The consultants are in charge now: How admen and advisers conquered American politics

The key elements of modern campaigns are new, lucrative -- and not always nefarious

Published January 10, 2016 4:59PM (EST)

Karl Rove, James Carville, Frank Luntz   (AP/Reuters/Rich Pedroncelli/Eduardo Munoz/Charlie Neibergall)
Karl Rove, James Carville, Frank Luntz (AP/Reuters/Rich Pedroncelli/Eduardo Munoz/Charlie Neibergall)

Excerpted from "Building a Business of Politics"

Ten miles from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, located in a low-rise office building in Towson, Maryland, is a successful business few Americans know about. Mentzer Media Services is one of the leading political consulting firms in the country. Mentzer Media does not design or produce the ubiquitous advertisements we see on television. Instead, the company specializes in the strategic placement of campaign commercials by purchasing airtime on behalf of its many clients, deciding where and when (and how often) an ad should run. Time-buying is a critical component of modern campaign strategy. It is also a highly profitable one. According to the company’s website, Mentzer Media has handled more than $1 billion in media buys. Assuming an industry-standard 10 to 15 percent commission on the ads it placed, Mentzer Media has earned between $100 and $150 million over the past several election cycles. In 2012 alone, Mentzer Media placed more than $245 million worth of ads, half of which were on behalf of Mitt Romney’s super PAC, Restore Our Future.

Mentzer Media is just one of the many consulting firms that profited from the 2012 election. The top Democratic media firm, GMMB, handled $435 million in spending in 2012, 90 percent of which came from the Obama campaign. Together, thousands of candidates, the two major parties, and a myriad of wealthy outside groups spent over $6 billion trying to win office or sway the outcome of a race. More than half of this total, around $3.6 billion, went to consulting firms specializing in media, direct mail, and digital services. Although it is difficult to know precisely how much consultants earn in a given campaign cycle, the top firms in the industry appear to be doing quite well. In 2012, just fifty professional firms, averaging around $50 million in expenditures, handled 75 percent of all consulting services in federal campaigns. Between 2008 and 2012, revenues and billings by the top fifty consulting firms grew in real terms by 66 percent, about seven times the rate of growth in overall political spending during the same period. Much of this increase is due to the pronounced rise in independent expenditures by super PACs and other outside groups. The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United opened the floodgates to more than $1 billion in outside spending in 2012—most of it on television advertising produced and placed by professional consultants.

Even if the political consequences of the 2010 Court decision remain a matter of debate to some, the economic benefits of Citizens United to the consulting industry are crystal clear.

In fact, federal elections are only one potential source of revenue for political consultants. Between 2008 and 2012, for example, GMMB earned approximately $125 million in commissions from political advertisements. During the same period, according to the Center for Public Integrity, GMMB received an additional $124 million in fees from the telecommunications industry, beverage companies, and several other industry groups. According to one study of the political consulting business, firms typically earn less than 40 percent of revenues in an election year from federal races; the majority of income comes from a combination of state and local candidates, ballot initiatives, political parties, corporate clients, and overseas elections. On this basis, the political consulting industry earned an estimated $8.9 billion during the 2012 election cycle. Politics has become a thriving commercial enterprise.

The rise of a multi-billion-dollar business of politics marks a significant change in the conduct of campaigns and the character of our democracy. Over the course of the twentieth century, the old style of political campaigns gave way to the media-intensive and candidate-focused electoral contests we know today. Whereas parties and candidates used to rely on a network of local operatives to rally the party faithful and manage the practical aspects of winning a race, most of the key decisions in contemporary campaigns are now in the hands of consultants who sell a variety of products and services such as media, polling, and direct mail to an array of causes and candidates. In the last hundred years, a modern political consulting industry took shape—and took control of American elections.

How did the consulting industry gain near-exclusive control over the provision of political services in American politics? More broadly, what are the consequences of this development for the functioning of American institutions, the role of money in politics, and the relationship between politicians and the public? This book answers these questions by examining changes in the practical work of political campaigns. Specifically, the book follows the emergence of a professional political class in the United States: the political consultants who plumb the public mind and craft the candidate’s message.

