Douglas Schoen

Last updated

Doug Schoen
Born
Douglas E. Schoen [1]

(1953-06-27) June 27, 1953 (age 71)
Education Harvard University (BA, JD)
University of Oxford (PhD)

Douglas E. Schoen [1] [2] (born June 27, 1953) is an American lawyer, political analyst, author, lobbyist, and conservative commentator. In 1977, he co-founded the political consulting firm Penn, Schoen & Berland, and was hired by President Bill Clinton and Ukrainian steel oligarch Victor Pinchuk. From 2009-2021 he worked for Fox News, and since 2021 for Newsmax TV.

Contents

Early life and education

Schoen was raised on the Upper East Side of Manhattanl, the son of a corporate lawyer. [3] He is of Jewish descent. [4] He graduated from the Horace Mann School in New York City. [5] While still a high school student, he canvassed the Upper West Side for Dick Morris. [6] In 1974, he graduated from Harvard College. [7]

Schoen graduated from Harvard College ( magna cum laude ) and Harvard Law School. [5] [8]

While in college, Schoen partnered with his dormitory roommate, Mark Penn [7] also a Horace Mann School alumni [3] and The Harvard Crimson writer, founded Penn & Schoen – now the global market research firm Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates. [9]

Career

Consulting work

While still at Harvard, Schoen first worked as an independent political consultant for Louis R. Gigante, associate pastor of St. Athanasius Roman Catholic Church, in the South Bronx, who successfully ran for New York City Council in 1973. [10] [11]

In 1977, he co-founded the political consulting firm Penn, Schoen & Berland with political strategists Mark Penn. [10] Michael Berland joined the firm in 1987. [10] Schoen worked for the political campaigns of politicians including Jay Rockefeller, Richard Shelby and Evan Bayh. [10] Following the 1994 United States elections, President Bill Clinton hired Dick Morris, who brought on Schoen and Penn. Schoen worked on the 1996 campaign as well in survey analysis. [6] [10] Schoen also began doing corporate work beginning in the 1980s. [10]

In 2000, Ukrainian steel oligarch Victor Pinchuk hired Schoen on a $40,000 per month retainer. [12] The firm was sold to WPP plc in 2001. [10] Schoen left the firm later to work for news media. [10]

In 2004, Schoen introduced Pinchuk to Hillary Clinton. [12] He also did work for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2008 and later became associated with the People United Means Action movement of disaffected Clinton supporters who refused to support Barack Obama. [13] [14] Schoen was a consultant for Jeff Greene in the 2010 Florida Senate election. [15]

In 2010, Schoen hosted a fundraiser for Republican congressional candidate John Gomez. [16]

Pinchuk donated $13.1 million to the Clinton Foundation in the years after Schoen's introduction. [12] In 2011, Schoen was paid $40,000 a month by Victor Pinchuk, as reported in his Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 statement. [17] Schoen registered as a foreign agent lobbying on behalf of Victor Pinchuk. [12] Between September 2011 and November 2012, Schoen arranged nearly a dozen meetings between Pinchuk and senior State Department officials, including Melanne Verveer. [12] In September 2015, Pinchuk donated $150,000 to the Donald J. Trump Foundation in exchange for a 20-minute video appearance by Donald Trump shown at a policy conference that year in Kyiv. [18] Michael Cohen solicited Schoen for the donation from Pinchuk, which was the largest outside donation the Trump Foundation received that year. [18] In March 2017, former Trump aide Monica Crowley registered as a foreign agent working for Pinchuk under Schoen's direction. [19]

Media

Fox News [10] hired Schoen as a political analyst in 2009 [20] [21] and Newsmax hired Schoen as a columnist. In 2010, he authored a book on the Tea Party movement with Scott Rasmussen. [10] He has been writing a regular column for Forbes magazine beginning in July 2016 with a column "Donald Trump Through The Years". [22]

Newsmax TV announced that Schoen would be leaving Fox News and on January 19, 2021, Schoen joined Newsmax TV as an Analyst. [23]

It was reported in 2019 that he joined Mike Bloomberg's exploratory 2020 presidential campaign as a pollster. [24]

Schoen served on the Advisory Council of Represent.Us, a nonpartisan anti-corruption organization. [25] [ verification needed ]

