OnSight’s Ben Davis participated in live-blogging of the Lance Armstrong confession last night.
One of the most-recognized names in sports has been much in the news the last week, as word of Lance Armstrong’s confession to ongoing use of performance enhancing drugs during an exclusive Oprah interview was publicized.
Part I of the two-part interview aired last night, and OnSight’s Ben Davis took part in a live-blog conversation on VeloNews, of the nation’s premier cycling news magazines, to give a Public Relations perspective to Lance’s performance.
Reactions to last night’s revelations were fairly tepid; will Part II tonight begin the long process of repairing the damage to Lance’s name, storied history, philanthropy, and the legitimacy of professional cycling at large?
Tune in to the VeloNews live blog tonight at 8 to find out…
The Keating/OnSight polls won Curtis Hubbards “closest to the pin” award.
Getting voters to understand the Amendment — which sets out to modernize government so that we hire and promote the best employees, increase accountability and help veterans who serve our country — was an uphill battle. A wonky and technical issue, it took a creative integrated campaign of online, radio, and billboard ads to get voters educated.
But with a unanimous vote of approval from the state legislature, endorsements from nearly every newspaper in the state, and an outpouring of support from both the business and non-profit community, Coloradans voted to pass Amendment S by a double-digit margin!
A win for veterans and the efficiency of our state government!
OnSight Public Affairs worked with Keating Research to run a series of polls leading up to the election. Cited by the NYTimes’ Nate Silver the day before the election, the OnSight/Keating polls were roundly recognized as among the most accurate, getting kudos from both Fox31’s Eli Stokols:
In Colorado, conservatives dismissing the work of pollster Chris Keating on the grounds that he’s worked for Hickenlooper and Udall, overlooked a series of polls that were spot-on. A day before the election, Keating had Obama leading Romney 50-46; it was a four-point win for Obama, 52-48, in the end.
And The Denver Post’s Curtis Hubbard, who gave our polls his Gold Medal award.
A series of web videos and online fundraising efforts managed by OnSight helped propel incumbent Ed Perlmutter to a 12 point victory in the race to represent the 7th Congressional District. Despite re-districting which made the race more competitive, and beer magnate Joe Coors’ (who poured millions of dollars of his personal fortune into the race) best efforts to discredit Ed with ads that made national attention for the dishonesty, Ed Perlmutter’s focus on positive advertising and his record of working hard to represent his constituents served him well in his campaign.
Congratulations to Ed, as both fans and constituents we’re excited to see you remain in office!
Throughout the campaign season, with Colorado in the media spotlight as both a swing state and the host of the first of the Presidential debates, OnSight’s electoral expertise was in demand:
The national media spotlight turned on Denver in early October, as the first Presidential Debate got underway at the University of Denver. Looking for new angles and local expertise, reporters turned to OnSight Public Affairs’ Mike Melanson for information and insight.
Quoted in the LA Times and at NBCPolitics.com, Melanson’s pithy and incisive commentary about the character of western voters helped bring the rest of the nation up to speed on the tenor of the contest in this battleground state.
With the election only weeks away and the candidates in what — at the time of this writing– appears to be a statistical dead heat, continue to watch this space for new polling data and insight into what it all means.
OnSight Public Affairs congratulates Elise Jones on her successful run to win the primary election in the race for Boulder County Commissioner. While the general election is in November, the winner of the Democratic primary is the presumptive winner.
Elise ran a fantastic campaign, with a solid showing at local debates, strong fundraising, and a robust volunteer and outreach corps. Elise and her volunteers had hundreds of conversations, knocked on over a thousand doors, and made thousands of phone calls, during nearly nine months of reaching out to Boulder County voters.
OnSight was proud to help Elise with a branded and structured mail outreach program, campaign strategy consultation, and social media and web presence design and input throughout Elise’s campaign.
We are proud of the honest and professional campaign Elise ran, and wish her luck through the rest of her election season.
Project New West Summit in Las Vegas
The Intermountain West was critical to the Democrats in 2008, but will it be even more important in 2012?
You can bet on it.
