Movers & Shakers: Steve Hildebrand

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After 22 years in politics, Steve Hildebrand was searching for his one last hope when he found Barack Obama…


Politics: You were with the president at the formative stages of his campaign in 2006. What was it like at a time when there weren’t too many people who actually thought he’d be the next president?

Hildebrand: Well, I started with him in a real way in October of 2006. So I sat in those strategy meetings and helped write plans and budgets and that kind of stuff. In a selfish way for me, I had sort of lost faith in politics and government. It’s like every cycle it gets a little worse, with politicians becoming less bold and more concerned about reelection. I had been working in politics for 22 years, and I was looking at what we were faced with— mounting deficits, crazy social policies, a lack of willingness to deal with climate change, and nothing had really changed in the way of gay rights in all that time. I was just growing impatient and basically I was looking for my one last hope. When I met Barack and saw the kind of passion that people had for him, I thought maybe he was different and maybe he was the guy who was the one last hope. Once I got to know him, I became a true believer in a very short period of time.

Politics: You say you don’t like to take much credit for any of this, but you played a big role in crafting that original message, which stuck.

Hildebrand: But that doesn’t make me the hero of getting him elected. I was one of thousands of staff people. Did I help craft some of the strategy? Yes. What I tried to impress upon people is that this guy is unique and the kind of leader we need at this time. That the core message never really changed wasn’t because it was politically expedient. And while the television ads and the direct mail and everything that goes along with that is vitally important to the success of a campaign, I really do give a lot of the credit to the organizers who were out in the field, registering voters at a pace that’s unheard of. If we hadn’t done those kinds of very successful voter registration efforts, this guy would not be president.

Politics: A few months back on Huffington Post you penned a bit of criticism of progressives who were attacking some of the president’s cabinet picks. How do you see his relationship with the progressive netroots developing over the next few years?

Hildebrand: I should have changed a few words with that Huffington Post piece, and I didn’t write the headline. But what I was trying to articulate was this: If you are a progressive in this country and you have a president whose top agenda items are putting people back to work, universal healthcare, addressing climate change, education and getting out of Iraq—that’s a good enough list for a progressive person to say, “Thank God he’s president.” There are bigger issues that he needs to address right now. Let’s work on the biggest, most impactful issues first and then worry about the others once we have accomplished some big things. I also think it’s important to state that Barack Obama is not the president of the netroots, he’s not the president of the grassroots—he is the president of the United States. He’s going to do what he believes is best for the country, and more often than not it’s going to please people in the progressive community. Of course there will be times when he’ll upset the apple cart.

Politics: In November and 2010, how important is it for Democrats to prove they can turn voters out without Obama at the top of the ticket? And are you confident they can?

Hildebrand: What we encouraged other Democrats to do in 2008 was to make sure they were introducing themselves to all of these new voters. We said you have to understand that there’s going to be hundreds of thousands of new voters in each of these states, and as candidates you need to make sure you have the list, you’re contacting them through phone and mail and door-to-door, so that when they do show up to vote, they aren’t just voting for Obama, they’re voting for you, too. As long as the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress can prove to these voters that they’re really trying to fix these problems, those voters are still very ripe. Also, there are still millions of unregistered voters that we have the potential to register and we can’t just stop. We need to continue to register voters through ’09, 2010 and 2012.

Politics: You’re one of a handful of people who passed over working at the White House after the campaign. How come?

Hildebrand: I made it clear for months and months that I just wanted to go home. Government is not where I want to work. Washington is not where I want to live. It’s sort of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but it wasn’t anything that I was driven to do. And I’m not a guy who likes to put on a suit and tie and work in uptight surroundings. So it was an easy decision for me.

Politics: Along with working Florida Rep. Kendrick Meek’s Senate race, what else are you working on right now?

Hildebrand: I’m working with Al Gore on his new alliance for climate protection. It’s a national campaign to enact bold policies to improve climate change, which is going to take up a lot of time. Right now, a lot of our strategy discussions are based on unknown timeframes. We don’t have a great sense yet of when Congress or the president wants to move. We’re just trying to build a bigger and stronger campaign operation that will effectively help pass legislation once we have the timeframe of when this is going to happen.

Politics: When it comes to technology for GOTV, outreach and persuasion, what do we have to look forward to in 2012?

Hildebrand: My advice would be to get together with some 16- to 18-year olds and figure that out. Much of the stuff that our cam- paign did was because we had young people who used all of this in their daily lives, and they helped us figure out how to apply it. I’m 46, so I didn’t know you could actually advertise in a video game. I don’t think anyone on our senior team would have known that. But some of our 23, 24-year-olds on the new media team knew that. Most of us on the senior team hadn’t really done texting either. It’s really just paying attention to what young people are doing. So I don’t know the answer today, but we’ll know soon enough.


Steve Hildebrand is president of Hildebrand Strategies, a Democratic consulting firm. A former political director at the DSCC, Hildebrand was deputy campaign manager for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential race.