Views

Schoen has identified as a member of the Democratic party, but has frequently criticized the party and taken positions on various political topics at odds with the party's views. Schoen's critics have called his identification as a Democrat "phony" and calculated to help his Fox News career. [26] Steve Benen called Schoen the quintessential "Fox News Democrat" and said he is "actively hostile towards [Democrats] and the party's agenda." [27]

In 2010, Schoen said that lower taxes would be a successful Democratic strategy, opposed President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, and said that Obama should not run for reelection in 2012. [28] [29]

He has stated that Obama divided the country along partisan lines, and said that the Affordable Care Act has been a "disaster" for the Democratic Party. [28] [29]

Schoen has been critical of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement. In a 2011 The Wall Street Journal op-ed, he wrote, "President Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement—and it may cost them the 2012 election." [28] [30] He believes that the protesters represent "an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence," and that their common bond is "a deep commitment to left-wing policies." [28] [30] Schoen believes that the Democratic Party should not appeal to voters who support taxing oil companies and the rich, but rather to voters in the middle who want lower taxes. [27] [28] [31] [32]

In an interview with NPR on January 26, 2021, Schoen advocated against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, claiming it was divisive and distracting. [33]

Works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fox News</span> American conservative cable news channel

The Fox News Channel (FNC), commonly known as Fox News, is an American multinational conservative news and political commentary television channel and website based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owned by the Fox Corporation. It is the most-watched cable news network in the U.S., and as of 2023 it generates approximately 70% of its parent company's pre-tax profit. The channel broadcasts primarily from studios at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan. Fox News provides a service to 86 countries and territories, with international broadcasts featuring Fox Extra segments during advertising breaks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reagan Democrat</span> Democratic voters who supported Republican president Ronald Reagan

A Reagan Democrat is a traditionally Democratic voter in the United States, referring to working class residents who supported Republican presidential candidates Ronald Reagan in the 1980 and/or the 1984 presidential elections, and/or George H. W. Bush during the 1988 presidential election. The term Reagan Democrat remains part of the lexicon in American political jargon because of Reagan's continued widespread popularity among a large segment of the electorate.

Newsmax, Inc. is an American cable news, political opinion commentary, and digital media company founded by Christopher Ruddy in 1998. It has been variously described as conservative, right-wing, and far-right. Newsmax Media divisions include its cable and broadcast channel Newsmax TV; its website Newsmax.com, which includes Newsmax Health and Newsmax Finance; and Newsmax magazine, its monthly print publication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dick Morris</span> American political commentator and consultant (born 1948)

Richard Samuel Morris is an American author, commentator, and former political consultant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor Pinchuk</span> Ukrainian politician and oligarch (born 1960)

Victor Mykhailovych Pinchuk is a Ukrainian businessman and oligarch. As of January 2016, Forbes magazine ranked him as 1,250th on the list of wealthiest people in the world, with a fortune of US$1.44 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott Rasmussen</span> American businessman

Scott William Rasmussen is an American public opinion pollster and political analyst. He previously produced the ScottRasmussen.com Daily Tracking Poll, a gauge of American voters' political sentiment. He is editor-at-large for Ballotpedia, where he writes the Number of the Day Feature, and is a host for the podcast entitled Just the Polls, a podcast series from Just the News.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick Caddell</span> American public opinion pollster (1950–2019)

Patrick Hayward Caddell was an American public opinion pollster and a political film consultant who served in the Carter administration. He worked for Democratic presidential candidates George McGovern in 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980, Gary Hart in 1984 (primary), Walter Mondale in 1984, Joe Biden in 1988, and Jerry Brown in 1992. He also worked for Mario Cuomo, Bob Graham, Michael Dukakis, Paul Simon, Ted Kennedy, Harold Washington, Andrew Romanoff and Donald Trump.

The Harris Poll is an American market research and analytics company that has been tracking the sentiment, behaviors and motivations of American adults since 1963. In addition to the traditional consulting offered, Harris has developed software data platforms that allow brands to track health and campaign success. The firm works with clients in three primary areas: brand strategy and tracking, corporate reputation, and research for public release.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Luntz</span> American political consultant, author, and pollster (born 1962)

Frank Ian Luntz is an American political and communications consultant and pollster, best known for developing talking points and other messaging for Republican causes. His work has included assistance with messaging for Newt Gingrich's Contract with America and public relations support for The Israel Project. He advocated use of vocabulary crafted to produce a desired effect, including use of the term death tax instead of estate tax, and climate change instead of global warming.

