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Ken Mehlman Changed the Way Republicans Target Voters

October 2006

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—When Ken Mehlman was hired to head the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign, he knew that the president's low approval rating would call for some unconventional political strategies.

His response was to borrow some tactics from the most successful corporate marketers. While political campaign managers traditionally had viewed the country's cities as a bastion of liberals and the outer suburbs and countryside as conservative territory, Mehlman decided to parse that data to a point where individual voters could be better targeted.

"We targeted voters the way Visa and Capital One target them," Mehlman, who now serves as chairman of the Republican National Committee, recalled in an Oct. 4 View from the Top address to the Graduate School of Business.

"It's not where you live, but how you live," he said.

As that anecdote suggests, Mehlman focused on the business of politics in his speech and explained how he used some of the same tactics to get Bush re-elected that heads of companies use to trump their competitors. Technology, like that used to target conservative voters living deep within blue state territory, can empower people, and raw data can be a critical tool if it is used properly, he said.

Mehlman, who also served as Bush's chief policy advisor from 2001 to 2003, said it was not metrics alone, but what he called "transparent metrics," that were really useful. "I cannot stress this enough," he said, noting that companies, like politicians, too often focus on selective statistics, to their own detriment. "You can feel great about the fact that you've registered two million new voters, but if the other party has registered three million, you're still behind."

Another effective tip Mehlman said applied to business as much as politics is to manage down. When Mehlman first started working for Bush in 1999 as a field director during his first campaign, he ignored the advice to attach himself to the president to help advance his own career and decided that he could be a more effective leader by working with people further down the totem pole. "I focused on the people that I could control," he said.

While Mehlman's prepared remarks avoided any discussion of Bush and the Republican Party today, he left time for a generous question-and-answer period, during which he was asked about the state of division in the country.

Offering many examples from history, Mehlman argued that the country is not nearly as divided as it is often portrayed to be. The United States has always been divided during times of war, with the exception of World War II, he said, but on many social issues today the red and blue states agree on more topics than they did in the past.

As recently as 1970, Mehlman said, the country was deeply divided on interracial dating and marriage, while in 1980, Sen. Edward Kennedy ran for president on a platform of "free employment," a policy of guaranteeing jobs for all. Today, Mehlman argued, such a policy would be overwhelmingly rejected by Democrats and Republicans alike who have collectively come to recognize the power of free markets in driving economic growth.

Likewise, Mehlman says the Republican Party continues to find support for its policies in some unlikely places. Although the concept of personal Social Security accounts has commonly been portrayed as a conservative practice that would benefit the rich, Mehlman said he targeted and found significant support among working Americans who lived paycheck to paycheck and were drawn to the idea of being able to retire with a nest egg.

"Our politics are divided, but I think our country is pretty united," he said, arguing that technology like the Internet, satellite radio, and cable television has fragmented the media to the point where people are able to tune out opposing views, creating the false impression of a deep political divide.

Mehlman's driven nature came through during his impassioned and high-energy address, but he said that he also worked to make his personal life a priority and would even turn down a meeting with an influential politician if it meant skipping his cherished exercise time.

"I make the time to work out," he said. "If given the choice to go for a run or meet with a senator, I know I will be much happier if I go for the run.

"I can meet the senator another time."

—Andrea Orr