Smith: I think Ive got good relationships with people in the media. Candidates and the people around them can get so spun up about things, and when you get spun up you make the worst mistakes, she says. When they gave me the job I thought, first of all this job exists? How much of his success was because of you, and how much was because of him? It was a slim path. Miller is darkly. Riley Keough has been married to Australian stuntman Ben Smith-Petersen since 2015. Smith, who is a Bronx native, must be an intelligent woman, but going for the "bad boys" might . Martin OMalley, who shed worked for, performing poorly in the Iowa caucuses. Then there was what I did next: jumped off the cliff. Lis Smith, Buttigieg's top communications adviser . But it is kind of fascinating to watch., Smith met Buttigieg on the recommendation of Axelrod and former Maryland Governor Martin OMalley. What do all the good candidates youve worked for have in common, and what do the bad candidates have in common? Because 2015 and 2016 were really difficult times in my life. The 54-year-old disgraced ex-governor. You deploy the F-bomb like Picasso used drypoint. Published on July 13, 2022 06:12 PM. A lot of people thought that to beat Trump, you had to be Trump. After O'Malley's campaign, she advised several nonprofit organizations, and incumbent governors such as Montana governor Steve Bullock. I really did feel he treated me as an equal. 20172020 Pete Buttigieg presidential campaign, Pete Buttigieg's 2020 presidential campaign, Martin O'Malley 2016 presidential campaign, Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service, "On the Ground With Lis Smith, the Political Pro Who Invented 'Mayor Pete', "A Tabloid Bashing, and a Lost Job With the Mayor", "Virginia Politics Blog - McAuliffe Adds Press Secretary", "To Know Mayor Pete, Look at His Top Adviser's Underreported Past", "Mayor Pete Buttigieg Is Even Worse Than He Seems", "Knowing the Buttiverse: We're tracking 101 ex-staffers from Secretary Pete's 2020 campaign and where they are now", "The Women Running Presidential Campaigns Give Us a Behind-the-Scenes Look at Life on the Trail", "10 of the most powerful women who are running the 2020 presidential campaigns from behind the scenes", "Lis Smith | 2020 40 under 40 in Government and Politics", "GU Politics announces fall fellows to celebrate its fifth anniversary", "Andrew Cuomo's Smear Team: His Brother and Top Advisers, Transcripts Reveal", "The Moment Cuomo Adviser Lis Smith Says MSNBC Anchor Katy Tur Repeated Her 'Spin' On Air", "In crisis PR mode, Lis Smith told top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa to 'just have your fucking assistant text people' and 'this is insane' as sexual harassment scandal blew up", "The Michigan Democrat Who Could Solve Her Party's Identity Crisis", "Lis Smith dishes on love of political combat in new book", "Two New Memoirs Detail the Threats to American Democracy", "Confessions of a Political Swashbuckler", "Welcome to the new era of political memoir", "Any Given Tuesday: Lis Smith on Cuomo, Spitzer and a political life", "Opinion | Lis Smith's self-serving story about Andrew Cuomo", "Let's Hear From the Women Lis Smith Smeared", "Opinion | 'The G.O.P. Her plan is to emulate maybe the best-known and most successful insurgent move of recent campaign history: John McCains 2000 Straight Talk Express. From the second I met Pete, I knew that there was something special about him. Keep in mind she was 22 at the time, Smith said. I knew from the beginningthat our relationship would be a big tabloid story when it became public. A Democratic candidate in West Virginia is going to look very different from a Democratic candidate in New York, and we cant impose this one-size-fits-all thing and think that the Democratic Party is going to be a majority party. The spinmeister hooked up with the still-married luv guv after working on his failed comeback bid to become city comptroller in 2013. Photo: amyandstuart.com@AmyandStuart. He didnt feel the need to go out there and be the coolest guy or the hippest guy on stage. There were very, very few women in positions of power. Martin OMalley, who got like 1 percent in the Iowa Caucuses. This 35-Year-Old Mayor From Indiana Is Wowing National Democrats The New Republic declared. They have one man to thank. Not long after that, at the presidential primary debate in Miami on June 27, you take us inside the greenroom backstage as you watched Pete get asked about this incredibly fraught moment. And its really heartening because you realize the future of the Democratic Party is really bright, and that all we need to do is help lift these people up. Deciding to get into politics for me, and in the world of political operatives, was like jumping off a cliff. While her work