James Carville | |
|---|---|
_(cropped).jpg) Carville in 2011 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Chester James Carville Jr. (1944-10-25)October 25, 1944 (age 81) Fort Benning, Georgia, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
| Residence(s) | New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, U.S. |
| Education | Louisiana State University (BS,JD) |
| Nickname | Ragin' Cajun |
| Military service | |
| Branch/service | United States Marine Corps |
| Years of service | 1966–1968 |
| Rank | Corporal |
Chester James Carville Jr. (born October 25, 1944) is an Americanpolitical consultant, author and occasional actor who has strategized for candidates for public office in the United States and in at least 23 nations abroad.[1] ADemocrat, he is apundit inU.S. elections who appears frequently oncable news programs, podcasts, and public speeches.
Nicknamed the "Ragin'Cajun",[2] Carville gained national attention for his work as a lead strategist inBill Clinton's winning 1992 presidential campaign.[3] Carville also had a principal role crafting strategy for three unsuccessful Democratic Party presidential contenders, including Massachusetts senatorJohn Kerry in 2004, New York SenatorHillary Clinton in 2008, and Colorado senatorMichael Bennet in 2020.
He is married to longtimeRepublican political consultantMary Matalin.
Carville was born on October 25, 1944, at a U.S. Army hospital atGeorgia's Fort Benning, where his father was stationed during World War II.[4] While his mother, Lucille (née Normand), had stayed behind inCarville, Louisiana, where James was raised, she traveled to Fort Benning long enough to have her firstborn son born there. Later, Carville noted: "We were availing ourselves to free government health services."[5] Lucille Carville, a former school teacher, spoke French at home, and sold theWorld Book Encyclopedia door to door. His father, Chester James Carville Sr., was apostmaster and owner of ageneral store.[6][7][8]
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Carville, Louisiana, a neighborhood in the city ofSt. Gabriel, inIberville Parish, located 16 miles south of the capital city ofBaton Rouge on theMississippi River, was named after his paternal grandfather Louis Arthur Carville, who was once the postmaster.[9] Louis Arthur's mother, Octavia Dehon, was ofBelgian parentage and had married John Madison Carville, described in a biography as "Irish-born" and a "carpetbagger."[10] Together, they established the general store operated by the family in Carville, in 1882.[11] Carville has seven siblings (Bonnie, Mary Ann, Gail, Pat, Steve, Bill, and Angela.).
Among Carville's earliest political campaign work was ripping down the campaign signs of a candidate for public office during high school.[12] Carville graduated fromAscension Catholic High School inDonaldsonville, Louisiana, in 1962.[13][7]
He attendedLouisiana State University (LSU) from 1962 to 1966, but did not graduate at that time. In a 1994 feature inNewsweek, Carville characterized himself as "something less than an attentive scholar. I had 56 hours' worth of Fs before LSU finally threw me out."
Carville served a two-year enlistment in theUnited States Marine Corps, from 1966 to 1968, where he was stationed stateside, atCamp Pendleton inOceanside, California.[13] He attained the rank ofcorporal.[14]
Following his military enlistment, Carville finished his studies atLSU at night, where he earned hisBachelor of Science degree in general studies in 1970 and hisJuris Doctor degree in 1973.[15] Carville is a member of theSigma Nu fraternity.[16][17] He later worked as a junior high school science teacher. Before entering politics, Carville worked as an attorney at McKernnan, Beychok, Screen and Pierson, a Baton Rouge law firm, from 1973 to 1979.[13]
Carville was trained in consulting byGus Weill, who in 1958 had opened the first advertising firm that specialized in political campaigns in the state capital in Baton Rouge.[18]
In a 2012 piece he wrote forForeign Affairs, Carville described one of his earliest political jobs distributing "hate sheets" with negative literature on a political opponent at grocery stores on behalf of Ossie Bluege Brown, during Brown's 1972 campaign for district attorney ofEast Baton Rouge Parish.[19]
In addition to his work as an attorney, in the late 1970s, Carville also worked forGus Weill andRaymond Strother at Weill-Strother,[20] a Baton-Rouge-based political consulting firm that, over the years, had assisted with electoral campaigns and political messaging for Louisiana governorsJimmie Davis,John McKeithen,Edwin Edwards, and U.S. RepresentativeOtto Passman.[21]
In the early 1980s, Carville served as executive assistant toEast Baton Rouge Parish mayor-presidentPat Screen.[22]
