Joe Trippi—heralded on the cover of The New Republic as the man who “reinvented campaigning”—was born in California and began his political career working on Edward M. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1980. His work in presidential politics continued with the campaigns of Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Richard Gephardt and Howard Dean.
As a campaign manager, Trippi has run presidential, Senate, gubernatorial and mayoral campaigns. He was selected by former Vice President Walter Mondale to manage Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses in 1984 and later went on to run several key states for the Mondale for President campaign. In 1988, Trippi was the Deputy National Campaign Manager for Richard Gephardt’s presidential campaign.
In 2004, he was National Campaign Manager for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, pioneering the use of online technology to organize what became the largest grassroots movement in presidential politics. Through Trippi’s innovative use of the internet for small-donor fundraising, Dean for America ended up raising more money than any Democratic presidential campaign in history, all with donations averaging less than $100 each. Trippis innovations have brought fundamental change to the electoral system and will be the model for how all future political campaigns are run.
Trippi began his work in media consulting at the Democratic media firm of Doak, Shrum and Associates, where he was involved in developing the strategy and producing the media for the successful campaigns of Jerry Baliles for governor of Virginia and Bob Casey for governor of Pennsylvania. Trippi was also instrumental in the re-election campaigns of U.S. Senator Alan Cranston of California and Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles.
In addition to his work in politics, Trippi worked with a number of high-tech companies in the 1990’s, including Wave Systems, Progeny Linux Systems, and Smart Paper Networks.
As a political analyst and commentator, Trippi appears regularly on MSNBC. He has been profiled in GQ, Fast Company, The New Republic and The New York Times Magazine