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FEATURE 33
GOP REFUGEE
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SEVEN DAYS
On an Indian summer morning in mid-September, Stevens limped his way along the Sugar Road ski trail at Trapp Family Lodge with the help of two spring-loaded Swedish trekking poles. A torn meniscus had interrupted his summer schedule of trail runs and bike rides, and it was slowing his pace even on the level terrain of Trapp’s beginner trails. As he jabbed one pole after another into the ground, Stevens recalled a 1978 phone call that had changed his life. Cochran was leaving the U.S. House to
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09.27.17-10.04.17
‘The Secret to Success’
run for the Senate, and his chief of staff, Jon Hinson, had decided to seek the seat. “[Hinson] called me and said, ‘I can’t afford to hire anyone. You’re in film school, so you have to make ads for me,’” Stevens recalled. “That’s when I found out people would pay me money to make political commercials.” For the first and last time in his life, Stevens took a job in government, working for a brief stint in Hinson’s congressional office. He was outraged to learn that members of Congress could use the so-called franking privilege to send political mail at taxpayer expense. So he contacted an editor at Washington Monthly and offered to write an anonymous exposé about the practice. In print, he used the pseudonym William Bonney — an alias once used by Billy the Kid. “I was probably, like, the worst staffer in the history of Washington,” Stevens conceded as he hiked up Sugar Road. While Stevens was establishing himself as a serious ad maker in the late 1980s, he kept crossing paths with another up-and-coming consultant, Russ Schriefer. The two founded a firm in 1991, now called Strategic Partners & Media, and have worked together ever since. Unlike most Republican media mavens, who used the same B-list production staffers in Washington, D.C., Stevens and Schriefer based their operation in New York City and tapped the talent of Madison Avenue. “We found that there was a creative edge to working with someone who, the day before, was editing some national Pepsi spot or Coke spot or car spot rather than a political spot,” Stevens said. “That was a huge advantage.” The pair’s early work had a lively feel. An ad they produced for Tom Ridge’s 1994 gubernatorial campaign featured the Republican congressman standing in a snowy shipyard in Erie, Pa. “A year ago, when I announced for governor, a Philadelphia newspaper called me ‘a guy nobody’s ever heard of from a city nobody’s ever seen,’” the candidate said with a shrug. “Well, I’m Tom Ridge. This is Erie! Halfway between Cleveland and Buffalo.” That year, according to the Atlantic, all 12 of the candidates Stevens and Schriefer advised won their elections. “The secret to success in politics is working for people who are going to win anyway,” Stevens likes to say. As his political profile grew, Stevens kept writing — and managed to break into television. In the early 1990s, he wrote episodes for CBS’ “Northern Exposure” and the short-lived NBC
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without success, to fly around the country with the nominee and deliver a convention speech. “It wasn’t like I was some Trump hater. I just thought he was particularly ill-suited to be president,” he said. “Neither is Jack Nicholson, but I love Jack Nicholson.” Stevens, who sat out the 2016 race and says he voted for independent Evan McMullin, was equally unimpressed with Trump’s campaign team. “These were just people who never really worked in politics,” Stevens said, noting that campaign manager Corey Lewandowski “had never been involved in a winning statewide race in his life” and calling campaign chair Steve Bannon an “amusing lunatic.” “I mean, these are people you wouldn’t share a cab with,” he said with a mix of bewilderment, jealousy and contempt. Stevens opposed Trump’s candidacy for many reasons, but chief among them was his denigration of Mexicans and his apparent comfort with white nationalists. In February 2016, when Trump declined to renounce the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Stevens wrote in a Daily Beast column that it was no longer possible “to pretend that Trump is not only an idiot but also a racist idiot.” Throughout the campaign, Stevens had argued that there simply weren’t enough white voters in America to put Trump in the White House. “Turns out I was wrong,” Stevens said. “But if the Republican Party is unable to get higher margins of nonwhite voters, it’ll kill us eventually.” He paused to summon the proper metaphor. “It’s sort of like somebody who has several drinks at a cocktail party and drives home, makes it home safely and concludes that alcohol helps you drive,” he said. “Probably the wrong conclusion.”