How To Launch Your Presidential Campaign – Terry Sullivan (Firehouse Strategies)

Terry Sullivan:

Go run a state Senate race. You're gonna learn 10 times more about campaigns and politics and how to do it by running a state senate race than you ever will by working on a presidential campaign.

Eric Wilson:

I'm Eric Wilson, managing Partner of Startup Caucus, the home of campaign tech Innovation on the right. Welcome to the Business of Politics Show. On this podcast, you are joining in on a conversation with entrepreneurs, operatives, and experts who make professional politics happen. Our guest today is Terry Sullivan, partner at Firehouse Strategies, a leading public affairs firm. But for the purposes of our conversation today, Terry was the campaign manager of Senator Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential campaign, where he also had the honor of being my boss. He's played a senior strategic role in more than a hundred campaigns from the bottom of the ballot all the way to the top. In today's episode, we're talking about presidential primary announcement season, which is well underway. What preparations are candidates making, why are they so coy when everyone knows they're running, and what comes after that? We dive into all that and more. Alright, Terry, we are in announcement season, but really preparing for a campaign starts longer than that years earlier. If you're serious, what goes into the election cycle or to before a candidate decides to officially run for president?

Terry Sullivan:

Oh, lots. MIT Romney once said to me many years ago when, when he was running for president the first time, that the best advice he'd gotten is, you can pick anytime you want to decide not to run for president, but if you're gonna decide, you've gotta put yourself in the position years in advance. And so you can wait as long as you want to decide. I'm not gonna do it. But there is a, there is a time when it's too late to decide you're gonna do it. And we've, we've passed that point for any, any serious candidate, even in the age of Donald Trump. This is something you've, you've gotta start years in advance on

Eric Wilson:

The escalator.

Terry Sullivan:

Yeah. Well, I mean, but, but, but realistically, what people don't remember is, is he was, he was running for president I was what, 92 or no, it was

Eric Wilson:

Well, 2000. Yeah,

Terry Sullivan:

Well, in 2000. But he also ran a reform party ticket prior to that in against, for the nomination on the Reform Party ticket against p Buchanan. Right. and the, I mean, there's questionable about, you know, the motives and who got 'em in and what, but I mean, he was out there you know stumping away for the Reform Party nomination.

Eric Wilson:

We're seeing people travel to the early states four years ago. They're like going around raising money for candidates down ballot in states that they don't live in. What are some of the other things that they're, they're doing to prepare?

Terry Sullivan:

Raising money is key. Hiring staff is key. Figuring out what, you know, your path to the nomination the, sorry,

Eric Wilson:

I, I meant more from in the, the cycles in advance. Like, I mean, just walk us through the nuts and bolts. Like you're setting, setting up like a c4. What, what, what are the, just

Terry Sullivan:

The nuts, nuts

Eric Wilson:

And bolts there.

Terry Sullivan:

Sure. I literally had I will protect the the innocent, but not mention any names, but got a call from someone just last month about, Hey wanna talk about, I've got someone who's seriously looking at running for president and, and what did it take to set up a a, a C4 and a 5 27 for, for Marco. And I was like, well, unless you're calling me about a run in the in the year 2028 <laugh> from, you missed, it's too late. It's the window here. Yeah, because part of it is, is there are for the Super pacs and the c4 s you're blocked out once you're in cycle and there's no communication. So if you're going to effectively use those, you've gotta have them at least a full cycle before you announce or, or so you know, that's a critical component to it.

The, you know, look, building a house file, building a, a database of, of donors, building relationships, those are the things you do years in advance, going out, campaigning for, for other folks who eventually may campaign for you. You know, building relationship with operatives, building relationship with reporters. All these things are just critically important to do. Long before I remember the before Marco made the final decision, we did a a presentation. I put together a, it was 101 page PowerPoint presentation <laugh> that that I did to to show 'em like, here's down to, you know, historical information about vote totals in early states to amount raised by the eventual nominees to number of days away from home. Right. these are how many days each month you're gonna have to spend away from home. And this is what it's gonna take. And I mean, it's a gr there, there's probably not any job in the world that is more grueling than candidate for president of the United States.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. It's, it's like a, it's like a tour for a musician, but it never stops. Right. And you're going to places that aren't

Terry Sullivan:

Exist. There's way less coke and strippers in a presidential campaign than there are in your average, like rock bands like tour, I'm guessing. Yeah.