Rasmussen Reports is an American polling company founded in 2003. The company engages in political commentary and the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information. Rasmussen Reports conducts nightly tracking, at national and state levels, of elections, politics, current events, consumer confidence, business topics, and the United States president's job approval ratings. Surveys by the company are conducted using a combination of automated public opinion polling involving pre-recorded telephone inquiries and an online survey. The company generates revenue by selling advertising and subscriptions to its polling survey data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bradley effect</span> Theory about discrepancies between opinion polls and election results in the United States

The Bradley effect, less commonly known as the Wilder effect, is a theory concerning observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some United States government elections where a white and a non-white candidate run against each other. The theory proposes that some white voters who intend to vote for the white candidate would nonetheless tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for the non-white candidate. It was named after Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California gubernatorial election to California attorney general George Deukmejian, an Armenian-American whose aunt perished in the Armenian Genocide, despite Bradley’s being ahead in voter polls going into the elections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Penn</span> American political strategist (born 1954)

Mark J. Penn is an American businessman, pollster, political strategist, and author.

<i>FiveThirtyEight</i> American news website

538, originally rendered as FiveThirtyEight, is an American website that focused on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States. Founder Nate Silver left in 2023, taking the rights to his forecasting model with him to his website Silver Bulletin. 538's new owner Disney hired G. Elliott Morris to develop a new model. On September 18, 2023, the original website domain at fivethirtyeight.com was closed, and web traffic became redirected to ABC News pages. The logo was replaced, with the name 538 now used instead of FiveThirtyEight.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Berland</span> American businessman

Mike Berland is founder and CEO of Decode_M, an insights and strategy firm. Prior to founding Decode_M in 2016, he was CEO of Edelman Berland, the global intelligence, research, and analytics division of Edelman. Before joining Edelman Berland in 2012, he was President of the market research and polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas Elmendorf</span> American economist (born 1962)

Douglas William Elmendorf is an American economist who is the dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He previously served as the Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from 2009 to 2015. He was a Brookings Institution senior fellow from 2007 to 2009, and briefly in 2015 following his time at the CBO, and was a director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PSB Insights</span> Company

PSB Insights is a consultancy firm founded in 1997 by Mark Penn and Douglas Schoen.

Matthew Allen "Matt" Towery is an American political analyst, pollster, television commentator, attorney, and former Georgia state legislator.

Brian Edward Fallon Jr. is an American political operative. He was the national press secretary for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, a role he began in March 2015, and was a senior advisor in Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign. In 2018, he founded the legal advocacy organization Demand Justice.

Arnon Absalom Mishkin is an American management consultant, media personality, and news analyst for Fox News. Mishkin worked as a pollster under political consultant David Garth for the Democratic Party during electoral campaigns for Ed Koch, Jay Rockefeller, and Tom Bradley. Mishkin worked as a partner at the Boston Consulting Group and the Mitchell Madison Group, and now operates his own consultancy firm known as Mishkin Associates. Since 1998, he has been consultant for Fox News as part of their Decision Desk, and has led it since 2008, including the 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020 United States presidential elections. In 2021, Mishkin also served as a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics.