history list might be lengthy, her dating track record isnt very long. Smith: Yes. Lis Smith on Pete Buttigieg's campaign bus during a four day tour of Iowa, September 23, 2019. To avoid stakeouts during the media frenzy that followed, Smith said she temporarily stayed with a friend from her college days at Dartmouthwho resided on the Upper West Side. [26][27][28] Philip Elliott of Time praised its transparency and wrote that it "may just rewrite the template for what a political memoir can be. In my book, I sort of get at this, but we are sort of an odd couple. He shoots her a look and gives a mock shrug, as if it's an inside joke between the three of us, now old chums: I mean, a little I guess., Buttigieg makes an appearance on "The View." Wren: Did you have a good handle before the campaign on Petes vulnerabilities? She doesnt give a fuck. Wren: Theres a part of Pete that is a little wonky, a little square. [2][9] She later worked as the spokeswoman for Bill de Blasio's mayoral run in 2013. I cant believe you didnt know that! He's on his way into a black car to do Maddow. I think thats probably the biggest misconception about me. 8,310 Followers, 856 Following, 219 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Lis Smith (@lis__smith) Riley Keough's husband, Ben Smith-Petersen, revealed the couple welcomed a baby girl while he gave a speech on behalf of his wife during a memorial service for Lisa Marie Presley on Sunday By. She wants to know if Id seen Buttigieg answer a question about the Notre Dame fire from a French TV station, in French. The most important thing is theres no one way to be a Democrat no matter what any of these lefty groups in Washington say, and we cannot expect candidates in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Ohio and Arizona and North Carolina to check off every box on the progressive party purity test. And its going to be really important to have a woman sort of leading the charge on these issues, who is able to really empathize with the despair a lot of women are feeling. And you just like have this moment, where youre like, Maybe this is it. Its just a personal part of my book. | Cuomoresigned last August amid claims of sexual harassment and misconduct. Each was the political id the candidate couldnt, or wouldnt, express. Smith: Dont make me praise Chris Meagher. [17] She has been included in Fortune's 40 Under 40 in Government and Politics,[18] and Crain's list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in New York. Political strategist Lis Smith isnt a married woman, though she may one day decide to tie the knot with a lucky somebody. Axelrod told Buttigieg about Smith, and OMalley told Smith about this young mayor from South Bend. She gravitates to candidates who are challenging and testing the status quo. On the flip side of that, the most established, the most convention conventional political consultants werent going to go work for Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend. What is this new phase of your career about? The actress who is the daughter of the late Lisa Marie Presley and musician Danny Keough met. What we did is fucking ridiculous. Smith: Democrats love to bitch that we dont have a bench. And when it happened, the story was her. [19], In 2020, Smith was one of six political experts named as fellows by the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service. But I dont know whats inside him. Eliot Spitzer. | Lis Smith Wiki Bio: Age, Husband, Net Worth, Children, Education, Career, Family, LinkedIn. Buttigiegs rise from unlikeliest of contenders to actual top-tier presidential candidate has been fueled in part, maybe in large part, by his astonishing success courting the press. Its about hustling for opportunities. That was my philosophy. What makes him such a magnet for criticism on both the left and the right? She puts the word fuck through every part of speech the word can be bent into: noun, pronoun, gerund, verb, term of endearment, sobriquet, epithet, honorific. Then, in an instant, everything changed, Smith writes in her tell-all, Any Given Tuesday., It came in the form of a text from [fellow consultant] Hari [Sevugan]: `Call me. He was a once-in-a-generation talent, someone who perfectly met the moment. Maybe a story that would be 80-20 bad you can get down to 60-40 bad, and that little bit is worth it.. ), Smith quipped. [9][41] From 2013 to 2015, she had a relationship with her former boss, New York governor Eliot Spitzer. Smith: Are we talking about the same Pete Buttigieg? She is operating on two and a half hours of sleep, having just arrived back in New York on a charter jet from South Bend, Indiana, after Buttigieg announced he was running for president. He was thinking of running for chair of the Democratic National