Eric Wilson:

I'm guessing. All right. Well, we just turned the explicit label for this, this episode of the podcast <laugh>. Right, right. Well, so I, I think one of the other things that people don't appreciate is there's a big freaking country and, and running for presidential the nomination. You're, you're running a series of, it's like the ultra-marathon of statewide races. So you really have to put in a lot of work. So because of that, we all know who is running or planning on running for, it's probably one of the worst kept secrets. So why are these candidates and, and most of all their staff so coy about talking about running and say, oh, a potential candidate. Like, they, they just won't admit that they're running for president. Yeah. I

Terry Sullivan:

Think first and foremost I is you, you, the second you say you're ready for president, you trigger legal ramifications. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I mean, there are laws that that go into effect on, on how you can, most importantly, you can't coordinate with your, your C4 or 5 27 anymore. Right. and you have to raise at certain limits and, and, and like, there are, there are things that, that it triggers. Look, there is a big argument you know, on how Jeb Bush broke the law when he ran for president in 2016. I don't know if most people remember that, but he, he did run failed miserably. It was a pathetic campaign of Yeah.

Eric Wilson:

You're not, I'm still bitter about it.

Terry Sullivan:

<Laugh>. no, I just like rubbing it in friend's noses. The no, but look, he ran and, and came out there and said, you know, hes, he's likely to run, he's probably gonna run like, dancing all around it, all will, talking to donors, asking for, you know, a hundred thousand dollars contributions, 50 times the legal limit that you can't do if you're an actual candidate. The second you say you're a candidate, you can't go out and ask for someone one for a hundred thousand. You can ask him for whatever, 2300 at the time, I believe it was. Yeah.

Eric Wilson:

Where, where, where cruising up with inflation. Yeah.

Terry Sullivan:

<Laugh>. Yeah. I know, I know, I know. But thank you Joe Biden. But there are a lot of triggers involved in actually acknowledging you're running for president, I think is the first and foremost.

Eric Wilson:

Got it. So you, you don't, you basically don't want to cross the finish line. So what, let, okay, you're, you're, let's say you're exploring a run, you know that in that in itself, in itself, the exploratory committee triggers something. But, so, so let's, let's back up even before that. So what parts of a campaign, like the staff, like the consultants, like offices absolutely have to be in place and ready for announcement day?

Terry Sullivan:

Well, I mean, it, you know, if if you're, if you're a winning campaign you know, you, you, you've gotta have your, your key infrastructure, you know, who's gonna manage it, who's going to be working in, in the key early states generally speaking, you need to have a finance director. You know, you generally have a, a TV person, an upholster, I mean, you know, all the moving parts of mm-hmm. Of a campaign. You don't wanna be interviewing folks after you've announced. Correct. and so, you know, a lot of stuff, and

Eric Wilson:

Hopefully you've all worked together a little bit before this Yes.

Terry Sullivan:

<Laugh>, yes. Right, right, right. A digital person, you really don't need, cuz digital's not important. Yeah. And

Eric Wilson:

I just show up a couple weeks before. Right.

Terry Sullivan:

It doesn't, it doesn't work real well, <laugh> the No, it is you, you gotta have all the, all your leadership really kinda locked in to their roles and ready to go. I mean, like, because they're, they're part of the plan. Yeah. I mean, they're part of the planning process.

Eric Wilson:

So you've gotta have all these, these people in place, but at the same time, it's not too built out. Right. Because you're, you're, that's, that's what you're getting ready to run run for. But how important is the official announcement rollout when it's happening so far out from real voters actually casting their ballots? Like people are, you know, announcing in spring of 2023, you know, Iowa, I, I mean I we're having debates this summer which is just crazy to me. But, but what, why do you do the, the official announcement? Yeah. Think

Terry Sullivan:

About this, Eric. This is, this is getting a later start than, than you and I did and, and eight years ago. That's true. I mean, this is, this is well behind and, and it's in part because you have a quasi incumbent mm-hmm. <Affirmative> type scenario. So you're, you've got these challenger type candidates and the and, and so, you know, by recent standards, this is kind of a late start.

Eric Wilson:

Cause Trump kind of froze the field a little bit early. I

Terry Sullivan:

Don't know. He Well, sure. Or, or there, there's no, you know, folks don't wanna get in the meat grinder with him <laugh>. And, and there's so, you know, and, and, and look, you, you've got a DeSantis who's, you know, in part waiting for for kind of some clarification on whether he can, has to resign as governor of Florida

Eric Wilson:

Right. And you've got a, a state legislative session and all that. Yeah.

Terry Sullivan:

Yep, yep. So the yeah,

Eric Wilson:

So, so I, I guess going back to, to Marco's campaign, we, we, we launched in in April right. Of 20 20 15. And then that, that was, you know, again, fair, fairly early. But, but that was still a really important moment for the campaign. We, you know, we had an event, we put out a video.