References

  1. 1 2 "Douglas E. Schoen - Writer Page". The Harvard Crimson . Retrieved August 22, 2024.
  2. ↑ "Bio - Douglas E. Schoen". Douglas Schoen .com. Archived from the original on April 8, 2012. Retrieved August 22, 2024.
  3. 1 2 Bumiller, Elisabeth (February 11, 1998). "Taking Pulse of the President's Pulse-Takers". The New York Times . Archived from the original on May 27, 2015. Retrieved August 22, 2024.
  4. ↑ @DouglasESchoen (February 22, 2017). "As a Democrat and a Jew, I would be ashamed if keith ellison is elected" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  5. 1 2 Weisberg, Jacob (August 7, 1995). "Who is Dick Morris?". New York . pp. 34 et seq. Retrieved November 3, 2010. Penn and Schoen are... city bred prodigies.The two attended Horace Mann together and became a political team at Harvard, where they worked on the Weiner Crimson.... As pollsters, the Laurel and Hardy-ish pair are known for a hard quantitative bent.... But if Penn and Schoen are moderates....
  6. 1 2 Stengel, Richard; Pooley, Eric (November 18, 1996). "Masters of the Message". Time. Retrieved November 1, 2016.
  7. 1 2
  8. ↑ "About Doug". powerofthevote.com. Retrieved November 3, 2010.
  9. ↑ Charter, David (February 25, 2006). "'The Most Important Man in Washington (You've Never Heard Of)". The Times Magazine. London.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Johnson, Dennis W. (November 7, 2016). Democracy for Hire: A History of American Political Consulting. Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780190272692.
  11. ↑ Darnton, John (February 21, 1974). "A 'New' Father Gigante: Defender of Power Politics". The New York Times . Retrieved August 22, 2024.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 Chozick, Amy (February 13, 2014). "Trade Dispute Centers on Ukrainian Executive With Ties to Clintons". The New York Times . p. A19. Retrieved April 11, 2018.
  13. ↑ Benen, Steve, "Clinton pollster urges senator to go relentlessly negative" Archived June 25, 2008, at the Wayback Machine , Salon.com , April 16, 2008.
  14. ↑ Greenwald, Glenn, "Douglas Schoen and Hillary's slimy pollsters", Salon.com, September 27, 2008.
  15. ↑ "Dems worry about a subprime billionaire in Florida", Politico, April 28, 2010.
  16. ↑ "Fox News 'Democratic Pollster' Fundraising For GOP". The Huffington Post. October 7, 2010. Retrieved November 1, 2016.
  17. ↑ Schoen, Doug (October 19, 2011). "#6071: FORM NSD-l" (PDF). United States Department of Justice . Retrieved August 22, 2024. Received by NSD/FARA Registration Unit 10/19/2011 4:41:41
  18. 1 2 Schmidt, Michael S.; Haberman, Maggie (April 10, 2018). "Mueller Investigating Ukrainian's $150,000 Payment for a Trump Appearance". The New York Times. p. A1. Retrieved April 11, 2018.
  19. ↑ Gramer, Robbie (March 14, 2017). "One-Time Trump National Security Pick Registers As Foreign Agent for Ukrainian Oligarch". Foreign Policy . Retrieved April 11, 2018.
  20. ↑ Schoen, Douglas E (November 5, 2009). "What the Voters Said". Fox News . Retrieved January 26, 2021.
  21. ↑ Schoen, Doug (January 26, 2021). "OPINION: Doug Schoen". Fox News . 5 November 2009 - 21 January 2021
  22. ↑ "Doug Schoen, Contributor | Policy", Forbes. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  23. ↑ Johnson, Ted (January 19, 2021). "Doug Schoen Joins Newsmax TV As Analyst". Deadline Hollywood . Retrieved January 26, 2021.
  24. ↑ Costa, Robert (January 31, 2019). "Bloomberg builds an all-star political team — and he might not even run". The Washington Post . Retrieved February 19, 2020.
  25. ↑ "About | Represent.Us". End corruption. Defend the Republic. Retrieved November 2, 2016.
  26. ↑ Thrush, Glenn. "Doug Schoen: "Democrat"?". Politico. Retrieved November 1, 2016.
  27. 1 2 Benen, Steve (October 18, 2011). "Doug Schoen isn't helping his reputation". Political Animal blog. Washington Monthly. Archived from the original on March 18, 2016. Retrieved October 19, 2011.
  28. 1 2 3 4 5 Lee, MJ (October 18, 2011). "Schoen warns W.H.: Don't back 'Occupy'". Politico .
  29. 1 2 Schoen, Douglas E.; Caddell, Patrick H. (November 14, 2010). "One and done: To be a great president, Obama should not seek reelection in 2012". Opinion. The Washington Post .
  30. 1 2 Schoen, Douglas (October 18, 2011). "Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd: In interviews, protesters show that they are leftists out of step with most American voters. Yet Democrats are embracing them anyway". The Wall Street Journal .
  31. ↑ Paybarah, Azi (October 19, 2011). "Survey: Many Occupy Wall Street protesters are unhappy Democrats who want more influence"". Capital New York. Archived from the original on October 19, 2011.
  32. ↑ Legum, Judd (October 18, 2011). "Doug Schoen Grossly Misrepresents His Own Poll Results To Smear Occupy Wall Street". Think Progress .
  33. ↑ McCammon, Sarah (January 26, 2021). "Trump Impeachment Trial Could Further Polarize Nation, Analyst Says". NPR . Retrieved January 26, 2021.
  34. ↑ "About the book", powerofthevote.com. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  35. ↑ "About the book", Simonandschuster.com. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.