The art of Advance, with Carol Dahmen-Eckery

CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: Politicians generally see public appearances as a chance to gain some media attention and to get their message out into the greater world. Whether or not that goes smoothly is almost always attributable to having a solid advance team. A great advance person is equal parts drill sergeant, Energizer Bunny and psychic, with an obsessive attention to detail. On today’s show we are joined by Carol Dahmen-Eckery, who for decades was one of the most well-known and respected campaign managers and advance team leaders in the business, who shares a plethora of insights and lessons from her years being the one to stop problems before they could even occur.

3:15 Capitol Caffeine series

4:18 Age evolution around the Capitol

5:10 Carol Dahmen-Eckery

6:19 Press conference at a freeway entrance

7:57 The role of the Advance team

8:47 The last event of the 1998 Gray Davis campaign

10:29 “Discount Advance”

12:05 The biggest challenges

13:34 Security

15:22 How the candidate’s personality affects the event

18:02 Essential Advance skills

20:39 Secret Service

22:37 Career path

25:50 Getting the candidate TO the event

27:53 “Years of experience”

28:13 The Martin Sheen story

31:02 Get in the trenches

32:23 Failure is a good teacher

33:25 Still staffing Gray Davis

36:31 #WWCA