Winning the Tough Ones with Steve Grubbs

Campaign Strategist Joe Lakin tells us the story of how he won his 2017 Pollie Award. All campaigns are hard, but run-offs are another beast altogether. And when a well-known figure in your own party decides to run as an independent the difficulty is hard to measure. And yet in spite of these obstacles, Lakin and the Victory Enterprises team would successfully take Mike Cierpiot to a victory in the Missouri State Senate 2017 Run-off Election.

Nicole Schlinger, President of the Campaign Headquarters call center, walks us through some her toughest battles, including Iowa Tax Bills, Merrick Garland's Nomination controversy, and the fight around the Affordable Care Act.

Dave Kochel joined the Jeb Bush presidential campaign in 2015. Over the course of the next year and a half, he would discover that the Bush name, so often a powerful ally in previous cycles, would be turned against them. Kochel speaks with us about the strategies they devised to try and overcome that, how they planned to beat Trump and win the nomination, and one of the most painful ends to a campaign anyone has ever experienced.

In 2016, the field of candidates fighting for the Republican nomination was terrifically large and varied. Within that field, just a few candidates successfully rose to the top to battle for the early states in the primaries. Iowa, the very first of those battles, would go not to the ultimate victor Donald Trump, but to his close rival, Senator Ted Cruz. And our Guest today, Jeff Roe, was the campaign manager that drove him to that success.

In 2010, Ukraine had one of its most important elections of the modern age, and it featured a pair of American professionals on opposite sides. Fighting for the Party of Regions was future Trump Campaign Advisor Paul Manafort, and fighting for the Motherland Party was our guest today, Jeff Link. Jeff would take the lessons he learned on the American Campaigns of Senator Tom Harkin and President Barack Obama, as well as his work in Aruba, Kenya and Ghana, and use them to try to keep Prime Minister Tymoshenko from being sent to prison.

Eric Branstad was the Iowa State Director for President Donald Trump's 2016 bid for office. He worked alongside Corey Lewandowski, Rudy Guiliani, Senator Joni Ernst, and his own father, former Governor Terry Branstad, to build a unified coalition in Iowa and a rabidly enthusiastic base. And then Trump asked him to do the same thing in Wisconsin, with just months left to go.

Chuck Larson is an army veteran, the former US Ambassador to Latvia, and in the early '90s he ran what has been called The Greatest Campaign Ever Run. I sat down with Chuck to ask about his secret, and learned about the lengths one can go in polishing a campaign.

Sometimes, the race is just stacked against you. But that doesn't mean you can't win it anyway.Dave Heller, the award-winning Democratic Media Consultant who has worked on the campaigns of Senators Elijah Cummings and Joe Donnelly to name a few, walks us through some of his toughest races, and the strategies he employed to tip the balance in their favor.We'd love it if you would leave a review or a comment on this episode, or even better, subscribe to us on any of the major podcasting directories.