Joe Trippi

Joseph Paul Trippi (born June 10, 1956) is an American political strategist.

Trippi began his career in the mid-1970s working on several local elections in San Jose, California while he was attending San Jose State University, before leaving college a few credits shy of graduation to join the Ted Kennedy 1980 presidential campaign.

During college he was a member of Sigma Nu fraternity.

Trippi served as Deputy Campaign Manager for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley's successful reelection bid in 1981 and his unsuccessful run in the 1982 California gubernatorial election.

During Bradley's gubernatorial campaign, Trippi installed one of the first in-house computers for a political campaign, the DEC-PDP11.

Trippi used it for fundraising and targeting.

In 1993, Trippi worked for then-PASOK leader Andreas Papandreou’s successful campaign of Prime Minister of Greece, as well as for his son, George Papandreou in 2007.

A member of the Democratic Party, Trippi most notably served as campaign manager of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential bid, and has served as a political commentator for CNN since 2018.

He has worked on a number of prominent gubernatorial and United States Senate campaigns, including the successful bids of Jerry Brown for Governor of California and Doug Jones for U.S. Senate in Alabama.

Trippi was born in Jamestown, New York and raised in Los Angeles, California.

Trippi advised former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2005.

In 2006, he worked for Romano Prodi on his winning race for Prime Minister of Italy.

In 2008, Trippi helped Morgan Tsvangirai and Zimbabwe’s opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change receive the most votes over Robert Mugabe in elections marred by violence.

He also brought media attention to Mugabe’s democratic subversion and violence which led to a unity government and Tsvangarai becoming the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.

As part of the unity government, Tsvangirai designated Roy Bennett as Deputy Minister of Agriculture on February 10, 2009.

But Mugabe refused to swear Bennett into office, and three days later Bennett was arrested and charged with treason.

Tsvangirai’s party reported that Bennett was being denied food in prison.

Trippi led an international campaign to put pressure on Mugabe to release Bennett, and days after his release on March 12, Bennett thanked Trippi for his efforts.

Trippi was hired by the Libertas political party to work on their campaign for the 2009 European Parliament election.

In 2010, Trippi was a senior strategist and media consultant in Jerry Brown's successful run for reelection as California Governor.

The Brown ads Trippi & Associates produced received four Pollie awards for excellence in political media and Time named one ad, "Echo," the best ad of 2010.

Andrew Romanoff, who challenged the incumbent Senator Michael Bennet in the 2010 United States Senate election in Colorado, announced his campaign had hired Trippi as one of its four new consultants.

Trippi worked on a number of recent House victories for Representatives Tulsi Gabbard, Janice Hahn, Mark Takano, and Seth Moulton.

Moulton, a former Marine from Massachusetts, won in a shocking come-from-behind upset.

The campaign overcame millions in outside spending to beat 18-year incumbent John Tierney in the primary and Richard Tisei in the targeted general election.

In January 2010, Michael Hastings reported that Joe Trippi was working in Iraq to help launch a secular moderate Shiite party: the Ahrar party headed by Iyad Jamal Al-Din.

A day later, Hastings also reported that 20 of Ahrar’s candidates had been struck from the ballot.

Beginning in October 2011, Trippi advised on the implementation of the recommendations of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, which was tasked with looking into the incidents that occurred during the period of unrest in Bahrain in February and March 2011, saying he "had no problem working for them" because they were "one of the progressive countries in the Middle Eastern Gulf."

The commission released a 500-page report which criticized security forces and provided various conclusions, observations, and recommendations to the government.

In 2011, Trippi provided strategic support for the campaign of Goodluck Jonathan in the Nigerian presidential election.

Trippi ended his work in Bahrain in April 2012.

In a 2015 article from The Boston Globe, Moulton recalled nationally renowned pollster Mark Mellman telling him to quit the race because it would be "statistically impossible" to win.

In 2015, Trippi helped guide the new media strategy for the election of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, helping him build a following of over 800,000 Nigerians and leading CNN to declare Jonathan the “Facebook President.”

In 2017, Trippi worked on the special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions on behalf of former US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama Doug Jones.

In his victory speech, Jones referred to Trippi as the "greatest political consultant in the world".

After the historic come-from-behind victory in Alabama, Trippi worked for Democratic candidates in both of the 2018 United States Senate elections in Mississippi Trippi worked with Howard Sherman for seat currently held by incumbent Roger Wicker, and with former Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy in the special election for the Senate seat vacated by Thad Cochran who decided to resign for health reasons.

In 2018, Trippi worked on the campaign of Janet Garrett, a retired schoolteacher and union leader running to unseat the conservative founder of the Freedom Caucus, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, in Ohio's 4th congressional district.

Trippi currently serves as senior adviser to Senator Doug Jones and Senate candidate Teresa Tomlinson.

Trippi joined The Lincoln Project in July 2021 as a senior advisor.

Trippi has also worked on international political campaigns over the years.