That’s why Project New West convened the top political strategists from around the country to discuss how we frame Western issues on the eve of the 2012 presidential race. The Western Summit featured speakers like Tom Brokaw, Ted Turner, Senator Harry Reid, and our own Senator Mark Udall, Senator Michael Bennett and, Governor John Hickenlooper.
We also released new polling data from Western states that will provide many with critical insight into the electorate and help them effectively message both traditional and emerging demographic groups.
Lot’s of good ideas and insights came out of the panels and presentations at the Summit. Let’s all hope that, at least this time, what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas.
Denver Post:
The West is an increasingly important political battleground, and Democrats hope to show they are better suited to appeal to their base as well as the ever-important independent-minded voter, said Jill Hanauer, president of the Colorado-based Project New West
“Folks do things differently out here,” she said. “Voters here vote for the person, not the party, and the policy, not the ideology. You don’t get elected by just folks from your own party, you need independents and others from the other party.”
Project New West’s 2011 summit is pulling in the region’s top business leaders, politicians and academics for three days of panels focusing on emerging issues in the New American West.
Read more: Powerful Western Democrats meeting in Vegas
AP:
LAS VEGAS—Western states are becoming more urban and diverse, with an influx of Hispanic, Asian and young voters who tend to vote against Republican candidates, according to political strategists who spoke Monday at a Democratic conference.
“The trend is worrisome if you are a Republican,” Robert Lang, a sociology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said during the event.
The battle to win the West is being planned in Las Vegas this week, with Republican and Democratic political consultants holding dueling strategy meetings.
The Nation:
As the 2012 elections approach, both parties are furiously jockeying for position. If the Democrats can turn out their votes in sufficient numbers, Western strategists believe, the party could regain many of the House seats it lost in last year’s GOP landslide, while holding the Senate and retaining the White House. If the Democrats fail to do so, the GOP could enjoy an electoral sweep.
The stakes could hardly be higher: For many residents in the region, the battle for 2012 is about basic economic survival. Yet the contours of what the Western fight will look like are still being drawn.
“Now more than ever,” averred Project New West president Jill Hanauer, “the nation should look west for new ideas. We vote for the person, not the party; the policy position and leadership, not the ideology.” For generations, she continued, people in the West have cherished both their communities and their independence, creating a politics suspicious of centralized government but determined to innovate at a local level.
Read more: The Democratic Plan to Recapture the West
National Journal:
Yet during a public panel that I moderated here sponsored by Project New West, a Democratic research organization, leading party strategists expressed unruffled, almost blithe, optimism about Obama’s ability to hold the three Mountain states he carried in 2008. Partly that was because they expect more young people and minorities to vote in 2012 than did in 2010. But it was primarily because they think Obama will benefit from the contrast with the eventual Republican nominee. The Democratic hope is that those twin dynamics will allow Obama to reassemble the coalition of minorities and suburban whites that reelected Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet last year in Colorado.
As Tuesday’s raucous GOP debate underscored, the Republican nominee will provide Obama plenty of clear contrasts. All of the contenders are betting they can sell a larger retrenchment of government than any GOP nominee has proposed since Reagan (if not Barry Goldwater); they are doubling down on pledges to dismantle environmental regulation and unshackle domestic energy production. The stakes on that wager won’t be greater anywhere than in the increasingly pivotal Mountain West, where acute anxiety about jobs jostles against enduring affection for the land.
Read more: Rocky Territory
On top of a mountain.
We’re proud to announce that George Merritt is joining OnSight as our Senior Strategist. In the world of Colorado politics and media, he’s second to none. And as The Post’s Lynn Bartels points out below, with that accent, even bad news sounds good.
Two firms with deep ties to the Colorado Capitol have announced new hires.
OnSight Public Affairs announced it has hired the always amiable George Merritt as a strategist and communications guru.
Merritt, a former Denver Post reporter, served as the communications director for John Hickenlooper’s gubernatorial campaign. At the Capitol he carries water for the Colorado Licensed Beverage Association during the annual breweries battle.
“We’re lucky to have him,” OnSight founding partner Ben Davis said. “He’s the most effective, hardest working public affairs guy in Colorado from North Carolina with a great accent and phenomenal attitude we could have hired. That’s a pretty specific position we were looking to fill.”
Not to mention, Merritt’s Tweets are great reading.