In early 1985, Carville consulted to helpCathy Long win a special election to central Louisiana's now-defunct 8th congressional district, following the death of her husband,Gillis William Long, of Louisiana'sLong family political dynasty.[23]
In 1984, Carville became acquainted with his consulting partnerPaul Begala when Carville managed then-Texas state legislatorLloyd Doggett's unsuccessful campaign forthe open Texas Senate seat. Carville helped Doggett, an unabashed liberal and committed enemy of special interests,[24] secure the Democratic nomination in a primary that included conservative U.S. RepresentativeKent Hance, and centrist former congressmanBob Krueger. During the primary, Carville borrowed a rubber vertebrae exhibit from a friend who was a personal injury attorney and coached Doggett on using it as a prop on the stump to attack Krueger as a politicalflip flopper, who lacked resolve and "backbone."[25]
During the general election, Doggett's opponent,Phil Gramm, leveraged viciousidentity-based attacks on Doggett. On one occasion, Doggett returned the small dollar fundraising he received from a gay rights group.[26] Gramm emphasized themes of "family values," including his insistence at a June 1984 prayer breakfast on "having people who believe in Christianity in charge of government," and Carville counter-punched that theme asantisemitic.[27] Doggett was defeated in the general election, polling 2,207,557 votes (41.5 percent), to Gramm's 3,116,348 votes (58.5 percent).
Finding himself out of work after the November 1984 defeat, Carville recalled, "I was scared to death, I was 40 years old, and didn't have any health insurance, I didn't have any money, I was mortified."[28]
Carville helpedBob Casey Sr. win election as the42nd Governor of Pennsylvania in 1986. Casey defeated Philadelphia District AttorneyEd Rendell in the Democratic primary in March, 56.5% to 39.6%.[29]
In the general election, Casey's Republican opponent, Lieutenant GovernorBill Scranton, took the lead in the polls after announcing that his campaign was pulling all negative ads and challenging Casey to do the same. However, the Scranton campaign misstepped by sending a mailer to 600,000 Republican voters that, in addition to a letter from Scranton's father, former Pennsylvania Governor and U.N. AmbassadorWilliam Scranton, included a brochure harshly attacking Casey's ethics.
Carville – who,The New York Times would later write, was brought into the campaign to "ramp up the aggression level" – began to counter, contacting journalists and characterizing the mailer as outrageous. Scranton claimed he did not know about the mailing, so Carville ordered 600,000 blank envelopes, loaded them onto a truck, and dumped them onto a street corner near Scranton's campaign headquarters. Television cameras captured the campaign, asking: "How could you send out this many envelopes and not know about it?"[30] Three weeks before the election, a poster appeared statewide, depicting Scranton as a "long-haired, dope smoking hippie."[31]
The race was virtually tied until five days before the election, when Carville launched the "guru," aTV commercial that portrayed Scranton as having been a regular drug user during the 1960s, also mocking Scranton's interest intranscendental meditation and his ties toMaharishi Mahesh Yogi.[32] The image of Scranton as a meditating, long-haired, dope-smokinghippie, with a background ofsitar music, was credited with tipping the scales against Scranton in thesocially conservative rural sections of Pennsylvania where Carville selectively decided to run the "guru" TV commercial.[33] Casey went on to win the election by a narrow margin of 79,216 out of 3.3 million total votes cast, or 50.7% of the vote to Scranton's 48.4%.[34]
In 1987, Carville worked as a campaign manager to cast Kentucky businessmanWallace Wilkinson as a self-made millionaireanti-establishment gubernatorial candidate.[35] Wilkinson, who had made his fortune in retail, and real estate development, and who was sued for not paying overtime to his employees, and refused to release his tax returns to the public,[36] charged his Democratic primary opponents with wanting to raise taxes, and continually campaigned on creating astate lottery to raise public revenue.
During the general election portion of the campaign, on September 25, 1987, Carville appeared onWLEX-TV's "Your Government" public affairs program and implored reporters to look into the background of Wilkinson's opponentJohn Harper's family, noting: "there might be problems with some of Harper's children."[37] After the incident, Harper confirmed that his son had been shot and killed byFranklin County, Ohio, police during a 1978 pharmacy robbery.[38] Wilkinson wonthe general election polling 504,674 votes (64.5%) to Harper's 273,141 (34.91%),[39] and, as Kentucky's 57th governor, secured passage of a state constitutional amendment to allow a lottery.
