Patrick Caddell

Patrick Hayward Caddell (May 19, 1950 – February 16, 2019) was an American public opinion pollster and a political film consultant who served in the Carter administration. He worked for Democratic presidential candidates George McGovern in 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980, Gary Hart in 1984 (primary), Walter Mondale in 1984 (general election), Joe Biden in 1988, and Jerry Brown in 1992. He also worked for Mario Cuomo, Bob Graham, Michael Dukakis, Paul Simon, Ted Kennedy, Harold Washington, Andrew Romanoff and Donald Trump.

Early life Patrick Hayward Caddell was born into an Irish Catholic family in Rock Hill, South Carolina, the son of Newton Pascal Caddell (1923–1989), a U.S. Coast Guard officer, and Janie Burns Caddell (1922–1997). In his senior year at Harvard, he borrowed $25,000 from Schultz and started a polling firm, Cambridge Survey Research, with two classmates, John Gorman (1950–2008) and Daniel Porter (1950–1973). In the fall of 1971, Gary Hart, the campaign manager for George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign, hired Caddell's firm to conduct polls in New Hampshire, where he worked closely with McGovern's aide Frank Mankiewicz, and Caddell began pitching his "alienated voters" theory. Due to the fact that, as business partners, Caddell and Porter had taken life insurance policies on each other, Caddell was initially considered a suspect. Consequently, Senator Ted Kennedy became concerned Caddell was being falsely accused for political reasons and sent two of his own investigators to Warren County, New York. After Carter was elected president, Caddell purchased a gold Mercedes. He escorted actress Lauren Bacall to Carter's inauguration ball. Actor Warren Beatty introduced him to Christie Hefner, the daughter of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner. Dotty Lynch worked for him from 1973 to 1979. He was the chief advocate of what later became known as Carter's "malaise speech". The speech was initially well received, but Carter soon fired most of his cabinet and his popularity suffered. In 1987, Carter's White House press secretary, Jody Powell, stated that the cabinet firings were not Caddell's idea, but that of Carter's White House chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan. He tried to persuade Joe Biden, Dale Bumpers, and then Chris Dodd to run, but none of them were interested. Caddell was credited with Hart's stunning victory over Mondale in the 1984 New Hampshire primary. However, he was blamed for approving a television commercial attacking influential Chicago alderman Edward "Fast Eddie" Vrdolyak that inflicted significant damage to Hart's campaign. He was also accused of refusing to attend campaign meetings and only willing to deal with Hart directly. In 1983, Biden remarked, "Sometimes it's hard to know where Pat's thinking stops and mine begins." Biden also remarked to journalist Jules Witcover that Caddell was a "godlike" figure. A public dispute between the three men ensued and Biden was called in to be the mediator. When Biden decided to run for president in 1988, he initially approached Doak to be his campaign manager, but Doak rejected him because he didn't want to work with Caddell again. Biden eventually hired Tim Ridley (1955–2005) to be his campaign manager. Biden's campaign was plagued by infighting, largely attributed to Caddell's presence. Four days later, Biden was further accused of plagiarizing another speech, stealing phrases verbatim from Bobby Kennedy. The latter speech was written by Caddell. Caddell later apologized to the Gephardt campaign. He told another advisor that he had "no right to give my candidate advice". He demanded Biden's brother, Jimmy, to allow him to speak to Biden directly and accused Jimmy of screening calls.

Caddell was also accused of having a role in the implosion of his former boss' Gary Hart's 1988 presidential campaign after a photo of Hart with model Donna Rice on the yacht Monkey Business surfaced in May 1987, leading to charges of infidelity and Hart's withdrawal from the race. Caddell denied the allegation.

Subsequent activities In 1988, Caddell relocated to California to teach a course at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Caddell served as a consultant on various scripted productions, most notably the feature films Apocalypse Now, Air Force One, Outbreak, and In the Line of Fire; the made-for-television movies Running Mates and Y2K; and the television series The West Wing. He was also a marketing consultant on Coca-Cola's ill-fated New Coke campaign in 1985.

In the 1992 presidential election, Caddell advised Jerry Brown in the Democratic primaries and then independent candidate Ross Perot in the general election. He was subsequently shunned in Democratic circles due to Bill Clinton's victory in 1992, which precipitated his rightward lurch. He called environmentalism "a conspiracy 'to basically deconstruct capitalism.'" In 2002, he was hired by Republican former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan, who was a primary candidate in the 2002 California gubernatorial election. In 2003, in a phone conversation with Dean's campaign manager Joe Trippi (who had worked under him at the consulting firm Caddell, Doak and Shrum in the mid-1980s), Caddell came up with Dean's "you have the power" refrain.

In January 2010, Trippi, Celinda Lake, and Caddell were named as consultants to Andrew Romanoff’s Senate campaign in Colorado. Caddell claimed he was "coming out of consulting retirement to work for Romanoff as he takes a principled stand for people against the entrenched interests and cesspool of Washington.”

In November 2010, Caddell penned an op-ed in The Washington Post calling on Barack Obama not to seek re-election.

In the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, Caddell was involved in the founding of a conservative non-profit group called "Secure America Now," which ran ads featuring Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu to target Jewish-American voters.

In the 2000s, Republicans began citing Caddell's tirades against the Democratic Party when they spoke on the floor of the House and the Senate. Caddell was a regular guest on Fox News, and at the time of his death was listed as an official "Fox News Contributor". This earned him the label of a "Fox News Democrat" by critics such as liberal online opinion magazine Salon.

In the 2010s, he was occasionally a guest lecturer at the College of Charleston and the Citadel.

Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign and "enemy of the American people"

Caddell first met Donald Trump in the 1980s and, despite being a registered Democrat who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 South Carolina primary, served as Trump's informal advisor throughout the 2016 election. As his polling data increasingly shifted away from the establishment, Caddell began promoting his outsider "Candidate Smith project" and tried to persuade Mercer and his other benefactor, oilman William Lee Hanley, to support an independent candidate.

After Paul Manafort was forced to resign as Trump's campaign chairman in August 2016, Bannon was named chief executive of the campaign, Kellyanne Conway was named campaign manager, and David Bossie of Citizens United was named deputy campaign manager. All three were previously Mercer operatives. As a result, Caddell's influence grew within the Trump campaign.

Campaign style According to a 1987 profile in the Washington Monthly: Caddell believes the key to winning contemporary elections is appealing to 'alienated' voters—that ever-growing group of mostly younger voters who are not easily identified as liberal or conservative and don't trust government, politicians, or the parties. You can't lure these voters with programs and stands on specific issues, so the theory goes. Rather, you must remain as uncommitted as they are. You lure them by attacking that which caused their alienation: the Establishment. Even if he were inclined to help his candidate address the nation's substantive problems and articulate a coherent package of solutions, he'd have trouble. According to Professor Kendra Stewart at the College of Charleston, Caddell had not been ill prior to his stroke and his death was a shock to those who knew him.

In a statement, former President Jimmy Carter said, "Pat Caddell was a brilliant pollster who at a young age provided me with key information and over his career helped to shape the future of professional research. Rosalynn and I are grateful for his counsel in our campaigns and while we were in the White House. We send our prayers to his family and friends."