NEW: Behind the scenes, the warren campaign is building all tv/digital/graphic production in-house (+ all digital ad-buying.
campaign tells me it won’t pay commissions to media consultants for primary/general.
Joe Rospars is officially chief strategist politico.com/story/2019/07/…
Combined w/ the no fundraisers, no outside pollster, and the early investment in staff instead of stockpiling resources for the usual TV ad blitz at the end, the in-house media moves are a rebuke of and an attempt to disrupt the consultant-heavy campaign model.
Some media consultants see this as purity politics gone awry and, perhaps unsurprisingly, see the campaign needlessly shunning expertise.
The ascension of Rospars to chief strategist (digital strategists for Obama’s 2 campaigns) is a signal that the campaign is producing the campaign w/ smartphones and comp as the main medium instead of TV. some experts think TV still critical given older people watch/vote more
Rospars is, somewhat ironically, technically a consultant on the campaign and is being paid through his firm Blue State Digital even as he is in many ways the architect and builder of this in-house approach that rebuffs the consultant-heavy model.
Here’s Rospar: "Campaigns offer a chance not only to tell people what kind of president you’ll be, but to show it. She’s running her campaign the way she intends to govern: willing to question existing power structures, making decisions grounded in evidence” (full quote here)
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Many Dems blame Platner's team — particularly his political advisers at the media consulting firm Fight Agency — for not revealing or pushing to find out the extent of his baggage while continuing to rake in money over the past year.
There were q’s in 2025.
A spokesperson for Fight Agency told Axios: "Fight Agency is a media firm. We make ads. For the Platner campaign, we made one launch video and over 40 ads."
The spokesperson added: "A vast variety of rumors swirled throughout the entirety of the campaign. We took those rumors seriously. The first time we heard any allegation that extended beyond problematic posting and infidelity was when the New York Times reached out."
“The first time we heard a specific allegation of non-consensual behavior was in the days prior to the Politico story breaking."
Jewish staffers in some Dem campaigns/offices say they've increasingly felt a chill.
One former Biden WH official: "No Jews in the Biden administration agreed with what Netanyahu was doing, but we all felt like we were having to answer for it by the party and our colleagues."
Some Jewish Dem politicians privately express frustration that their views on Israel are more scrutinized by the media and voters simply because they're Jewish.
They also argue that some left-wing activists object to Israel being a Jewish state but don't speak out against Islamic governments.
“Days after Graham Platner announced his Maine Senate bid, his wife informed the campaign about a potential political problem she had previously discovered on the oyster farmer’s phone: sexually explicit texts with several women”
NYT too:
“Ms. McDonald said Ms. Gertner told her that her husband had been exchanging sexual messages with as many as a dozen women.
A current Platner campaign official said Mr. Platner had been communicating with up to six women.”
“But he couldn't do it: While he could passionately state, 'I am a Zionist,' his remarks about innocent Palestinians came off as inadequate and forced."
Gaza was also a factor in Harris’ VP deliberations.
When she met with Shapiro, "We talked about how to handle the attacks he'd confronted on Gaza and what effect it might have on the enthusiasm we were trying to build. Big protests at the convention were a major concern."
Scoop: High-ranking Biden admin officials repeatedly questioned and criticized how the president's team decided on controversial pardons and allowed the frequent use of an autopen to sign measures late in his term, internal emails obtained by Axios show.
After the political backlash to the Hunter pardon, the WH pushed to find more people to grant clemency to
“There was a mad dash to find groups of people that he could then pardon — and then they largely didn't run it by the Justice Department to vet them," per a person familiar
Biden granted clemency to more people than any president in history — 4,245 ppl.
More than 95% of that occurred in the final 3½ months of his presidency (a record, per Pew).
New: Jean-Pierre’s colleagues had thoughts abt her & her book
“one of the most ineffectual and unprepared people I've ever worked with”
“The amount of time that was spent coddling her…was astronomical compared to our attn on actual matters of substance” axios.com/2025/06/05/kar…
Many quietly had fumed for years, believing she was incompetent at her job at the podium and more interested in promoting herself than Joe Biden.
Biden aides largely had stayed silent b/c she was seen as untouchable, given her close relationship w/ FLOTUS aide Anthony Bernal.
Jean-Pierre also caused internal drama by repeatedly blocking National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby from joining her at the White House podium, even when national security issues were at the forefront of the news.