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 on aggressive digital messaging and a relentlessly professional “ground game” – into a successful global corporate strategy business. On leaving the White House, he founded The Messina Group (TMG), which now has over 300 international clients and offices in DC, London, LA, San Francisco and Denver. As Messina’s face comes into view on myZoom screen – despite being a Democrat, he reminds me of a young William Buckley Jr debating Gore Vidal – I can see he is bunkered up in in what looks like a large, rustic cabin-like house, a sort of Camp David of TMG. Due to the fires, a strange, chalky white smoke is visible in the cabin’s windows. Messina’s location may make him seem isolated, but he does in fact rank alongside other iconic US strategists such as James Carville (aka the Ragin’ Cajun of The War Room fame and the man behind Clinton’s 1992 White House win), David Axelrod (chief strategist of the 2008 Obama campaign), Ed Rollins (manager of Reagan’s 1984 campaign) and his protégé Lee Atwater who died of brain cancer aged just 40 but was the Machievellian architect of George HW Bush’s 1988 victory, famed for his “dirty tricks” campaign of racial messaging against Michael Dukakis. But when I mention this roll-call of maverick legends, I point out that none of the above went on to found a global corporate strategy business, with clients ranging from Uber to Google. What makes him different? “You know, Carville’s now one of my best friends, but he just has no interest in the business side. And I studied Lee Atwater but he had no interest [outside of politics]. And a lot of these guys just think I’m fucking crazy because I can do whatever I want in politics and I’m out there talking to tech guys that they think are assholes. But you know, it’s just a different thing for me. I’m just incredibly fascinated by innovation.” He is known as The Fixer, winning what he calls the 2012 “dream race”, largely thanks to embracing technology as well as heavily investing in an innovative social media digital strategy that won votes online as well on TV. He has never wanted to do anything else since the age of ten (other than be quarterback for the Denver Broncos). With a smile, he says there are “only 13 drinking days left until the first TV debate”, an event he can hardly wait to watch (Messina has a waspish sense of humour and a colourful vocabulary). With the slogan “Good fights are in our DNA”, TMG advises global business leaders, FTSE 100 CEOs and is feted at Davos. Messina is one of the world’s most in-demand campaign strategists. After starting in 2013, with just two former staffers, and operating out of what he calls a “borrowed, windowless office” the group now has a track record of having elected more presidents or prime ministers than any other strategy outfit in history.   London calling
One of his very first calls after deciding to launch his new consultancy back in 2013 was to David Cameron. He had first met Cameron in 2009 during Obama’s first state visit to Britain during a bilateral meeting. Despite Cameron being an Eton educated Conservative and Messina a die-hard Democrat (“from the wrong side of the tracks,” as he says), they just clicked. “David had yet to win in 2009. He was in an opposition meeting with Obama so we met and talked for a while. And I was super impressed with Cameron. Really smart. And I was like, oh, that’s interesting.” Then Cameron’s team called Reggie Love, Obama’s assistant at the White House, and said they wanted to meet with Messina. So in early 2013, Cameron’s team flew over to DC, among them Lynton Crosby, the Australian strategist who had masterminded Boris Johnson’s winning mayoral campaign, and Andrew Feldman, Cameron’s old Etonian tennis partner and former chairman of the Conservative party. The Cameron-Messina courtship began to get serious. “And then my wife and I flew over and Cameron cooked dinner at Number 10 which was funny as I didn’t realise Downing Street isn’t like the White House. D...