Terry Sullivan:

Yeah. And I, I do think like f first and foremost, it's a huge fundraising opportunity, right. You know, folks raise a lot of money when they announced, they get a lot of media attention. You know, so much of campaigns now matter about media attention. And and look, it's your first, it's first impressions. It's, it's, it's voters and the media's first impression of not only a candidate but of their, of their campaign. You know, is this gonna, is this gonna go off without a hitch? Are these guys and gals have, you know, their stuff together? Are they planned? Are they ready? And so, I, I think it's, it is more of a media spectacle than anything else. Mm-Hmm.

Eric Wilson:

<Affirmative>, you're listening to the Business of Politics Show. I'm speaking with Terry Sullivan about preparing to run for president. He was a campaign manager for Marco Rubio in 2016. So, Terry, what's next for campaigns after they, they go official, they file the paperwork, they wrap up their first early state trips after that announcement?

Terry Sullivan:

Yeah. I mean, l look, the, the, it is a lot of, of raising money and a lot of small events in the early states getting to meet people and then combined with getting earned media where you can't. And I think that has changed a fair bit over, over the years just because there's so much coverage now of campaigns more than there ever used to be. You have more media, more news outlets than there ever used to be. And so earned media has taken on a level of importance in campaigns that it's far beyond what it used to be especially in a presidential campaign. I mean, look, Eric, you know, this, when, when we ran in 2016, the there were only, we, we monitored earned and paid media impressions on the target universe every single week, right from the day we got in till the day that we dropped out.

And for the entire time that Trump was in the race there were only two weeks that he didn't get more earned media impressions than every other candidate's earned and paid combined <laugh>. And so, you know, and, and we're seeing that already again. And so the ability to generate earned media is critically important. And it goes back to why a announcement is so important is, is getting a lot of positive earned media out of it. And that's a, a big component of how do you put together events? How do you how do you build things to get positive earned media? And Trump's pretty damn good at it.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. And it's hard to, how hard to counter that, that pull or that gravitational <laugh> effect when, when you came. Well, if

Terry Sullivan:

You're willing to set your, set your you know, head on fire every day mm-hmm. <Affirmative> you know, that's tough to, that, that's tough to compete with.

Eric Wilson:

So working on a presidential campaign was the best thing I did for my career. And I'll always be grateful for you for, for hiring me on that. Many of our listeners wanna work on presidential campaigns, or, or maybe if they're an entrepreneur, sell into presidential campaigns. What advice do you have for someone trying to get the attention of a busy decision maker on a presidential

Terry Sullivan:

Campaign? First and foremost, go run a state senate race. You're gonna learn 10 times more about campaigns and politics and how to do it by running a state senate race than you ever will by working on a presidential campaign. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And because you're forced into doing every job yourself. I mean, there's no, you know, you are the fundraiser, you are the PR person, and you understand that the fundamentals of, of politics, and frankly, you have a hell of a lot more impact on the outcome based on your skillset of a state senate race than you ever would a presidential campaign. Right. The, the best campaign manager on a presidential is not gonna be able to move the needle a tremendous amount. But a s just a, a, a smart operative can help elect a state senator. And it's, and it's, you know, it's that way down the ballot anywhere.

The, the higher up the ballot you get, the more, the more you're at the the whim of, of the prevailing wins whatever they may be. And, and a presidential campaign is, is a huge component of that. As, as we saw with Trump. I mean, it's, it is you know, obviously this, this advice sounds self-serving cuz I got my ass kicked by a reality TV star. So I, I can't be that smart at what I do. But at the, at the end of the day you had a lot of really smart folks managing campaigns. I know Corey Lewandowski has gotten a lot of crap. He wasn't the most popular person amongst campaign operatives. He ran a smart campaign, but he, but he certainly didn't have the level of experience of running campaigns that, that frankly any of the other campaign managers had.

Right. and so when you look at stuff like that, it's, it, you know, it's a good example of the of, of the manager's role, or anybody's as a staffer's role matters a lot less than on a down ball race. That being said, if, if you're trying to get on a presidential campaign, then volunteer, just get involved. Everybody wants to have a you know, take whatever job's available, show up and say, I'm willing to work for half as much as anybody else and twice as hard. It's like, it, it is, the, the fundamental thing in, in politics across the board is it is the easiest business in the world to to get into and move up in because it is the ultimate meritocracy.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. People like you and I can do it. Anyone can do it. Right.