Committee. I am a liberal Democrat, but I was so into the McCain thing. The national security site has found fresh energy as a savvy, progressive attack dog in national politics. So what I try to do is to meet candidates where they are, and to help work with them on what their strengths are and not to erase the things in them that are quirky or not, but see if we can use them as assets. Smith double majored in government and anthropology at Dartmouth College, graduating in 2005. Its really hard to do a hit piece on a guy who you are going to see the next morning over coffee and donuts. Tom Ford. Its really hard to do a hit piece on a guy who you are going to see the next morning over coffee and donuts, says Weaver. Lis Smith was supposed to become de Blasio's press secretary until The Post revealed that she was dating former Gov. But as long as its just like that one percent that you need to have the confidence that you can go out and rally thousands of people, and that its just that 1 percent and not 70 percent, then its all good. On Sunday, Bill de Blasio put out a statement in a New York Post story in his own name defending himself against the portrait you paint of him in your book as obsessively paranoid. If you were working for him, and a book like yours came out authored by someone else, how would you have advised him to address the situation? He looked white as a ghost, didnt say anything, just nodding along. Did I think I was going to walk into his office and tell him that I was dating Eliot Spitzer? Pete has no battle scars. [40], Smith dated Missouri politician Jeff Smith after meeting him at Dartmouth and handled some of his publicity during his campaign. Inside the Shrinking Newsroom of the Paper That Shapes the PrimariesBy Tim Alberta. I have talked to all the guys who see in the shots. And I talked about that in the book. Smith has spent much of her career as a political strategist working for prominent men such as Pete Buttigieg, Barack Obama, and the now disgraced Andrew Cuomo. ELIOT AND DeBABE blared the cover of the New York Post, which ran several photos of the pair on its inside pages and in a column from the acid-tongued Andrea Peyser which called Smith not just any ordinary bimbo and called her an ambitious, youngish cookie who presumably does not charge Eliot for any services rendered., Eliot Spitzer and Lis Smith at a Philadelphia 76ers vs. New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden in 2014. He was a once-in-a-generation talent, someone who perfectly met the moment. There may be nobody more central to Mayor Petes media successbesides the candidate himself, and arguably his social-media-savvy husband, Chasten Buttigiegthan Smith, who serves as a communications adviser and all-around aide. A report by New York Attorney General Letitia James showed that Smith was working behind the scenes to protect Cuomo from the allegations. In that same vein, I know that there were people in the transportation secretarys inner circle that thought his taking that position wasnt the best idea. But Joe Biden is president today, and Kamala Harris is his vice president. She was my girlfriend., Later, says Smith, when he was a state lawmaker, I would say to her, I am going to talk to such-and-such group, and she would tell me, This is what you should say. And I would say to her, Lis, I am not going to say that, its not my style, its not going to work. They are already well-known.. But I love politics because it touches everything in our lives. Its sad, but our politics isnt built to deal with people who are reasonable. And if I can help you with my experience, my profile, my contacts, to do that, then I will do it. I had to deal with candidates who, unfortunately, did not give me all the facts, and you cant effectively handle a crisis. We just had the Supreme Court decision on abortion. But it was one of those moments where I had to go with my gut. Smith: Im not going to say who. Wren: One of the theses of Petes campaign was that mayors are on the front lines of democracy. Smith said she felt violated after learning she was being followed. You can unsubscribe at any time and you can contact us here. Political strategist Lis Smith reveals in her new book how The Post exposed that she was dating prostitution-loving former Gov. Tim Miller, my friend, wrote a great book weeks ago, where he talks about the danger of getting sucked up in the game. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. Political strategist Lis Smith reveals in her new book how The Post exposed that she was dating prostitution-loving former Gov. Buttigieg has gotten a number of lavish long-form features, so many that some have jokingly wondered whether Smith is getting paid by the profile. 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