The story begins in the early twentieth century when campaigns began to place greater emphasis on the qualities of the candidate as a way to get out the vote. With the spread of radio and the advent of polling in the 1930s, experts in mass communication and survey research began turning social scientific renderings of the public into carefully crafted messages. These developments continued through the 1950s and 1960s as the growth of television provided a new medium to reach the public. However, with a few exceptions in places like California, the commercial opportunities from campaign work remained limited until the 1970s, when a full-blown business of politics finally emerged. Aided in part by new campaign finance rules, the pursuit of popular support came to rely almost exclusively on products and services that consultants alone could provide. Today, the business continues to evolve as consultants incorporate new techniques of digital politics and the industry consolidates into larger firms and multinational holding companies that offer an array of services to political and corporate clients.

Changes in the practical work of campaigns have had far-reaching consequences for American politics. The rise of a business of politics keyed other important developments such as the twentieth-century growth of presidential power and the political mobilization of American business. In our own time, the consulting industry is contributing to a broader shift toward a professionally managed public sphere while serving a crucial role in the system of campaign finance that allows wealthy donors to seek power and influence through legal (if lightly regulated) political contributions. In other words, political consultants are critical intermediaries in the democratic process, standing between the voters and those who endeavor to represent them. The definition of public problems, the framing of issues, and the formation of interests all rely on the services of a professional political class.

The Control of Political Work

There are those who live for politics, and there are those who live from it. For some, politics offers a path toward personal fulfillment, a sense of meaning and purpose that comes from the devotion to a cause. For others, politics is mainly a source of income. The two are quite compatible, of course. Writing in the early decades of the twentieth century, the German sociologist Max Weber observed that the advent of mass democracy had given rise to a new kind of specialist whose job it was to secure popular support on behalf of a party or candidate. Weber argued that this cadre of “politically gifted people” was a defining feature of modern political life, although he hesitated to predict “what outward shape the business of politics … will take” in the future.

The rise of the political consulting industry is part of this democratic development, although the modern business of politics represents a fundamental change in the nature of political work over the last hundred years. By “political work” I mean practices designed to elicit the support or influence the views of the public on behalf of political candidates, elected officials, or interests of various kinds. This book examines how innovations in the practical work of campaigns contributed to a shift away from the party agent who mobilized armies of partisans at the local level and toward the political consultant who crafts images and messages using mass communication and social scientific techniques.

Commentators and critics often blame consultants for much that is wrong with American politics today, particularly a media-driven, personalized style that some argue undermines the quality of public debate. Others lament the rise of a permanent campaign in American politics as those skilled in the dark arts of political communication have acquired a privileged position in a White House constantly seeking public approval for presidential initiatives.

Political scientists commonly take a more measured view, explaining the rise of consulting as a logical outgrowth of broader shifts in the polity such as the rise of new technology or the evolution of the national party committees into something akin to general contractors that help candidates secure campaign services like polling and media.

These developments were critical to be sure, but broad shifts alone cannot explain exactly how political consultants transformed the practical work of campaigns. In fact, many of the practices we associate with contemporary politics such as candidate-focused appeals and even poll-tested messages predate the rise of television or changes in party organizations. In other words, the history of the consulting industry does not fit with accounts that explain its rise solely in terms of the functional needs of parties or candidates. Consequently, this book looks at the practical work of consultants themselves in order to understand how they became central figures in the American political system.

Consider the following puzzle: after decades of careful study, political scientists have found that television advertising often has minimal effects on the outcome of a race. Or, to put it more accurately, television ads are only effective at certain times and under certain conditions. For instance, a study of the 2012 presidential election found that early investment in advertising by the Obama team had minimal effects on voters compared with advertisements aired at the end of the campaign. This finding is consistent with other research that shows the effects of advertising to be rather short-lived. Television is also a blunt instrument for targeting supporters, particularly in large metropolitan areas that include multiple congressional districts and where viewers are regularly exposed to ads from candidates for whom they cannot vote. Moreover, research suggests that door-to-door voter contact is a more effective tool than television when it comes to increasing turnout. Yet, television accounts for the largest single expenditure in most campaigns, and candidates will spend as much on advertising as their fundraising prowess will allow. The 2012 election shattered records for television advertising in federal elections.

