If you’ve been out on the trail this campaign season or just tracking
election 2008 via YouTube and your favorite blog, please join our panel of political strategists and political reporters for a round-table discussion on the digital campaign.
Matthew Dowd – is a founding partner of ViaNovo, an international communications and brand positioning firm. He was the chief strategist for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006 and for
President George W. Bush in 2004. His innovative approach on the 2004campaign led the bi-partisan American Association of Political Consultants to name him Pollster of the Year. In December 2007, he was introduced on ABC’s Good Morning America as its new political contributor. He also appears on the same network’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. He has been a visiting professor since the Spring of 2005 at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. The course he teaches is called “The Modern American Political Campaign.” In 2006, Dowd, along with journalist Ron Fournier and former Clinton White House advisor Douglas B. Sosnik wrote “Applebee’s America: How Successful Political, Business, and Religious Leaders Connect With the New American Community.”
Terisa Estacio is an investigative reporter for KRON-TV. She
previously worked as a correspondent for CBS’s Newspath traveling the nation to all breaking news events. Terisa worked as a White House correspondent for Tribune Broadcasting during President Clinton’s first term. She was later on the scene for much of the breaking news surrounding the 2000 Presidential race between President Bush and then Candidate Al Gore. In more than two decades as a journalist, Terisa has worked for television stations in Los Angeles, Houston, Texas, Sacramento, Reno and Eureka. Now settled in the Bay Area, Terisa covers a wide range of topics for KRON-TV, with an emphasis on crime, the courts and top investigative stories of the day.
Josh Harkinson is a staff writer at Mother Jones Magazine, where he covers a variety of beats, including online politics. He was a primary contributor to the magazine’s July/August Politics 2.0
package, which looked at how technology is changing political discourse and campaigning. His January/February feature focused on the role of techies in the insurgent presidential campaign of Rep. Ron Paul. He also contributes stories to the magazine’s website and blog. Harkinson graduated from the Berkeley J-School in 2002 and came
to Mother Jones from the Houston Press, the Texas alt-weekly. His upcoming feature in the magazine’s May/June issue, “Tar Wars,” looks at the politics of the Canadian tar sands.
Ben Tulchin is Vice President of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Director of the firm’s California office. Tulchin has provided research and consulting services to a wide range of clients across the country, including candidates for elected office, ballot measures, labor unions, non-profits, corporations, and foundations. Tulchin serves as a senior analyst for candidate campaigns. Some of his clients have included DNC Chairman and former presidential candidate Howard Dean, former California Governor Gray Davis, U.S. Senators Patty Murray and Harry Reid, among many others. His latest research, presented in March at the American Association of Political
Consultants conference, is a study of the impact of cable television
on candidate campaigns.
Discussion Moderator Scott Lindlaw has spent 16 years covering politics, policy and government for the Associated Press. That’s included two statehouse assignments and four years as a White House correspondent, spanning the first term of George W. Bush.Lindlaw received his MJ at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in 1992 Today he is based at AP San Francisco, where he specializes in investigative projects with an emphasis on the military and national security.