Carville served as campaign manager to New Jersey U.S. SenatorFrank Lautenberg during Lautenberg's successful1988 re-election campaign.[40] Carville and his partner Paul Begala both led Lautenberg's successful campaign against Republican challengerPete Dawkins, a Brigadier General and former Heisman Trophy winner who hadRoger Stone as a consultant.[41]
In 1989 and 1990, Carville assistedconservative Democrat and four-term lieutenant governorZell Miller in winning thestate party's gubernatorial nomination in a five-candidate contest that includedAtlanta MayorAndrew Young, then-state senatorRoy Barnes, and former governorLester Maddox.
Miller campaigned on a platform ofshock incarceration boot camps for first-time drug offenders, blasted Young for "an explosion of crime" in Atlanta, and painted Young with wanting to "run away from" the issue of drugs.[42] At Carville's counseling,[43] Miller made a state lottery in lieu of state tax increases a central theme of his campaign.[44] Carville attributed Miller's eleven-point primary victory over Young to the attraction of the lottery issue and its capacity to turn out white suburban voters. "Zell Miller was able to set the agenda, and the agenda was the lottery", Carville noted.[45]
Miller won the nominating contest in the August 1990 runoff against Young and later defeatedJohnny Isakson in the November 1990 general election. Miller was later akeynote speaker at the1992 Democratic National Convention and the2004 Republican National Convention.
Carville consulted in 1990 for former Texas Congressman and sittingstate Attorney GeneralJim Mattox, a bare-knuckled political brawler who routinely traveled toHuntsville to attendstate executions in Texas, the most active state in carrying outthe death penalty. On advice from Carville, Mattox, who was seeking the Democratic gubernatorial nomination that year, based his campaign on the claim that astate lottery would solve Texas' revenue needs without additional state taxes.[46]
With no facts to support the charge, Mattox also ran a television advertisement accusing his primary opponent, State TreasurerAnn Richards, a recovering alcoholic, of being acannabis andcocaine user who might falter in fulfilling the responsibilities of being governor.[47][48] In losing the nominating contest to Richards, Mattox gained a reputation as a combative campaigner.[49]
In 1991, Carville consulted forHarris Wofford in his run for the open U.S. Senate seat left vacant whenSenatorJohn Heinz was killed in an April 1991 plane crash. Following the crash, Carville, who was by then a close political confidant ofGovernor Casey, hatched a plan to offer his appointment of the Senate seat toChrysler chairmanLee Iacocca, anAllentown native who declined the offer within 24 hours.[50] Attorney and laterPittsburgh Steelers ownerArt Rooney II was also considered. Still, Casey ultimately decided to appoint Wofford, then his state Secretary of Labor, to fill the seat, and Wofford faced a special election in November of that year.
Against the national backdrop of the firstGulf War, and adour economy, Wofford's general election opponent, George H.W. Bush's sittingU.S. Attorney General,Dick Thornburgh, was widely seen as a surrogate of the Bush political machine, and the contest was widely viewed as an early referendum on Bush's reelection prospects the following year.[51]
Wofford was one of the first whites to graduate fromHoward University School of Law, traveled to India and wrote a book onGandhi, co-founded thePeace Corps, and was arrested at the1968 Democratic National Convention for disorderly conduct, and was an opponent ofapartheid. A philosophical progressive and college president, he had served as an aide toJohn F. Kennedy,[52] and was a friend and adviser toMartin Luther King Jr.[53] Wofford had the air of an "anti-politician," rumpled in appearance and uncomfortable with small talk, who ran a campaign with themes of economic populism.[54]
Though the issue polled a distant 5th in voter concerns, Wofford eschewed guidance from his consultants in demanding national health insurance be the centerpiece of his campaign. With the assistance of a guild of Philadelphia ophthalmologists, Wofford crafted an impactful slogan: "If criminals have access to a lawyer, working Americans should have a right to a doctor."[55]
During the race, Carville helped Wofford craft an aggressive campaign,[56] with television advertisements attacking Thornburgh for taking expensive flights at public expense in government jets to junkets in places such as Hawaii. Another Wofford campaign commercial evoked an anti-establishmentarian air, linking Thornburgh to "the mess in Washington."[57]
In the months before the election, Wofford overcame Thornburgh's 44-point lead in the polls and defeated him in November, garnering 1,860,760 votes (55 percent) to Thornburgh's 1,521,986 (45 percent).
