mayor’s office and Hughes and his chief collaborator, Tim Baker (with whom he’d had overlap in work with Benacquisto and Atwater), to the famed Data Targeting firm, and ultimately, toward a platform in which Hughes and Baker have revolutionized political communication in Jacksonville. *** Like most of the environs Hughes has been in throughout his life, he learned to read Jacksonville quickly.
PHOTO: Mary Beth Tyson
When asked about the challenges of adapting his style to different markets, Hughes either trusts his “gut,” or “forces (his) will to make it work.”
HUGHES AND WIFE RACHEL PERRIN ROGERS
bubble popped. Then film school beckoned. Syracuse gave Hughes a full ride, seeking “grad students who knew digital” to serve as TAs in its small “artistic program.” From there, a move to Portland, where he adjuncted at Pacific University, while working in the city’s “hot ad industry.” And then, a tenure-track move to New Jersey’s Ramapo College in 2004, where the conservative Hughes was an awkward fit in the “School of Human Potential,” otherwise staffed by “liberal hippie professors” and the odd communist. Hughes’ professional life was in a comfortable “rut,” leading him to ask himself: “What did I go to film school for?” Despite attempting to engage students with contrarian works like Ayn Rand’s “Anthem” and Eric Hoffer’s “True Believer,” the
model was unsustainable. Once again, Hughes was getting “antsy.” *** Hughes, motivated by his own Gulf War experience, embarked to Afghanistan to research a documentary on military chaplains. However, the siren call of politics in the Sunshine State was too much to resist. By the end of the last decade, Hughes was back in the game, with work for Lizbeth Benacquisto and Jeff Atwater. And he met his second wife in Tallahassee, which provided further incentive for the itinerant Hughes to put down roots in Florida. In that timeframe, Hughes also met Lenny Curry via the Republican Party of Florida, setting the stage for an association that vaulted Curry to the Jacksonville
He looks at how consumer goods are sold — soda, groceries, cars — and then adapts his political pitch to that of the area, balancing his “knee jerk intuition” with Baker’s “sense of strategic process.” “Combined,” says Hughes, they are “lethal.” In Northeast Florida, the Hughes/Baker narrative in campaigns has been a classic “heroes vs. villains” paradigm. Hughes rejected the idea that he was creating “personas” — the language reminded him of academia — before describing the process of “taking the core of what I see in somebody and pulling it out.” “I have 30 to 60 seconds to do something. I trust my gut: meet my clients, assess their opponents, drill in,” Hughes said, “like a dentist does a cavity.” “I don’t invent my clients. They’re authentic people. I try to take away every distraction from their core … polish away the other stuff … let the audience see (in a short window) what I see through the luxury of time,” Hughes added. *** Hughes, as he approaches his 50th birthday in a few years, is in a place where he calls his own shots. He has the luxury of clients and causes he believes in. He has a happy home life with Rachel Perrin Rogers, Chief Legislative Aide for Sen. Wilton Simpson who is very much “in the process.” It hasn’t been a linear path for Hughes to get to any of this — from New York State and the Gulf War to becoming a leading communicator in Florida politics. But what is clear: he’s gotten here, by his own path, on his own terms. And in doing so, he has changed the way the game is played. ][ SPRING 2017 INFLUENCE | 163