The Strategist: How to Win Elections with Jim Messina

William Cash | Issue 2 | Magazine

From the Archive

Photo by Charles Dharapak/AP/Shutterstock (5955960a)

In an exclusive Mace interview, William Cash talks to Jim Messina, the man known as The Fixer for his success in both Obama and Cameron election campaigns.

There was a time when Jim Messina was described in the media as “the most important man in Washington you’ve never heard of”. But such anonymity is no more. Today, thanks to turning around the flagging Obama campaign of 2012 and pulling off a similar miracle for Cameron in 2015, Messina is right up there in the Olympian clouds of the DC Beltway election campaign manager hall of fame. And he’s only just turned 50. Messina began his career as a college senior in 1993 when he managed the successful reelection bid of the mayor of Missoula in Montana. Today he has a track record that has elected 12 presidents and prime ministers around the world. Has politics become more glamorous since the days of his early dawn-to-dusk battle busrides? “Absolutely,” he jokes. “People are now making movies and TV shows about idiots like me.” Only the self-effacing Messina – a political junkie since he was 10 – is no such thing. He’s the first US campaign manager to turn his data-driven “playbook” – focused...

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