If the effects of advertising are somewhat limited or only partly understood, why do campaigns devote so much of their resources to media? One answer is that candidates are always “running scared” and are therefore reluctant to cede any advantage to their opponent.

Advertising can make a difference when one candidate has a big advantage in spending. However, the desire to avoid being outspent on the airwaves begs another question: How did media become the core element of modern campaigns? Given the decidedly mixed evidence about the effects of television, it appears that something more is at work than candidates simply adapting to the changing conditions of twentieth-century politics. In fact, the heavy reliance on television in political campaigns makes much more sense from the perspective of a political consulting industry reliant on products and services that provide the greatest financial return.

In order to understand how techniques like polling and media became core features of American politics, it is necessary to focus on the nature of political work itself. Accordingly, this book examines how practitioners devised new methods for securing popular support, convinced would-be clients of their skills, and outcompeted other providers of political services such as party workers, journalists, and those working in allied fields like public relations and advertising. Over the course of the twentieth century, consultants asserted themselves as trained experts in the provision of political advice, a claim they defended by developing a new set of political tasks that they alone were uniquely qualified to perform and, they argued, were uniquely suited to the needs of a complex modern polity. The rise of the modern business of politics hinged on the creation and eventual control over new forms of political work. As a result of these innovations, it became possible to live for and extremely well from politics in the United States.

In his richly detailed account of nineteenth-century politics, Richard Bensel vividly describes how elections resembled “a kind of sorcerer’s workshop in which the minions of opposing parties turned money into whiskey and whiskey into votes.” At the heart of this wizardry was the party agent who “ran the machinery of democracy.” Hired by party leaders and local bosses to secure victory at the ballot box, the party agent performed a variety of important functions during the nineteenth century, including mobilizing voters, intimidating the opposition, and even working as judges and recording clerks on Election Day. Their job, simply put, was “manipulating the returns where they could, manhandling their opponents where they must.”

And what a job it was. Party agents were “experienced in the customs, traditions, and techniques of party competition in and around the polling place.” This was a valuable set of skills that granted party agents considerable influence over the conduct of nineteenth-century campaigns. Although motivated to some extent by political beliefs, party agents “were also, in much more mundane and personal terms, rewarded by money payments, social recognition, and patronage appointments.” Writing at the turn of the twentieth century, political scientist Moisei Ostrogorski described the American party system in similar terms as an “immense army” of party workers “spurred by the incentive of personal interest.”

Financial reward has long been a feature of American politics because political work attracts individuals motivated by a mixture of partisan and pecuniary interest. This was especially the case in the nineteenth century when armies of fourth-class postmasters and customs workers owed their livelihood to partisan politics. With their jobs depending on the outcome of the presidential contest, patronage workers provided much of the labor for political campaigns and paid a portion of their salary back to the party to help cover electioneering expenses. The graft and corruption associated with some of the urban political machines that flourished through the early part of the twentieth century further illustrate how politics provided financial rewards for the privileged few. Similarly today, helping one’s party succeed can yield personal gains such as a political job or even a presidential appointment. Although partisanship still motivates people to work long hours on political campaigns (often for little or no money), politics has long provided a way to make a living, whether as a nineteenth-century party worker or a twenty-first-century political consultant.

Yet, a crucial difference separates the party agent from the political consultant. Unlike the party worker of the past, consultants operate under a different set of incentives. Today, the profit motive guides the conduct of political work and shapes the character of our politics in a manner and to an extent that did not exist before the rise of the political consulting industry. With the organization of political work into commercial firms, consultants can hedge political risks by working for multiple clients and providing an array of commercial services, addressing the short-run needs of a candidate without sacrificing the long-run interests of the business. Whereas the personal fate of the political operative used to depend almost entirely on the electoral success of the party, today’s political consultants can lose an election without losing their livelihood.

