Hal Malchow

Harold Clark Malchow Jr. (4 November 1951 – 21 March 2024) was an American political consultant, securities lawyer, and author. During his consulting career, he worked for every Democratic presidential nominee from 1988 through 2004, over 30 senatorial campaigns, 20 gubernatorial campaigns, and multiple organizations.

Early life and education Harold Clark Malchow Jr. was born on 4 November 1951, in Gulfport, Mississippi, and Harold Clark Malchow. His mother, a Republican was deeply upset when Malchow's ninth-grade class was desegregated. and Malchow's paternal grandfather was Harold C. Malchow. and Millsaps College with a degree in political science in 1973. and passed The Mississippi Bar the same year. At University of the Pacific, he was the vice president of its student bar association and associate editor of a law journal.

Career Malchow's political involvement began in college, and led a few unsuccessful campaigns before a successful one with Al Gore. He worked for multiple organizations, including the United Auto Workers, and worked at a law firm in Jackson, Mississippi, but left after realizing how boring writing contracts defending against financial fraud was compared to devising schemes to do them.

He volunteered to work with Mississippi First, a progressive nonprofit founded in 1982 backing Mississippi governor William F. Winter's reforms, which stalled in the stage legislature. Malchow was the head of Mississippi First's fundraising, where he requested donor lists from the previous living governors, and manually entered every name into an Apple II. The fundraising brought in $100,000, enabling the effort to enact Winter's education laws. Following the campaign, he moved to Washington, D.C. where he was often asked to assist in fundraising through the mail. Malchow devised solicitations that could be mailed to readers of particular magazines and donors to causes, saying that they "had to be a four-page letter, and it had to go in an envelope" to be effective.

Diagnosis and death Malchow's mother began suffering from early onset dementia, so Malchow took a genetic test in 1987 which found him likely to develop Alzheimer's. At the time, he was around 35, and vowed to take his life if he developed symptoms. Malchow would regularly be tested for symptoms. A 2019 brainwave scan showed evidence of an emerging dementia, and he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. He adopted a diet and regular exercise in hopes that it would stave off its effects. The next year, though, he started showing concrete symptoms, forgetting passwords and movies or TV he watched.

Despite New Mexico permitting assisted suicide, the state requires that it be for terminally ill patients with a prognosis of only a few months. Alzheimer's does not fit that requirement. In September 2023, Malchow contacted the nonprofit assisted death advocacy group Dignitas, and scheduled his death.