at some of the transition teams. It represents this country as a president should. And I think you're gonna see Biden, he's, I actually love when he says, you know, he ran as a Democratic president and he's gonna govern as an American president. And I think that's what the vast majority of the country wants. It's why he won the primary. It's why he won the general election. And we need to actually like temper down. We need to temper down our politics and we actually have to start getting things done again. And when you look at things like the environment, I mean, Joe Biden is where the scientists are, but is where a lot of the people on the ideological center and center left and left are and a number of things. And so, you know, we will find ways to make advancements and get things done as a country. And I think that will, that will, the proof will be in the actual accomplishment. You know, Biden, I think it's gonna work hard to get an infrastructure bill passed and that's gonna put a lot of people back to work and it's gonna pay good wages. And so, you know, we'll work to have things to show. Yeah, definitely. Yep. Good. So we're going to some questions from the audience in here. And, but so Greg, I'm gonna ask you this though, have you decided what you're gonna do next? I'm trying to, I started to read a book for the first time in nine months, two and a half year old son, we went to the Aaron Space Museum on Saturday. Oh, yeah. And you and Katie and Brody, if you both know, it's like, you know, it's, that's like what normal people do. They like read and it's, I'm trying to enjoy like that for a little bit. I've been with Biden now for seven years in a number of different roles, not even counting the 08 and 12 campaigns. So I'll stay close whether that is on the inside or if that is something on the parallel outside. I'm trying to give myself just a little bit of distance. You should. You know, just for some mental health. And Katie, I'm sure you will be figuring out the, you know, the Republican party's direction and, you know, presidential campaigns and state and local campaigns as well as you address what, you know, you've certainly established to be some real challenges for the Republican party going forward. Yeah, to be honest, you know, I've been on a bit of a hiatus from Republican politics. And, you know, right now I'm kind of waiting to see what happens, you know, in these next few months. So that goes then to one of the questions then I think polling. And there's a question everybody, you know, everybody is sort of confronted with sort of what happened to the pollsters and why were they so far off in this and that. And it's really been interesting to Katie, I've said this to a number of people that it seems that, you know, some of the Republican pollsters and you'd see them in whatever that website is that we all tend to look at. But some Republican pollsters were, you know, coming back with predictions and results that a lot of these battleground states were going to be closer than some of the other pollsters were predicting, certainly. What do you think about the future of polling, Katie? I guess, and did you find it more reliable, you know, in past campaigns you've worked for than it seems to be the case now. And I'm gonna talk about internal polling. I'm talking about the polling that, of course, is done in conjunction with the networks and pollsters, you know, that whole industry. Well, I'll say I'm not sorry to see media polling taking a beating. I think that it's been a long time coming. I think media polling is a very uninformed, not particularly artful way of gauging progress in political campaigns. Why is that, do you think? I think they do it cheaply. I think they do the cheapest thing that they can. They don't really, they're not really accountable. I mean, nobody's calling up ABC, you know, a month after the election and not doing business with them because their poll was off. You know, so all these media outlets wanna have a poll because, you know, it's clickbait and they wanna have a headline to report on the evening news, you know, or to run on the ticker on the cable news all day. I think it's junk. I think media polling, generally speaking, is junk. There are a few exceptions to that, but generally it's junk. And I think the campaigns have a much better handle on where the polls are at. And I remember, you know, maybe, you know, everybody was talking about how this race was in the bag. And I remember, you know, something, you know, some email that Jen O'Malley Dillon, who I know is a political superstar, you know, saying, this is close. These are the states where it's really super close. Do not let up. And I remember thinking to myself, she knows. She's looking at real data and she knows. And so, you know, forget what all these media polls are saying, you know, the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign are saying it's gonna be close in these places. Listen to them. So, you know, I would like to see, you know, media outlets have enough dignity and self-respect to say, this is something we don't do well. So we're not gonna report on it. We're gonna report on actual news. Poll isn't news. We're gonna report on what the candidates and the campaigns are doing and how it's affecting people and forget, you know, this poll-driven news that, you know, has overtaken campaigns. I think it has become something that influences campaigns and that should not be the role of the media. Yeah, that's interesting, Greg. I would think about the, for example, I can't remember whose poll it was, but the poll, like maybe the weekend before. Wisconsin had, someone had Wisconsin on 17. 17, yeah. So what was your reaction inside the campaign to that? Was it all the way off, but it might be a little close? No, we don't know. We always thought it was gonna be close. And I think for us, I think if you looked at our, one of the things we fixed at the start of the primary, in 2016 on the Democratic side, you had pollsters and you had data scientists and they just kind of butted head all the time and it was just no good data. And so we had a very strong working relationship with our data scientists, Becca Siegel, who'd run it since day one and our main pollsters who have been with us since day one. And so we at least weren't getting conflicting data. They did their own things, but they worked together so it was instructive. I think if you go back and look at, if they had to rank out the top 10 states in order of how close they'd be and how important they are, we always understood our priorities and I feel confident that our polling and data scientists always kept us focused on what was the most important priority order. Because at the end of the day, you kind of wanna know like, what's the value of the state and how important is it to put more investment, more time, more resources into it. And so we never, we all, I mean, for two years, where like don't look at polling, it's not, especially like national polls. I mean, I don't know why anybody does a national poll anymore for any, for the primary doesn't matter and for a general, it doesn't matter. And so just stop doing it, it does nothing, does nothing. And so, the other thing is we've increased the modes of communication. We've overlaid on landlines historically. We've now done, since the primary, we have done, you know, text and online focus groups and we've tried to just not rely on anyone's source of input for a polling output. So those are just kind of some thoughts on that. Yo, thank you. Well, yes, so for those of us who didn't work on this campaign, the polling drove us crazy and I would say, I'm not gonna look anymore. And then I'd say, oh, great. Oh no, what do I believe in realizing that it's, you know, it's the voters who determine all of this, right? Not the, those who predict the scientists, data scientists make a big deal though, so. Yeah, we knew it was gonna be close and we knew it was ours to lose, but we knew it was gonna be close. And that's how we felt that way for two years. Well, we're at the end of our hour and I really just wanna first say thank you both for a great conversation, a very informative conversation, a very pleasant conversation and, you know, cause we don't have enough pleasant conversations in our body, body politic these days, that's for sure, but I'm optimistic as I'm sure you all are too about the future and I just wanna thank you on behalf again of the Ford School and the Towsley Foundation and Greg, anytime you wanna come to the big house for a game and walk and touch the banner, the go blue banner, I think we could probably arrange that for you, but since you're an Ohio guy, I suspect you don't wanna do that. Broderick and you know, and Broderick just alluded to the fact that I've got two degrees from the Ohio State University, but I have been saying for the first and only time in my life since spot September that I hope Michigan goes blue for Joe Biden. And so you didn't, so thank you for that. Absolutely, and Katie, thank you tremendously as well. It's been great, all the best, safe and happy Thanksgiving and the rest of the year to both of you. And I think that's a wrap, that's a great session. Thank you both. Thank you. I'm gonna see you Katie. Good to see you guys, take care. You too, thanks.