- Pritzker Fellows
- Former Fellows
- Stuart Stevens
Stuart Stevens
Republican Political Strategist, Media Consultant & Writer
Biography
Stuart Stevens is one of the nation’s most successful political strategists and media consultants. For twenty-five years, Stevens has been the lead strategist and media consultant for some of the nation’s toughest political campaigns such as U.S. Senators Rob Portman and Roy Blunt, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge and President George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. Most recently, Stevens was lead strategist for Governor Mitt Romney’s 2012 primary and general election presidential races.
In 2014, he was lead strategist for Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran’s come from behind runoff win and led an eight state Super PAC campaign to help secure the new Senate Majority.
Beginning his political career in his native Mississippi, Stevens first worked on Thad Cochran’s campaigns and has gone on to help elect more governors and U.S. senators than any other current Republican media consultant.
Stevens’ sixth book, The Last Season: A Father, a Son, and a Lifetime of College Football, was published in September 2015. Also to his credit are numerous essays and articles, extensive writing for both film and television, formerly serving as a Fellow of the American Film Institute and current weekly column for The Daily Beast.
An endurance sports enthusiast, Stevens has ridden the legendary Paris-Brest-Paris cycling race and skied the last 100 miles to the North Pole.
Seminars
“Election 2016: Joe & Stuart’s Wild Ride”
This seminar with Joe Trippi and Stuart Stevens will run in real time through the most important contests of the 2016 presidential nomination fight. Ride through what promises to be one of the wildest primary fights ever - from the critical weeks prior to the Iowa caucuses, through Super Tuesday, and on to the path leading to the nominating conventions - with two guys who have been around since the invention of the bi-plane and seen more than their fair share of political dogfights and air wars.
*This is a joint seminar series with Joe Trippi
We will tackle it all! What have the polls gotten right? Where did we all go wrong? Why and how did either of us get into politics? The state of the race, what it all means and how to look at the race going forward. And yes, you better come with your predictions too. Because we are going to keep score!
Why have debates mattered? How do you prepare to win one? What to look for in the final debate before Iowa. And….wait for it: Iowa is just four days away! It does not get any better than this! Why going negative in a multi-candidate field can be dangerous. Joe Trippi will relive the Howard Dean-Dick Gephardt murder suicide in Iowa in 2004 that made John Kerry the nominee and Stuart Stevens will explain the implications for Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz (or whoever is practicing murder-suicide at the time). Oh yeah. We will also discuss who will win Iowa and why.
This session will take place two days after the New Hampshire primary. So it’s our chance to look back and explain how we knew what was going to happen happened. What mattered more: TV ads or news coverage? Who’s out? Who’s still in? Which campaigns are in a nosedive? And which are still alive and just looking through the windshield at an on-rushing calendar of states coming faster than they could possibly imagine? Oh, and we will look ahead at what this all means for upcoming races in Nevada and South Carolina.
What happened in the contests in Nevada and South Carolina? We’ll look at that, but guess what? In five days, on March 1, it’s Super Tuesday for Alabama, Alaska (GOP), Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia. Remember when we said it doesn’t get better than this? We lied! Super Tuesday is going to be Super! Joe Trippi will explain why Super Tuesday was originally set up by Democrats in 1988 to ensure a southerner was nominated. Stuart Stevens will deliver the punch line - Super Tuesday instead helped nominate a northeastern liberal named Michael Dukakis. Money and momentum matter when you have this many contests on one day - who has it? Oh and have any of our predictions come true yet?
Special Guest: Russell Schriefer, Political Strategist & former Senior Advisor to Mitt Romney in 2012
After a bunch of campaigns went splat on Super Tuesday we will likely be down to the two final candidates with a real shot at the nomination. If there are more than two it could mean that crazy notion of a brokered convention could be in play for the first time in decades! Remember when we said it could not get better than Super Tuesday? We lied again! Stuart Stevens will look back to see when the GOP nomination was sewn up in years past and see how that jives with where we are in 2016. And we will finish with a look ahead at the General Election, with Joe Trippi boldly predicting that Hillary Clinton will be our next president. Come find out what Stuart Stevens has in mind.