Man Behind the Campaign

This is the first major election year since John F. Kennedy '40 ran for president in 1960 that veteran political consultant Matthew Reese has not been directly involved with a political campaign.

"I've done it all," says Reese, explaining why he chose to sit this election out. "I've gotten up every Monday morning for 38 years and have gone to work. I wanted to see some other things. I'm glad to take the opportunity to come [to the Institute of Politics (IOP)]."

Reese has indeed done it all. He was Kennedy's coordinator for North Carolina and served as national director of Lyndon B. Johnson's voter registration drive. He has also been deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee. In total, Reese and his Washington-based company--Reese Communications--have worked as general consultants in more than 500 political campaigns.

Reese says he got his start in politics helping his college professor, M.G. "Bernie" Bernside, win a Huntington, W. Va., Congressional seat in 1954. Reese served on Bernside's staff in Washington until Bernside lost his seat to a Republican in the Eisenhower sweep of 1956. Returning to West Virginia, Reese says he became executive secretary of the Young Democrats while selling encyclopedias and insurance and running a restaurant to support himself. When Kennedy came to West Virginia, Reese got involved in his campaign.

"There wasn't anybody who thought [Kennedy] could win. And I thought he could," says Reese. "I was enamored with him. I had met him when I was in Washington. And it was an opportunity for me to get involved in a national campaign."

So in 1960, he took a job handling the daily campaign schedule of Edward M. Kennedy '54-56. During the Democratic convention, he worked on the staff of the elder Kennedy and afterwards became coordinator for North Carolina.

Now, as a fellow at the IOP, Reese will be sharing some of the knowledge he has acquired over the course of his career in his study group entitled, "Winning Elections: How to Get the Voters to Do What You Want Them to Do."

"I hope to teach the core of an election campaign, which is target and message," Reese says. "The winning campaign is the campaign which best answers these four questions: What truths do we tell? To whom? Through what channels of communication? How many times?"

The group will focus mainly on the first two questions: the target/message theme of telling the right things to the right people, Reese says.

"We have to tell the truth because if we lie and get caught we break the bottom-line deal," Reese says. "Mr. Nixon didn't lose the presidency because of what he did, its because he lied and got caught. So we have to tell the truth. We're not obligated to tell all of it. It's an antagonistic contest between two candidates. So we can tell the truth selectively... Targeting is the elimination of prospects. If you target me out, you leave your best prospect for the expenditure of your resources; and if you create the best messge for those prospects, then you'll have a greter chance of making your money and people go farther."

Finding the appropriate message for the appropriate target requires detailed demographic analysis. According to Reese, experts have divided the United States into 250,000 blocks of 280 households called Census Block Groups.

"We can read those, each and every one of those Census Block Groups demographically and know what kind of folks they are, how much money they make, how much education they have, what's their ethnic background, what's their religion et cetera," says Reese.

"And we can read each and every one of those attitudinally: what they think about issues, what they think about the future, what they think about the past, what they think about themselves, what they think about the candidates or issues. Knowing those things, we can create messages to those specifics," he says.

Each one of the Census Block Groups is placed into one of 40 categories, each indicating a different socio-economic status. The categories have names like "Estates and Limousines" (at the top end of the scale) and "Hardscrabble" (at the bottom).

For example, Reese says, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis is a member of the "Two More Rungs" group. The category is similar to "Pools and Patios" and "Furs and Stationwagons," but it is especially for affluent ethnics.

Reese says he also wants to take advantage of his fellowship by going to IOP forum events and by having friendly discussions with fellow political pundits like Dillon Professor of Government Richard E. Neustadt and Gary Orren, assistant director of the Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

"There's just so damn much to do here if you want to do," says Reese as he flips through a pile of announcements of forum events and lectures he says he plans to attend.

Although he is not working on either presidential campaign, Reese has been watching the race carefully. He is a Democrat, saying that "all Dukakis has to do to win my vote is to stay alive." But Reese says a Dukakis victory will be an uphill climb. Dukakis is at a disadvantage, Reese says, because the Republicans have a hold on the West and Mountain states. For Dukakis to win, Reese says, he must have a better campagin organization than Vice President George Bush, benefit from a Bush gaffe or get across to the voters the idea that Dan Quayle is unqualified to be vice president.

"It isn't who wants George Bush or Michael Dukakis this election day; it's who wants him enough to go to the polls and vote for him. The trick is to get them to want to [vote] enough," he says. "Part of that is trying to find a message that will move them. Part of that is the process of knocking on doors and pestering people to do what they really want to do anyway."