About the Contributors

Glen Bolger is a leading political strategist and pollster for the Republican Party. He is a partner and cofounder of Public Opinion Strategies, a national political and public affairs survey research firm whose clients include leading political figures, Fortune 500 companies, and major associations. Public Opinion Strategies has eighteen U.S. senators, seven governors, and more than forty members of Congress as clients. For its work in the 2002 elections, Public Opinion Strategies won the Pollster of the Year Campaign Excellence Award from the American Association of Political Consultants. Prior to cofounding Public Opinion Strategies, Glen was the director of survey research and analysis for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the political arm of the House Republican Conference. Glen is a graduate of the American University in Washington, D.C. He and his wife Carol have three daughters.

 

Anthony Corrado is professor of government at Colby College and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He also serves as chair of the board of trustees of the Campaign Finance Institute, a nonpartisan research organization located in Washington, D.C., and is a member of the American Bar Association’s Advisory Commission on Election Law. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles on campaign finance law, political finance, and presidential elections, including Financing the 2004 Election (2006) and The New Campaign Finance Sourcebook (2005).

 

David A. Dulio is associate professor of political science at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. Dulio has published six books, including Vital Signs: Perspectives on the Health of American Campaigning (with Candice J. Nelson, 2005), For Better or Worse? How Political Consultants Are Changing Elections in the United States (2004), and The Mechanics of State Legislative Campaigns (with John S. Klemanski, 2005). Dulio has also published dozens of articles and book chapters on topics relating to campaigns and elections. During 2001-2002 Dulio served as an American Political Science Association congressional fellow in the office of the U.S. House of Representatives Republican Conference headed by former U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts Jr. (OK).

 

Paul S. Herrnson is director of the Center for American Politics and Citizenship, professor in the Department of Government and Politics, and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland. He has published several books, including The Financiers of Congressional Elections (2003), Voting Technology: The Not-So-Simple Act of Casting a Ballot (2008), and Congressional Elections: Campaigning at Home and in Washington, 5th ed. (2008). Herrnson has advised the U.S. Congress, the Maryland General Assembly, the Federal Election Commission, and various other governmental and nongovernmental organizations on matters pertaining to money and politics, political parties and elections, and political reform.

 

Dotty Lynch is an Executive in Residence in the School of Communication at American University and a political consultant for CBS News. The 2008 election was her eleventh presidential campaign as a professional journalist and pollster. She was the CBS News senior political editor (1985-2005) and is currently an on-air analyst for CBS Radio and a member of the CBS News Election Decision Desk. She began teaching at American University in 2006 and in 2008 team-taught a class on the presidential primaries that included a five-day field trip to New Hampshire. In the 1970s and 1980s she worked on the polling for the presidential campaigns of George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Ted Kennedy as well as dozens of U.S. Senate and gubernatorial candidates. In addition, she developed the concept of the gender gap and is a leading expert on women in politics.

 

Candice J. Nelson is an associate professor of government and academic director of the Campaign Management Institute at American University. She is the coauthor of Vital Signs: Perspectives on the Health of American Campaigning (2005), Shades of Gray: Perspectives on Campaign Ethics (2002), The Money Chase: Congressional Campaign Finance Reform (1990), and The Myth of the Independent Voter (1992). She is a former American Political Science Association congressional fellow. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley.

 

Alan Rosenblatt is associate director of online advocacy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. He founded the Internet Advocacy Roundtable in 2005. Alan is an adjunct professor at Johns Hop-kins, Georgetown, and American Universities; a blogger at the Huffington Post, TechPresident.com, K Street Café, andDrDigiPol.com; a contributing editor to Politics Online; a board member for E-Democracy. org; and a former fellow at George Washington University’s Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet. He taught the world’s first Internet politics course at George Mason University in 1995. Alan has a Ph.D. in political science from American University.

 

Chris Sautter, president of Sautter Communications/Sautter Films, is a political media strategist, award-winning filmmaker, and attorney who has gained national notoriety for his work in politics and film. Sautter produced Barack Obama’s first political ads and served as a lead attorney in Al Franken’s U.S. Senate recount. He coauthored The Recount Primer (1994), considered the definitive guide to election disputes. Sautter’s first film, The King of Steeltown: Hardball Politics in the Heartland (2001) about Chicago-style machine politics, won Best Political Documentary at the New York International Independent Film Festival. Sautter’s documentary So Glad I Made It (2004), about a struggling singer songwriter, won six top film festival awards and a spot on the Grammy Awards ballot for Best Music Film. Sautter teaches election law at American University.

 

Leonard Steinhorn is professor of communication, director of the Public Communication program, and affiliate professor of history at American University. He writes and lectures frequently on politics, media, and the presidency and comments regularly in the press, serving as the political analyst for FOX-5 News in Washington, D.C. He is the author of The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy (2006) and coauthor of By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race (1999). Steinhorn’s writing has been published in anthologies, textbooks, journals, magazines, and op-ed pages. He lectures frequently at universities and organizations in the United States and abroad, and he serves on the board of the Internet journal History News Network. Previously Steinhorn served as speechwriter and strategist for various politicians and advocacy groups.

 

James A. Thurber is University Distinguished Professor of Government, founder (1979) and director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies (american.edu/ccps) at American University, Washington, D.C. Under his direction, CCPS organizes biannually the Campaign Management Institute and the Public Affairs and Advocacy Institute over the last two decades. He was the principal investigator of a seven-year grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts to study campaign conduct. He was the principal investigator of a four-year study of lobbying and ethics funded by the Committee for Economic Development. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and is a former APSA congressional fellow. He has authored books and articles on Congress, congressional-presidential relations, interest groups and lobbying and ethics, and campaigns and elections. He is an editor of Rivals for Power: Presidential-Congressional Relations, 4th ed. (2009), Congress and the Internet (with Colton Campbell, 2002), The Battle for Congress: Consultants, Candidates, and Voters (2001), Crowded Airwaves: Campaign Advertising in Elections (with Candice J. Nelson and David A. Dulio, 2000), Campaign Warriors: Political Consultants in Elections (2000), Remaking Congress: The Politics of Congressional Stability and Change (with Roger Davidson, 1995), and Divided Democracy: Cooperation and Conflict Between Presidents and Congress (1991). He has coproduced three BBC-TV documentaries on the U.S. Congress and elections.

 

Carol A. Whitney is a longtime Republican political strategist with particular expertise in message development and delivery. She is an adjunct faculty member who teaches courses in political communications and policy at American University, and also serves as coprogram director of the Campaign Management Institute. She developed the curriculum on ethics in campaign politics distributed to universities in 2000, and teaches a course in ethics in campaign politics.

 

David Winston has served as a strategic adviser to Senate and House Republican leadership for the past ten years. He was formerly the director of planning for Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and advises center-right political parties throughout Europe. Additionally Winston was a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation where he did statistical policy and econometric modeling. He has served in a senior staff role to four RNC chairmen. Winston is a columnist for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call and an election analyst for CBS.