Wofford's surprise victory helped earn Carville national attention, with the Democratic Party now hoping that he could now help the party win the White House in1992 U.S. Presidential election.[57]
Carville again consulted for Wofford's re-election campaign in 1994 when he was narrowly defeated by RepublicanRick Santorum.
In late 1992 and early 1993, Carville consulted forSan Fernando Valley state assemblymanRichard Katz in his run for the open 1993 Los Angeles mayoral election, which was the first time in 63 years that an incumbent mayor didn't appear on the ballot.[58] Katz ran on atough-on-crime platform that includedgun control, new sales taxes on firearms and ammunition, and selling-off city-owned infrastructure, such as theOntario International Airport, to pay police overtime, while promising not to raise property taxes.[59] Despite retaining Carville, and spending a million dollars on campaign television commercials, Katz finished behind three other candidates, garnering 46,173 votes, or 9.73% of 474,366 total votes cast in thenonpartisan blanket mayoral primary, and did not advance to the general election.[60]
In 1992, Carville helped leadBill Clinton to a win againstGeorge H. W. Bush in the presidential election. In crafting an economic strategy for Clinton, Carville reprised thepopulist rhetoric his client, Pennsylvania SenatorHarris Wofford, successfully wielded the prior year, which was distilled into a series of articlesDonald L. Barlett andJames B. Steele wrote forThe Philadelphia Inquirer. The articles were re-printed into book form:America: What Went Wrong? which became a prop Clinton brandished effectively from thestump during a time ofeconomic recession. In bringing in the series of articles from the Wofford campaign, Carville imported an angryleft-wing populism as a campaign theme.[61]
One of the formulations he used in that campaign has entered common usage, derived from a list he posted in the campaignwar room to help focus himself and his staff, with these three points:
Carville sought to shield Clinton fromGennifer Flowers' allegations of her extramarital sexual affair, which emerged shortly before the1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary. Carville alleged that a supermarket tabloid paid Flowers $175,000 for sharing her story, and that "the mainstream media got sucker-punched" by her allegations.[63] Carville set out to shame the press, berating reporters with charges of "cash for trash" journalism, and noted: "I'm a lot more expensive than Gennifer Flowers.".[64] Flowers later brought a civil suit against Carville in 1999 (see below).
In June 1992, trailingGeorge H. W. Bush andRoss Perot in the polls, Clinton limped toward thenational convention, while theLos Angeles riots crowded him out of news coverage.[65] Carville knew he needed to bring Clinton back into the news limelight. He did so by orchestrating Clinton's splashy criticism of hip hop artistSister Souljah in a prepared speech Clinton delivered at theRainbow Coalition's June 1992 "Rebuild America" conference in Washington, D.C.[66] Sister Souljah had remarked: "If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?" Clinton responded in his speech by saying, "If you took the words, 'white' and 'black' and you reversed them, you might thinkDavid Duke was giving that speech." Clinton refuted the suggestion that his speech was a calculated attempt to appeal to moderate and conservative swing voters by standing up to a core Democratic constituency.[67]The speech had the effect of opening up a public war between Clinton andJesse Jackson.[68]
In 1993, Carville was honored as Campaign District Manager of the Year by theAmerican Association of Political Consultants. His role in the Clinton campaign was documented in the feature-length Academy Award-nominated filmThe War Room.
