Exciting things are afoot at Lessig2016 campaign headquarters. Lessig’s mission to fix democracy first is garnering more and more attention, and our support grows every day. Now we’ve added five heavy hitters to the Team Lessig roster who will help us reach every voter in America and show that fixing democracy can’t wait.
Here’s our superstar lineup:
Steve Jarding
General consultant
Jarding is a Harvard professor with a 37-year career of leadership in some of the most difficult Democratic campaigns of the past 30 years, including Tom Daschle, Bob Kerrey, Mark Warner, Tim Johnson, and Jim Webb. Jarding also served as communications director and senior advisor at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and has run presidential leadership PACs for Bob Kerrey and John Edwards. Jarding has been called a political operative “who wins races he is not supposed to win.”
Bill Hillsman
Media consultant, North Woods Advertising
Hillsman is the creator of some of the most successful political marketing campaigns of the past 30 years. His work for Paul Wellstone’s successful 1990 U.S. Senate campaign won the Grand Effie ad award, and in 1998, his ads for Jesse Ventura’s upset win in the Minnesota gubernatorial election were recognized as some of the best in America. Hillsman has done pioneering work for Air America Radio Network, Iraq veterans’ organization Operation Truth, VoteVets, and Ralph Nader for President, among many others. Slate dubbed Hillsman “the world’s greatest political adman,” and the National Journal called him “one of the nation’s foremost authorities on swing voters and independent voters.”
Richard Dickerson
Campaign manager
Hailing from Charlottesville, Virginia currently living in Birmingham, Alabama, Dickerson has a lengthy public service career. He held leading roles in Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry’s presidential campaigns, and he ran the GOTV program for Doug Wilder, the first black governor in America. He served as a consultant to the Democratic National Committee during Ron Brown’s tenure as chairman. Dickerson has successfully led cutting-edge national grassroots organizing efforts, including work for Jesse Jackson, Michael Dukakis, Chuck Robb, and Bill Clinton. He has held leadership roles at the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Agency for International Development, and National Democratic Institute.
Drew Westen
Message consultant
Dr. Westen is an expert in strategic political messaging and founder of Westen Strategies, a political and corporate consulting firm. His career spans clinical, personality, and political psychology and neuroscience, and he’s currently a professor in the departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University. He has taught at the University of Michigan, Harvard Medical School, and Boston University, and is the author of one the most influential books about political psychology and messaging, titled “The Political Brain.”
Adam Bonin
Legal Counsel
Bonin is a Philadelphia-based lawyer whose firm exclusively represents clients in campaign finance, election law, and lobbying compliance matters. He has been a leader on behalf of the rights of online speakers, including a major victory before the Federal Election Commission on behalf of major political bloggers, securing their right to engage in online political speech and advocacy. He has successfully represented candidates on both sides of ballot access battles, both defending the right to appear on a ballot, as well as removing from the ballot those whose signatures had been procured fraudulently or unlawfully.
With these expert additions to our team, we’re taking this campaign to the next level. As Jarding put it, “No race I have ever worked on has more at stake, and none was more important.”
We don’t have the big moneyed special interests behind this campaign — we have you. And we would have it no other way. With your help, we amazed the cynics in the first month, raising $1 million in under 30 days. We need to keep it up if we want to convince the political establishment that we’re in this to win.
We need your help to get Lessig’s message to the people of America. It’s time to take our democracy back. Let’s go do it.
