Blaise Hazelwood

Blaise Hazelwood, an American Republican strategist and consultant in the United States, is the owner of Grassroots Targeting, LLC, a microtargeting company.

Hazelwood first came to prominence as the driver behind the “72-Hour Task Force” in 2001, the party’s last major revision to its tactical campaign playbook which is credited with revolutionizing the Get Out the Vote efforts. Hazelwood has led and managed political operations, high-profile grassroots programs and political campaigns, including multiple winning campaigns for chairman of the Republican National Committee. She received praise for her work as Political Director at the Republican National Committee in 2002 and 2004, spearheading their online Team Leader program and the construction of Voter Vault, the RNC’s voter file database. She went on to serve as the director of media and political operations for the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 2006 cycle under Senator Elizabeth Dole.

Despite her Arizona lineage, however, she was born in Washington because her father was working at the Interior Department during the Nixon administration. She was named for St. Blaise. The name was chosen by her mother, who wrote a dissertation on the Roman Catholic saint while studying for a doctorate in early Christian art at Georgetown University. Hazelwood has admitted that being named after a little-known male saint caused confusion when she was younger.

Hazelwood worked as Political Director at the RNC in 2002 & 2004. Matthew Dowd, Senior Advisor at the time said, "She's got good intuition, and she's exceptionally well organized. She'll do whatever it takes to get the job finished. She's not concerned about being the last person to leave the office or getting on an airplane to get the job done."

72 Hour Program "When the history of the Republican Party's midterm election victories of 2002 is written, President Bush will get the headline and much of the credit, but a large footnote will go to a young political operative named Blaise Hazelwood." -The Washington Post, 2003

Hazelwood, only 31 at the time, was serving as political director of the Republican National Committee (RNC), and it was her responsibility to coordinate the party's "72-Hour Program," an 18-month effort designed to put shoe leather back into politics and beat the Democrats in turning out the vote, especially in the final three days, 72 hours, of the campaign. The 72-Hour Project was born of necessity after the 2000 election, when Republicans discovered that Democrats had done a better job of getting their voters to the polls in one of the tightest presidential races in history.

With prodding from White House senior adviser Karl Rove, White House political director Ken Mehlman and RNC Deputy Chairman Jack Oliver, the party undertook a top-to-bottom review of its get-out-the-vote operation, poured more than $1 million into more than 50 experiments to test how best to reach out to voters and then methodically set about implementing their findings in the midterm campaigns.

"I'm confident from the testing and from human life experience that making a volunteer telephone call or knocking on someone's door makes much more impact than just doing it paid," Hazelwood said.

Her work paid big dividends on Election Day, when a surge of Republican voters in states such as Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Missouri overwhelmed the Democrats and turned what many had called one of the most competitive midterm campaigns in history into a substantial Republican victory.

Voter Vault

In addition to implementing the 72 hour program, Hazelwood is also credited with creating Voter Vault, the Republican Party's voter file database which is used by campaigns all over the country.

National Republican Senatorial Committee

In 2005, Hazelwood moved over to become Elizabeth Dole's right-hand-woman, serving as campaign and media director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) through the 2006 election cycle.