Now after advising Pete Buttigieg, she's published a must-read memoir, 'Any Given Tuesday: A Political. Maybe theres still time for me to choose a new life path because I felt extremely disillusioned. And so much of my book is about the power of belief and the element of belief that it takes to succeed in professional football, in politics, and hes the one who brought that belief back for me, and brought my love my pure love of politics back for me. Jason Bergman for POLITICO. The good candidates have humility. 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. During the campaign, Forbes considered her one of "the essential people to follow on Twitter," saying:[5], The New York Times noted that Smith's rapid response tweets "were a big reason that the campaign was able to define Mitt Romney before he could define himself."[4]. Mistakes Ive made in my professional life. Hold on, Im sorry. 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. [3] Buttigieg received the most pledged delegates in the Iowa caucuses . This section featured five news stories about Buttigieg and his presidential campaign. Insider caught up with Smith on Thursday, and learned about her time with de Blasio and what she looks for in undiscovered star candidates. #cjc2024. 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. I want him on everything, she told me. They have grown to like and trust each other. Democratic Consultant Lis Smith on Her Professional - People Obama had David Axelrod. Lis Smith - Fellow - Georgetown University's Institute of - LinkedIn Smith: All the good candidates are comfortable in their own skin. Youve got this hard-nosed New York-style political operative and this friendly Hoosier mayor, he said. She was a field representative in South Dakota for then-Sen. Tom Daschle's unsuccessful re-election campaign in 2004 and press secretary for Sen. Claire McCaskill's (D-Mo.) I was coming off some New York races where everything is just all-day personal attacks getting in the mud. ), Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo. Does something like Buttigieg Derangement Syndrome exist? 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. He weighed in after the shooting in Uvalde. There were very, very few women in positions of power. | Mark Peterson/Redux, Yuki Iwamura/Redux. The obvious thing to do would have been to take on high-paying, quieter corporate gigs, or to reenter politics with someone truly high profile. They are doing things that are more directly relevant to peoples lives. 2022: Hell of a Week with Charlamagne Tha God as Self: 2021: Mayor Pete: 2003: Real Time with Bill Maher as Self: Clear; CNN's Dana Bash speaks to Senior Political Commentator and former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, former Buttigieg campaign adviser Lis Smith, CNN Political Commentator David Urban and CNN . You have to know the social media ecosystem, how people are sharing and consuming their news. It wasnt just the biggest names, people you know, Smith says. George Bush had Karl Rove; Bill Clinton had James Carville. She is a talented communicator. Thats a pretty ballsy thing to do. She ran it like he was trying to be president, getting him in front of as many microphones as she could. She led Buttigieg on a series of one-on-one meetings over beer, coffee, lunch or cigars with what used to be known as the Gang of 500those reporters, producers and pundits who shape much of the nations political coverage. Cuomo recruits former de Blasio campaign aide who dated Eliot Spitzer Click here. And if people like it they like it, and if they dont they were probably never going to vote for you anyway.. Its why in one day we do CBS Sunday Morning, The View, Teen Vogue and the New Yorker. Smith: You never say never. Im just going to leave it there because I thought it was funny. And you just like have this moment, where youre like, Maybe this is it. Theres a public Terry and a private Terry. [2] He suspended his campaign on March 1, 2020.[3]. It pisses me off, she adds, When candidates think they are too good for some of these outlets, or that it cheapens them to do TMZ or do a more entertainment-focused thing. 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. At the newsstand around the corner, you could buy a New York magazine with Buttigiegs beatifically smiling face splashed across the cover, and a New York Times with an A1 story about his time at Harvard. And why that matters is because the states are where a lot of the key fights are going to play out following the Dobbs Supreme Court decision. ), Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo. Through the DNC race and afterward, Smith treated the national political press like it was another constituency that needed to be courted. In that moment, in retrospect, it seems like Harris couldve ended Buttigiegs campaign. This is an election where the women voters are going to be really important. It will codify Roe v. Wade. Her plan is to emulate maybe the best-known and most successful insurgent move of recent campaign history: John McCains 2000 Straight Talk Express. This is what day one looks like. Lis Smith is an American campaign manager affiliated with the Democratic Party. 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. Wren: You mentioned that some people might view you as radioactive. This is what day two looks like. I think hes a really good person. You get a sense of the news, what is going to get picked up, she said, reaching into her bag for her copy of the Post, which she said she was saving for Buttigieg. There are probably dozens of Mayor Petes out there across the country. It was a reporter from BuzzFeed News, waiting to take my place. Shes on her phone talking to another Buttigieg aide. It was younger reporters, super-hungry reporters that really know how to use Twitter, people who can then go to a cocktail party and tell their friends they had a beer with this guy Pete Buttigieg three hours from now. Sign up for POLITICO Magazines email of the weeks best, delivered to your inbox every Friday morning. Theyre just not looking in the right places. Wren: Youre often credited with vaulting Pete from the mayor of Indianas fourth-largest city to a member of Bidens cabinet. . Well, of course someone running for president would need to talk about it with me first, right? Wren: How is the Lis Smith depicted in this book different from the Lis Smith in the popular political imagination? Lis Smith is recording this call. Shes a Black half-South-Indian woman. The makeup of a candidate's staff can signal the strength of their support from influential party activists and whether they are aligning with a particular faction or group within the party. Wren: You and Pete have very different brands. The spotlight turns to Kamala Harris, the only Black candidate on stage. Not surprisingly, her politics are establishment liberal. That is not the typical relationship of adviser to political principal, but typical is not a word people use about Smith. He doesnt yell and scream, take the most extreme positions on issues, or tweet incendiary things. He was attempting a comeback by running for the modest job of New York City comptroller, and when the vote came in, he pulled in a respectable 48 percent, even though the entire citys political establishment was against him. 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. 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. As someone who was a mayor who was on the ground, who knows how important this stuff is, hes a great messenger to send out there to these smaller media markets everywhere, where he can meet with the mayors, speak to them in their language, help make sure that theyre getting the resources they need. Its really hard to do a hit piece on a guy who you are going to see the next morning over coffee and donuts. He weighed in after the Supreme Court decision. You deploy the F-bomb like Picasso used drypoint. Maybe Im done. 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 he's known since. He shoots her a look and gives a mock shrug, as if it's an inside joke between the three of us, now old chums: I mean, a little I guess., Buttigieg makes an appearance on "The View." Weve seen a lot of cataclysmic things happen. We met at the Roxy Hotel in Tribeca. A photo and audio tour of the hosts driving the conversation. I remember in Iowa, we had all these young mayors for him. Pete Buttigieg's Campaign Staff: 5 Fast Facts | Heavy.com How hard-chargingNew Yorkoperative Lis Smith helpedturn an obscure Indianamayorinto a national name. Im realistic here. 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. [2] He suspended his campaign on March 1, 2020. 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. Smith starts texting me, wanting to know if Id seen the celebrities in the audience, including George Takei, Kal Penn and Kate McKinnon. 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. Pete Buttigieg presidential campaign staff, 2020 - Ballotpedia