Terry Sullivan:

That's it. That's it. <Laugh>. It is. No, it's, it is, but it, but like, look, if, if you just, you just show up and work hard, you know, you can, you can quickly move up the ladder.

Eric Wilson:

Well, and, and I think, you know, tying it back to what you said earlier, just like these candidates have to prepare years in advance. If, if you want to make an impact on a presidential campaign and, and, and have that role, you've gotta go out and, and, and learn how to do campaigns. You can't just be a, you know, a Washington DC person, never knocking a door in your life, then show up on

Terry Sullivan:

Residential. I, there's plenty of folks who get, get campaigning presidential campaigns that fall in that category. To me, they're, they're, they're not the really good ones. But there are you know, DC is filled with political operatives who, who've never worked in a state in their life in both parties.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. So, Terry, we did this together back in 2016, so that's almost eight years ago. And I was recently chatting with someone who's getting ready to do this for the first time as a, as a staffer. And they, they asked me for advice and I kept thinking back to the different headaches we had. And the technology available today is just so much more accessible. You know, thinking about like keeping your website up, there's now free software with CloudFlare that just does that for you. So from a purely tactical perspective, setting aside the field, what do you think would be the biggest change between 16 and 24?

Terry Sullivan:

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely technology changes in innovation. You know, it's, it's interesting the amount of money has changed. And I think that has to do a lot with the, the online fundraising. I I was just having a conversation yesterday with, with digital operative who's working on a presidential campaign. And I said, I was surprised that that Nikki Haley had raised 11 million. And, and he said he thought that was, you know, a relatively small amount based on how things are now with digital fundraising. And back, you know, eight years ago, that would've been a huge amount and yeah, it

Eric Wilson:

Would've, would've been a good spot,

Terry Sullivan:

<Laugh>. Right. Right. I mean, Eric, I think we crashed our website on our announcement for a few minutes. Sorry if that like, you know, brings back bad P T S D. Yeah. but, but the, and I think we raised like one and a half million dollars that day, you

Eric Wilson:

Know? Right. It was like a huge, huge win. Yeah.

Terry Sullivan:

Right, right. And it was, it was, you know, huge. And it was a, a fraction of the amount. So, so I do think that there's definitely more money. I, I don't know that the money ma like you, there is a, a, you know, a cost of entry in the money, but at the end of the day, I don't, you know, if you got enough to charter a plane and get around and have good staff and you and I both know that staff pays worth crap. So if you don't need much money for that <laugh>

Eric Wilson:

Right. You just told me a few sandwiches and I'll work for a week. Yeah.

Terry Sullivan:

Right. We were just talking about that with someone the other day about how we put you guys in that, in that attic of that first house we were in mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And we were afraid that digital was gonna come crashing down on all of us. Cause we have so many people up there, <laugh> remember then the bathroom kept backing up on the first in the basement.

Eric Wilson:

I mean, it was things were, things were were going gracefully and glamorous while we were there.

Terry Sullivan:

Yeah. Kids, kids, this sounds, if this doesn't, you know, this sounds glamorous for, this is what you wanna do for your life <laugh>.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. You really gotta want it <laugh>. Right,

Terry Sullivan:

Right.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. And, and, and it was like the air conditioning never really worked. And it, yeah. So it was, it was, no, we

Terry Sullivan:

Fun out for you just were in the attic <laugh>.

Eric Wilson:

We

Terry Sullivan:

Didn't have, we didn't have air conditioning up there. Sorry, man.

Eric Wilson:

<Laugh>. So, so the, the, the money's a lot different. I do you think people have you know, adapted to like a post-Trump? Like we've, we've run a few cycles of, of, of the reality of a President Trump, which we didn't have the benefit of in 2016. Is there changes like that or media landscape? What's the, you know, what are some other factors that have changed?

Terry Sullivan:

You know, I, I do think that, that the phenomenon of Trump has has, you know, it's, it's the obvious thing, but it, it is changed more than anything else because it is hard to I mean, he, he runs an insurgent campaign that is completely unconventional. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and contr and, and all, you know, I mean, the guy gets in indicted for paying off a porn star and like raises, you know, huge win

Eric Wilson:

For

Terry Sullivan:

The campaign. Yeah. I mean, it's like, and, and, and you're, and you're like, and here's the best part. There is nobody on the planet who thinks he's innocent of. That's like, there's no one, it's like, it's not like the Trump supporters are like, oh, I don't believe that he would ever do that. They're like, oh yeah, no, no, no. Totally did it. You know, and who cares? It's a witch hunt. And so I, I like, can other candidates get away with that? I don't know. I do think, and I think this is something that started with Bill Clinton a little bit and has progressed on, but if candidates don't have shame <laugh>, it really helps 'em, you know, I mean, if you are just shameless and, and never apologize and never admit you're wrong in a weird ba bizarre world, it helps you with voters. The second you apologize and say, you know, I messed up in a normal relationship, in a friendship, anything else, people are like, oh, well I respect that you have the courage to apologize, and I admit you're wrong. Oh, not in, not in the abusive relationship of current, you know, politics. It's like, yeah, deny, deny, deny. Yeah.