This book examines the consequences of this shift as the political craft of the party agent evolved into the modern business of politics. The transition begins at the turn of the twentieth century when Progressive Era reformers embraced the idea of publicity as a way to challenge the power of the trusts and expose back-room deals to the light of day. Publicity subjected politics, and politicians, to careful scrutiny. However, the idea of publicity carried another meaning as well, as an orchestrated campaign of persuasion that could attract public support on behalf of a candidate, a cause, or a corporation. This dual meaning of publicity suggested a new kind of political work, one that depended on appeals to individual opinion rather than partisan identities or affiliations.

With the end of World War I, the progressive promise of publicity gave way to a postwar fear of propaganda. Rather than enlightened and informed, the experience of the war revealed a public that was easily manipulated and even misled. Consequently, many greeted novel methods of publicity and mass persuasion with skepticism or outright hostility. In response, publicity experts and would-be consultants claimed they were specialists in the modern science of behavior. Struggles over the control of political work subsequently played out in attempts to secure professional status as an expert reader and shaper of public sentiments. This professional claim dovetailed with a behavioral turn in the social sciences and the burgeoning academic study of public opinion. One early practitioner was Edward Bernays, a tireless promoter of public relations who worked hard to convince potential clients and the larger public that his techniques were ideally suited to the conditions of modern politics. To achieve his goal, Bernays cultivated close ties with prominent social scientists in order to achieve a degree of professional control over political work.

With the invention of radio, the ability to reach a vast broadcast audience occasioned the need for new sources of information about the effects of mass communication. This was especially the case in the burgeoning field of advertising as advances in market research and commercial polling gave rise to a new science of selling. The toolkit of modern business methods heavily influenced the modern business of politics. As politicians and presidents took to the airwaves, survey research offered a much-needed source of political intelligence especially suited to the radio age. In effect, as Sarah Igo explains, pollsters “transferred the techniques honed for selling soap and cereal from the buying to the voting public.” More than simply a way to measure public sentiment, surveys became an instrument to craft targeted appeals through a union of advertising and polling. Combining the art and science of politics was a critical innovation of the political consulting profession.

Despite these advances in polling and media, most early practitioners were unable to make a living from political work. An important exception was in California, where the team of Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter hit upon a successful business model that overcame the uncertain and periodic nature of campaigns. Specifically, Whitaker and Baxter forged a lucrative business of politics by discovering new ways to organize business in politics. Through their firm, Campaigns, Inc., the team worked on behalf of various industry groups and trade associations to defeat candidates, ballot measures, and legislative proposals that threatened the financial interests of their clients. Their work had national implications. After Whitaker and Baxter defeated a proposal for universal health care in California, the American Medical Association (AMA) hired the pair to defeat Harry Truman’s plans for national health insurance. Stoking fears of “socialized medicine,” Whitaker and Baxter unleashed a media blitz that cost the AMA $3.6 million and earned Campaigns, Inc. almost $1.2 million in fees between 1949 and 1952.

Despite the important advances made by Whitaker and Baxter in the 1940s, it would take several decades more before a true business of politics emerged on a national scale. This lag points to an ongoing struggle over political work as the consulting profession slowly consolidated its
control over campaign services. In the 1950s, Madison Avenue advertising firms took the lead in managing the national television campaigns for presidential candidates. However, this began to change in the 1960s as advertising agencies discovered that involvement in a presidential
campaign might compromise relations with their commercial clients.

Advertising firms were ill-suited to the partisan nature of political work, and their exit from campaigns provided a crucial opening for specialists in political strategy and media to build a business of their own. In the 1970s, the political consulting industry took off, aided by a new campaign finance system that required candidates to document each and every dollar spent. In effect, consultants became a legal and legitimate way for politicians to spend money. Meanwhile, technological advances in video production and computing along with lower-cost communication and transportation made it possible for consultants to service a larger number of clients across the country and even around the globe. By the end of the 1980s, a profitable business had taken hold, and the term “political consultant” began to enter wide usage as a way to designate those who provided a range of specialized products and services to political campaigns.

