Michael Stanley Dukakis is an American retired lawyer and politician who served as governor of Massachusetts from 1975 to 1979 and again from 1983 to 1991. He is the longest-serving governor in Massachusetts history and only the second Greek-American governor in U.S. history, after Spiro Agnew. He was nominated by the Democratic Party for president in the 1988 election, losing to the Republican nominee, Vice President George H. W. Bush.
Harvey LeRoy "Lee" Atwater was an American political consultant and strategist for the Republican Party. He was an adviser to Republican U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and chairman of the Republican National Committee. Atwater aroused controversy through his aggressive campaign tactics, especially the Southern strategy.
Marvin Pierce Bush is an American businessman. He is a son of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush and the brother of former U.S. President George W. Bush, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the late Robin Bush, Neil Bush, and Dorothy Bush Koch.
Joe Conason is an American journalist, author and liberal political commentator. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo, a daily political newsletter and website that features breaking news and commentary. Since 2006, he has served as editor of The Investigative Fund, a nonprofit journalism center.
Mary Joe Matalin is an American political consultant well known for her work with the Republican Party. She has served under President Ronald Reagan, was campaign director for George H. W. Bush, was an assistant to President George W. Bush, and counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney until 2003. Matalin has been chief editor of Threshold Editions, a conservative publishing imprint at Simon & Schuster, since March 2005. She is married to Democratic political consultant James Carville. She appears in the award-winning documentary film Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story and also played herself, opposite her husband, James Carville, John Slattery, and Mary McCormack in the short lived HBO series K Street.
William R. Horton, commonly referred to as "Willie Horton", is an American convicted murderer who was the subject of a major issue in the 1988 presidential election. Horton had committed violent crimes while on furlough from prison, where he was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for murder. Released for a weekend as the beneficiary of a Massachusetts furlough program, he failed to return, and was later recaptured and convicted of committing assault, armed robbery, and rape in Maryland, where he remains incarcerated.
The War Room is a 1993 American documentary film about Bill Clinton's campaign for President of the United States during the 1992 United States presidential election. Directed by Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker, the film was released on December 5, 1993. It was eventually nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award.
Negative campaigning is the process of deliberately spreading negative information about someone or something to worsen the public image of the described. A colloquial, and somewhat more derogatory, term for the practice is mudslinging.
In politics, opposition research is the practice of collecting information on a political opponent or other adversary that can be used to discredit or otherwise weaken them. The information can include biographical, legal, criminal, medical, educational, or financial history or activities, as well as prior media coverage, or the voting record of a politician. Opposition research can also entail using "trackers" to follow an individual and record their activities or political speeches.
Steve Brodner is a satirical illustrator and caricaturist working for publications in the US since the 1970s. He is accepted in the fields of journalism and the graphic arts as a master of the editorial idiom. Currently a regular contributor to GQ, The Nation, Newsweek, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, Brodner's art journalism has appeared in most major magazines and newspapers in the United States, such as Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, Time, Playboy, Mother Jones, Harper's, and The Atlantic. His work, first widely seen exposing and attacking Reagan Era scandals, is credited with helping spearhead the 1980s revival of pointed and entertaining graphic commentary in the US. He is currently working on a book about the presidents of the United States.
Roger Jason Stone is an American conservative political consultant, lobbyist, and convicted felon. Stone is most remembered for the Robert Mueller special council investigation, and his involvement with and connections to Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election as a political consultant for the campaign of 45th U.S. president Donald Trump.
Howard David Fineman is an American journalist and television commentator. In a career that spanned nearly five decades, Fineman has covered nine presidential campaigns as a reporter, writer, and analyst. For 30 years, he drove Newsweek magazine's political coverage. At the height of the publication's influence, Fineman was its chief political correspondent, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. His "Living Politics" column was posted weekly on Newsweek.com. Following Newsweek,he was named global editorial director of the AOL Huffington Post Media Group.
From January 21 to June 3, 1980, voters of the Republican Party chose its nominee for president in the 1980 United States presidential election. Retired Hollywood actor and two-term California governor Ronald Reagan was selected as the nominee through a series of primary elections and caucuses culminating in the Republican National Convention held from July 14 to July 17, 1980, in Detroit, Michigan.
The 2000 presidential campaign of John McCain, the United States Senator from Arizona, began in September 1999. He announced his run for the Republican Party nomination for the presidency of the United States in the 2000 presidential election.
Charles R. Black Jr. is an American lobbyist and businessman, who is the Founding Chairman of Prime Policy Group, a public affairs firm which is now a subsidiary of Burson Cohn & Wolfe. Prime Policy Group was formed with the merger of Martin B. Gold's Gold & Liebengood with the Washington, DC-based lobbying firm he co-founded—BMSK—with Paul Manafort, Roger J. Stone, and Peter G. Kelly. In 2010, Black was inducted into the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) Hall of Fame.
Karl Christian Rove is an American Republican political consultant, policy advisor, and lobbyist. He was Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff during the George W. Bush administration until his resignation on August 31, 2007. He has also headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives.
Tucker Eskew is a political and communications strategist in the United States who served as Deputy Assistant to the President for Media Affairs and Global Communications under President George W. Bush. He joined Senator John McCain's presidential campaign in August 2008 as senior advisor and counselor to Sarah Palin. He was the founder of Eskew Strategy Group, an Alexandria-based communications firm. In 2005, he merged the Eskew Group into a new bipartisan communications firm called Vianovo.
Stefan Forbes is an American screenwriter and film director whose films and social justice work often address issues of race, class, masculinity, violence, and restorative justice.
Richard Rowley is a documentary filmmaker. His films and TV shows have received three Emmy awards, an Oscar nomination, and other awards and nominations, as well as recognition at film festivals around the world.
The 1988 presidential campaign of George H. W. Bush, the 43rd vice president of the United States under President Ronald Reagan, began when he announced he was running for the Republican Party's nomination in the 1988 U.S. presidential election on October 13, 1987. Bush won the 1988 election against Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis on November 8, 1988. He was subsequently inaugurated as president on January 20, 1989.
