This morning, Jeff Berkowitz joined MSNBC’s Chris Jansing for a discussion of opposition research in the 2012 GOP presidential primary. Watch the discussion here:
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This morning, BPA principal Jeff Berkowitz visited again with Bobby Chernin of WTSL in New Hampshire about the latest news on President Obama, the failure of the Congressional Super-Committee, and the state of the GOP presidential primary.
Delve CEO Jeff Berkowitz helps Reuters examine how political research has changed over the past decade.
“This is a golden age” of opposition research, said Jeff Berkowitz, who dug dirt on Democratic candidates for the Republican National committee … The sort of search tools that discovered presidential candidate Joe Biden’s plagiarism in 1987 have become more sophisticated and the outlets to shop damaging information are now virtually unlimited.
When these advances are “combined with outside funding,” Berkowitz said, “you will see significantly more opposition research from significantly more sources.” And it will all happen at warp speed …
“Now YouTube is old hat. Now you have Twitter. Twitter is better because it breaks news faster. You can push things around on Twitter. It’s like wildfire. Twitter both provides information and also provides the dissemination mechanism. Campaigns are going to have to adapt to that.”The first step, says Berkowitz, who still advises the RNC and today heads Berkowitz Public Affairs, is to turn the microscope on your own candidate. You should assume that any problems lurking in his or her past will come out – and that trying to bury or deny them will probably backfire.
Read the full story here.
This morning, Delve CEO Jeff Berkowitz spoke with Bobby Chernin of WTSL in New Hampshire about the state of the GOP presidential primary, whether Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, President Obama’s jobs speech to Congress, the economy and the Obama-Solyndra scandal.
Delve CEO Jeff Berkowitz explains Social Security’s predicament to The Daily Caller as the site examines the controversy caused by Gov. Rick Perry’s comments about the entitlement program.
Jeff Berkowitz, a communications consultant and former research director at the Republican National Committee, said statements like Perry’s — accurate though they may be — rub Americans the wrong way because they call that guarantee into question.
“The reason it’s so controversial is because it’s so exactly true,” Berkowitz said. “The more you expose the uncertainty, the more people become concerned about the safety of their investment.” …
“When FDR implemented Social Security, there were 16 workers for every one retiree,” Berkowitz said. “Now there’s less than three for every retiree, and it’s moving downward.” …
Berkowitz said the system needs to be reformed, “otherwise whoever is not at or near retirement isn’t going to get the full benefits they were promised.”
Read the full article here.
“It used to be that 90 percent of it was in the dark-arts category, slipping folders to reporters. Now it’s almost the opposite,” BPA principal Jeff Berkowitz tells Politico’s Ben Smith as he investigates the emergence of opposition research as a critical daily tool for public affairs, advocacy and political campaigns.
Berkowitz also noted that opposition research is particularly relevant to the 2012 Republican presidential primaries: “After the debacles they witnessed last cycle in states like Delaware and Colorado and Alaska, where candidates were not sufficiently vetted before they were nominated, I would expect opposition research to play a stronger role in campaign efforts to feed Republican voters’ desire to trust but verify this cycle.”
Read the full article here.
Last week, Politico asked that very question, and enlisted Delve CEO Jeff Berkowitz to help answer it:
The Queens Congressman did have the good fortune to be busted in an off-year, and in the fast swirl of the contemporary media cycle, some observers thought he might be able to make it up.
“In our day and age, a year and a half isn’t really quick,” said former Republican National Committee research director Jeff Berkowitz. “There’s a lot of time for him to get back to work, focus on his constituents.”
Read the full article here.
Delve CEO Jeff Berkowitz appeared on RT’s “The Alyona Show” last night to defend the US-Israel Relationship and comment on Obama’s Middle East speech. Here’s the video here:
Delve CEO Jeff Berkowitz was quoted in Politico, offering analysis of how 2012 presidential candidates should prepare to deal with their past record and other vulnerabilities.
“Now more than ever, you’ve got to think about what’s out there, or what’s not out there yet but could be, “ said Jeff Berkowitz, Rudy Giuliani’s research director in 2008 and a former Republican National Committee research head. “It’s harder to control that, and that’s going to be an increasing unknown for candidates. … You have to get prepared to re-fight a lot of battles you fought five years ago, 10 years ago and account for those things.”
You can read the full article here. Among other services, Delve can help candidates prepare to defend and promote their record as they run for office. Learn more about these and other services here, or feel free to contact us with any inquiries.
On December 28th, 2010, Delve CEO Jeff Berkowitz was a featured lecturer at American University’s Campaign Management Institute, where he discussed strategies and techniques for researching your opponents in political campaigns. A recognized expert on opposition research, Berkowitz discussed both the research process and how to utilize research in campaign message development and rapid response. C-SPAN covered the lecture live and in re-broadcast. The video and transcript can be viewed here: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/CampaignOpp