Carville continued to serve theDemocratic National Committee in a political capacity during the 1990s, and had an ongoing need to regularly visit the White House to speak with then President Bill Clinton on political matters.[69] Accordingly, Carville was once one of only twenty individuals at the time who was granted a permanent "Non-Government Service" security badge, which were used for non-government employees, such as contractors, who needed regular access to theWhite House grounds. In consideration for the privilege of the permanent pass, the Clinton Administration asked Carville to submit to a fullsecurity clearance styleFBI background check.[69]
In response to the 1997 civil lawsuit then Arkansas state employeePaula Jones filed against Bill Clinton over her claims of sexual harassment while attending a conference on official business, Carville infamously remarked: "Drag a hundred dollars through a trailer park and there's no telling what you'll find."[70][71] South Carolina U.S. SenatorLindsey Graham later made reference to Carville's trailer park line during the 2018Brett KavanaughSCOTUS confirmation hearings in reference to Dr.Christine Blasey Ford. During an October 2018 interview with Michael Smerconish on CNN, on the topic of Graham alluding to Carville's "drag $100", Carville remarked that, at the time, "I was making a joke", and added "I'm always complimented when people use my lines; you always like to leave a little legacy out there."[72]
In 1999,Gennifer Flowers, who had previously alleged an affair with Carville's 1992 client Bill Clinton, sued Carville and his colleagueGeorge Stephanopoulos fordefamation of character. In 2000, Flowers additionally namedHillary Clinton as a defendant in the suit.[73] AttorneyLarry Klayman ofJudicial Watch, a conservative advocacy organization, represented her in the suit.[74] Flowers contended that Carville and Stephanopoulos ignored obvious warning signs that news media reporting did not conclusively determine that tapes of her recorded telephone conversations with Clinton were "doctored."[75] In 2004, a federal district court dismissed the case with summary judgment.[75] Klayman then appealed the case on Flowers' behalf.[76] In 2006, 14 years after the allegations of the affair became an issue for Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign, theU.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed the lower court's dismissal.[77]
Beginning in the mid-1990s, Carville worked on a number of election campaigns abroad, including those ofTony Blair, thenPrime Minister of the United Kingdom, during the2001 general election (in which Blair was comfortably re-elected), and with theLiberal Party of Canada.
Carville viewed working campaigns abroad as more commercially lucrative, and with less reputational risk than campaigns in the United States noting in 2009: "If you help elect a president and then you get involved in a governor's race and you lose, it's going to be a little bit damaging to your reputation. But if you go to Peru and you run a presidential race and you lose, no one knows or cares. So why go to New Jersey and lose for 100 grand when you can go to Peru and lose for a million?"[78]
Carville has been less forthcoming to the news media about his work abroad, and remarked to aLos Angeles Times reporter in 1999, "I won't comment on anything I do outside the U.S."[79]
In 2002, on behalf of theU.S. State Department, Carville, and his wife, political consultantMary Matalin, met with a group of 55 Arab women political leaders during the2002 United States midterm elections. The programming, "Women as Political Leaders" International Visitor (IV) Program", was the first program implemented under the auspices of theMiddle East Partnership Initiative, a collection of 40 programs headed by then deputy assistant secretary forNear East AffairsLiz Cheney.[80] In addition to events with Carville and Matalin, the group met with congressional, state and local campaign staff, and observed campaign work during their visits toConcord, New Hampshire,Dallas, Texas,Detroit, Michigan,Toledo, Ohio,Raleigh, North Carolina, andTallahassee andTampa, Florida.[81]
That year, Carville also proposed visiting Arab and Muslim nations on behalf of the US government to do "some kind of propaganda," adding "I'd love to use my experience and skills to tell people about my country and what's available to them beyond hopelessness and terrorism." He added, "What the terrorists are after is the younger and increasingly poor population. What they are offering is not that much, but we are not doing a good job telling those young people the other side of the story. It's time we told them about choices they have without imposing American values."[82]
Carville, Begala, and Mary Matalin advised incumbent Greek Prime MinisterKonstantinos Mitsotakis in an election that saw local Greek press allege United States interference in the election.[83] Unpopular because of his program of economic austerity and privatization, Mitsotakis failed in his reelection bid, and lost to democratic socialistAndreas Papandreou.
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In 1994, Carville consulted forFernando Henrique Cardoso in his successful 1994 campaign for the Brazilian presidency.[84] Cardoso, a professor andFulbright Fellow lectured in the United States during the 1980s atColumbia University on issues of democracy in Brazil. Cardoso, often nicknamed "FHC", was elected with the support of a heterodox alliance of his own Social Democratic Party, the PSDB, and two right-wing parties, theLiberal Front Party (PFL) and theBrazilian Labour Party (PTB). During his tenure in office, Cardoso's administration liquidated public assets and deepened theprivatization of government-owned enterprises in steel milling, telecommunications and mining, along with making reforms to Brazil's social security income program and tax systems.
