Brad Rourke

Category: politics

  • Resistance

    Last weekend I led a candidate training program run by the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia. It is a bipartisan four-day session that brings experts in all the important aspects of campaigning — planning, fundraising, message development, communication, GOTV, and more — and wraps it all in a framework of…

  • Rearranging The Deck Chairs At The State Of The Union

    As people wring their hands over the “toxic” rhetoric swirling throughout public life, a proposal from Colorado Senator Mark Udall has been gaining traction and winning approving nods from The Concerned Elite. The idea? At the upcoming State Of The Union address on January 25, don’t seat Members of Congress by party but mix them…

  • A Call For Rhetorical Nonviolence: It Starts With Me, Not My Enemy

    The tragic events in Arizona may well be a turning point. Many are calling for changes in policies, and many of these changes may well make sense. Many are also calling for a scaling back of the vitriolic political rhetoric that has marked public life these days. There is much blame being directed at political…

  • Jerry Brown Came To My Apartment

    The year: 1989. The place: dilapidated beachfront apartment on Venice beach. I was awakened one groggy morning by a knock on the front door. It was Jerry brown, who came into my apartment and said something quite memorable. Watch the video of me telling the story: (Yes, I told this story as a podcast some…

  • Lesson Learned From Juan Williams: The Center Cannot Hold

    I recall the day I met Juan Williams in the elevator. It was a couple of years ago. I was in the C-SPAN / FOX building overlooking the Capitol; we were both going down the elevator after our respective Fox appearances. We chatted. He handed me his card — NPR. He won’t remember it. But…

  • New Collaborative Governance Council Mandated By Law in MN

    One of my very first clients when I started working independently (I hung out my own shingle back in November 2003) was a group called the Policy Consensus Initiative, along with its sister organization the National Policy Consensus Center. I will always be grateful to PCI’s founder Chris Carlson and NPCC’s director Greg Wolf for…

  • Oh, D.E.A.R. — How to Respond to Crisis: Eat the Whole Bug

    I spent the last weekend, as I do a couple of times a year, leading ethics and leadership sessions at the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership’s Candidate Training Program. This is a bipartisan, intensive boot-camp for new candidates, delivered within an ethics framework. It has been proven to work and numerous grads are now holding…

  • Election Laws Coming for Facebook, Twitter

    The state I happen to live in is at the forefront of an interesting wave in public policy, one which is inevitable. The Maryland Board of Elections is considering taking actions to regulate the social media usage of candidates and campaigns. A quick scan shows that many candidates and campaigns have begun to tap into…

  • LaHood's Dilemma And The Difficulties Of Evaluation

    Yesterday Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, in response to a question at a congressional hearing, suggested that Toyota owners ought to avoid driving their cars. Specifically, he said: “My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it, take it to the Toyota dealer because they believe they have the fix for it.”…