The evolution of political work continues in our own time with the development of digital politics. The use of the Internet as a platform for raising money and the ability to leverage sophisticated data analytics to identify and mobilize armies of supporters have become staples of political campaigns in the twenty-first century. Unlike the advent of radio or the rise of television, however, recent advances in digital campaigning have occurred amid a highly commercialized market for political products and services. Rather than challenge the consultant’s control over political work, digital campaign tools are just another service to sell. Meanwhile, the consulting industry is consolidating into larger firms, and the business of politics itself is increasingly part of a global communications enterprise dominated by a handful of multinational conglomerates.

Practical Innovation and Political Work

Politics is a speculative enterprise, fueling experiments in the conduct of political work. In fact, the history of consulting vividly illustrates the creative element in politics. As they devise a campaign strategy, consultants mix scientific polling and sophisticated media with local political knowledge and previous experience. In the process, consultants create the very context in which they work. As they craft the messages of the candidates, consultants define the issues of the campaign. When they interpret poll results, consultants call forth specific groups that make up an electoral coalition. In doing so, consultants recreate, reinforce, and reproduce the alignments and allegiances that inform the decisions of the candidate as well as the behavior of individual voters.

These practical responses to the shifting dynamics of a race have important consequences for the political system beyond the life of a specific campaign. As I detail throughout this book, the media-intensive, candidate-focused style of politics we witness today arose through a series of innovations that applied new methods to the old task of vote-getting. Although consultants and their forerunners exploited technological developments like radio and television as well as political opportunities that came with the decline of traditional party organizations, the industry’s rise also required a willingness to experiment and a fair degree of salesmanship. It is in the successful effort to define and defend their role that political consultants transformed the conduct of campaigns and altered the character of American politics.

Changes in democratic practice reflect the shifting techniques of everyday politics, what I refer to as political work and the rise of a consulting profession that exercises almost complete control of that work. In order to understand the practical aspects of democracy, we must examine what practitioners actually do.   Consequently, this book follows the publicity experts, public relations specialists, pollsters, and political consultants who over the course of the twentieth century built a business of politics. To do so, I rely on a rich archive of source material that illuminates the experiments and gambits, the successes and the failures, that are part and parcel of practical innovation. Some of the figures we will encounter are well-known, like Edward Bernays, the “father of spin”; George Gallup, who broke new ground in commercial polling; or the California team of Whitaker and Baxter. Others have received much less attention, such as Gerard Lambert, who helped pioneer the use of poll results in the crafting of presidential speeches, or Jon Jonkel, a public relations man from Chicago whose unconventional tactics helped a political unknown unseat a four-term senator in Maryland. In addition to various archival sources, this book uses a series of interviews conducted with consultants in the 1970s and 1990s that provide crucial insights into the business of politics from the practitioner’s perspective. As we will see, consultants make politics through creative acts of campaigning, turning the practical work of elections into a thriving business that has had far-reaching implications for the American political system.

Democracy as it actually exists is more than just a set of rules, institutions, or beliefs. It is also about the practical work of politics, including the consultants who collectively earn billions of dollars to craft the images of the candidate and interpret the opinions of the public. Some of the consequences of this are less than desirable, to be sure. The constant bombardment of campaign advertising and the steady stream of opinion polls contribute to the exhaustion and cynicism many Americans feel about politics today. Consultants also serve as the conduit for wealthy donors seeking political influence by turning an almost unlimited and increasingly untraceable flow of campaign contributions into various products and services. At the same time, the consulting industry illuminates how the uncertain nature of political competition spurs innovation, fueling an unending pursuit of political advantage and a continuing search for more effective instruments of persuasion. Whether we like it or not, political consultants play a crucial part in democratic practice, and the rise of a modern business of politics provides a critical window into the changing character of American democracy.

Excerpted from "Building a Business of Politics" by Adam Sheingate with permission from Oxford University Press USA. Copyright © Oxford University Press 2016 and published by Oxford University Press USA. (www.oup.com/us). All rights reserved.


By Adam Sheingate

Adam Sheingate is Associate Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and author of The Rise of the Agricultural Welfare State (Princeton).

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