In 1997, Carville consulted for then leader of theNational Congress of Honduras,Carlos Flores Facussé, in hispresidential campaign.[85] Flores attended theAmerican School of Tegucigalpa, studied international finance atLouisiana State University in the early 1970s, and married a U.S. citizen from Tennessee.[86]
He later became the publisher of his family'sLa Tribuna, a leading Honduran newspaper, and served on various corporate boards of directors, including theCentral Bank of Honduras,[87] and became involved in politics. Flores was aligned with former presidentRoberto Suazo Córdova'sRodista faction, the more conservative wing of theliberal party. Vowing to move Honduras past its image of being primarily a banana and coffee exporter, Flores campaigned on his "New Agenda" platform, which included a ten-point plan to stabilize the economy. Flores distanced himself from the outgoingReina administration, while successfully portraying himself as an opposition candidate from the same party.[88]
In the November 1997 general election, Flores facedNational party candidateNora Gúnera de Melgar, the wife of GeneralJuan Alberto Melgar Castro, who seized power in a1975 coup which removed then presidentOswaldo López Arellano after hisbananagate bribery scandal withUnited Fruit Company.
Flores defeated his opponent by a 10% margin of 195,418 votes out of a total of 1,885,388 votes cast. Gúnera de Melgar's campaign was aided by the assistanceDick Morris, a rival political consultant and also a political adviser toBill Clinton. Morris claimed he had no knowledge of Carville's involvement with his opponent until after the election.[85]
In 1998, Carville helped to craft a successful strategy to electJamil Mahuad Witt as President of Ecuador. Mahuad, an Ecuadorian-born attorney, earned aMaster of Public Administration fromHarvard Kennedy School, where he was Mason Fellow.[89] He was also aUS State Department-sponsoredFulbright Fellow,[90] who lectured in ethics and politics at several universities.
Mahuad was elected Mayor ofQuito in the 1990s before retaining the services of Carville to help him win the Ecuadorian presidency,[91][92][93] in a campaign in which Mahuad touted his educational background at Harvard Kennendy School.
In the wake of an economic crisis from falling oil prices and stagnant economic growth, Mahuad decreed a state of emergency, and embarked onausterity measures to stifle rampant inflation, includingsales tax and gasoline tax increases, freezing bank account withdrawals, and thedollarization of the economy which included the sudden voiding and invalidation of thesucre, Ecuador's currency since 1884.[94] In January 2000, Mahuad was forced from office in a military coup following demonstrations by Ecuadorians.[95] Mahuad fled to exile in the United States. In 2014, an Ecuadorian court convicted Mahuad, in absentia, of embezzlement during his time in office, and sentenced him to twelve years in prison.[96]Interpol also issued a warrant for his arrest.[97]
In 1998, theDemocratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) in Panama retained Carville as their main adviser to help re-elect thenterm-limited PresidentErnesto Pérez Balladares during an election where opposition figures suggested that Perez Balladares was hoping to convey the impression that the Clinton Administration in the United States secretly favored a second term for him.[98] Pérez Balladares, who attended college in the United States at theUniversity of Notre Dame before attaining his Master's at theWharton School of the University of Pennsylvania,[99] reformed Panama's Labor Code,privatized Panama's telephone and electrical utilities, and ushered Panama into theWorld Trade Organization during his tenure.[100] Despite massive spending by the PRD, including the hiring of Carville to craft an effective political strategy, the proposal to lift his term limit was defeated by a margin of almost 2 to 1.[101]
At the suggestion ofPresident Clinton, who had grown frustrated withBenjamin Netanyahu's intransigence towards the peace process, Carville, along with colleaguesBob Shrum, a speechwriter for President Clinton, andStanley Greenberg, consulted in late 1998 and early 1999 forLabor Party candidateEhud Barak to help him prepare for the 1999 prime ministerial election.
Carville and colleagues endeavored to help Barak seize control of the daily debate, and boost his struggling challenge to the incumbent Netanyahu. Short, declarative sentences, sound bites, rapid responses, repetition, wedge issues, ethnic exploitation, nightly polling, negative research, searing attack advertisements on television, all familiar tools of American politics, arrived on the Israeli political scene during the election, as a part of what Netanyahu's director of communications, David Bar-Illan, characterized as an Americanization of the election, and Netanyahu advisers implied White House meddling in an Israeli election.[102] Barak won election by a double digit margin and served for over two years, before calling a special prime ministerial election in 2001.