Eric Wilson:

You know, I think it's like the, the Bed of Nails strategy is how I liken to it. You know, step on one nail, it goes right through your foot if you put a bunch of nails together. Yeah.

Terry Sullivan:

Fine. Good, good analogy.

Eric Wilson:

So you know, I think for, from my perspective, the, the biggest change has to be like the flattening of politics. You know, the, the saying that all politics is local, I think is completely outdated. It's all politics as national. Yeah. and so you think about going to Iowa or New Hampshire, it, I mean, you're having the same conversation as any other state at this point.

Terry Sullivan:

It, it's true. I would say I was a little bit different because it's a caucus versus, versus you know, a normal voting thing like any sane state would do. So, you know, those crazy people in Iowa like want you to show up and gather in a room and hang out and tell all the votes are counted, <laugh> the and eat corn on the cob. Will you do it? And driving your ethanol cars while showing up. The as you can tell, I have zero plans to ever work in presidential politics. Again, we're just

Eric Wilson:

Shutting those doors right now.

Terry Sullivan:

Yeah. It's, yes, yes I am. But no, it is they are very so I do think Iowa's a little bit of a unique outlier. And, and the interesting part about it, I mean, look, Ted Cruz won in Iowa proving that the Zodiac killer can win even in Iowa. And the come on man, even he thinks that joke's funny. He like calls himself the Zodiac killer. The, but if you're really the Zodiac killer, wouldn't you do that? The perfect say, right? I mean, I like, isn't that a great plot twist? But no,

Terry Sullivan:

He but, but, so I do think that that can be a little bit more localized, but I completely agree with what you're saying is that, that, look, it's the national ballot getting, and look for Republican getting on Fox News, he's getting on Fox News, say on Fox News, the more time you're on Fox News, the better you're gonna do nationally, and the better you're gonna do in the States. It's, it is not a, it is not three-dimensional chess. It is checkers.

Eric Wilson:

Alright, Terry, so last question for you. Imagine that someone dragged you off your boat, got you. To run another presidential campaign in 2024. What's something you'd like to try out that, that maybe you weren't sure about last time or, or think would be shoot

Terry Sullivan:

Myself in the head on day one? <Laugh>. yeah, I just, I would, I would never do another race at all for any candidate, but I think that a strategy that we definitely got wrong for Marco was running a, we, we ran a lean campaign, but we still were so focused on running a conventional campaign of message discipline and only focusing on talking about policy issues, not feeding the beast of these ridiculous reporters on every tchotchke story about how many yard signs you have, right? What county chair and all these BF stuff that we said, look, we, you know, it became a joke. It was literally process stories written. I remember McKay Coplan just wrote a, a story about how we don't, the process of that. We say we won't talk about process <laugh>. And that was our thing. We just didn't talk about process type stuff.

And then you have a trunk who just gets up there and talks about polls all day long. I mean, I, no one knew what his policies were. Hell, I think most people still don't know what his policies are, right? He just talks about winning. It was like a Charlie Sheen, you know, interview and like he was, you know, tiger Blood and winning. And so I do think that that strategy is what the media wants and giving the media what they want gets you on TV more. And that matters. I mean, so I think, you know, whatever they wanna talk about, get on whatever you needed to get on tv, I think is the key to success and the pathway to the nomination, unfortunately.

Eric Wilson:

So it's like totally committing to the kayfabe of pro wrestling. Yeah. This, it, it's all, it the, it it's the, the process about the process, the, the campaign about the campaign,

Terry Sullivan:

Jeff. A hundred percent.

Eric Wilson:

Well, my thanks to Terry Sullivan for a great conversation. You can learn more about him and, and what he's working on now, and the link in our show notes with firehouse Strategies. If this episode made you a little bit smarter or gave you something to think about or, or maybe rethink all we ask is that you share it with a friend or colleague and, and you'll look smarter in the process. Remember to subscribe to the Business of Politics Show wherever you get your podcast, so that way you'll never miss an episode. And you can also sign up for email updates on our website at business of politics podcast.com. With that, I'll say thanks for the listening. We'll see you next time.

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