Carville consulted forBuenos Aires Province GovernorEduardo Duhalde in his 1999 run for president of Argentina as theJusticialist Party nominee. Carville remarked in May 1999 that U.S. Ambassador to ArgentinaJames Cheek introduced him to Duhalde in January 1998.[103] Carville's consulting fee ran $30,000 per month, in 1999 US dollars, added to a percentage of campaign advertisements, plus first class airfare and hotel expenses.[104]
Duhalde spent much of the campaign embroiled in a power struggle with his own party and incumbent PresidentCarlos Menem who was barely dissuaded from running for a third term despiteconstitutional term limits, and a series of court rulings against him. The contest of campaigns was rather flat; there were no presidential debates, nor large campaign rallies, nor were any major changes in course promised by the frontrunner candidates.[105] Duhalde emphasized hislaw and order credentials as a campaign theme. One television advertisement for Duhalde's campaign depicted him walking in the woods alone, talking to himself, and bemoaning all the political enemies plotting against him.[106] Carville clashed with Duhalde's public relations team leading up to the election, which lead to his departure.[107]
Against an economic backdrop of theArgentine Great Depression, Duhalde lost the October 1999 general election toRadical Civic Union party candidateFernando de la Rúa who enjoyed the strategy and advice of U.S. American political consultDick Morris (like Carville, also a former consultant to President Bill Clinton). De la Rúa would later resign during theDecember 2001 riots, and the Argentine Congress appointed the governor ofSan Luis ProvinceAdolfo Rodríguez Saá as president. When Rodríguez Saá also resigned, Congressappointed Duhalde, who would serve aspresident of Argentina from January 2002 through May 2003.
In 2002, through his firmGreenberg Carville Shrum (GCS), Carville strategized in Bolivia on behalf ofRevolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) party presidential candidateGonzalo "Goni" Sánchez de Lozada. The son of a political exile, Sánchez de Lozada spent his early years inIowa, studied at the University of Chicago,[108] and spoke Spanish with amidwestern American accent.[109][110] Sanchez de Lozada served as Bolivian president in the mid 1990s, and had a record of usingshock therapy,economic liberalization, andprivatization. In his 2002 election campaign, he faced the first serious challenge to the hegemony of the established Bolivian political parties in the form ofEvo Morales and hisleft-wing populist andindigenistMovement for Socialism (MAS) party.
Carville helped Sanchez de Lozada run a campaign playbook with a slick media campaign under theslogan "Bolivia sí puede" ("Yes, Bolivia can") that featured negative attack ads on his opponents, particularly againstCochabamba mayorManfred Reyes Villa. In one campaign advertisement, Reyes Villa was blamed for rampant diarrhea in the city's poor children.[111]
Sanchez de Lozada garnered a plurality of votes, 22.46%, againstEvo Morales second place finish at 20.94%, before coming to power in August 2002 in a coalition government formed with two other political parties.[112] Lozada resigned in October 2003 and fled to exile in the United States following the 2003Bolivian Gas Conflict. Carville's work for Lozada in Bolivia was portrayed in the 2005 documentary filmOur Brand Is Crisis, which inspired the 2015 narrative form filmOur Brand is Crisis.
In early 2003, Carville worked in Venezuela as an advisor to Venezuelan business interests that had previously ledan economically devastating strike in the spring of 2002 by managers of the national oil company,Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), in an effort to destabilize the government of leftist presidentHugo Chávez.[113] In the aftermath of an unsuccessful coup attempt in April 2002, the group sought Carville's assistance in displacing Chávez from office.[114][115][116][117] In a September 2006 interview that touched on the topic, Carville remarked: "I've worked in Venezuela and I would be very reluctant to call Chávez a democrat."[118]
Afghan presidential candidateAshraf Ghani hired Carville as a campaign advisor in July 2009. Ghani, who renounced hisUS Citizenship in order to run for the presidency of Afghanistan,[119] attended high school in the United States inLake Oswego, Oregon, during the late 1960s, earned his master's degree fromColumbia University in 1977, was aFulbright Fellow in the United States who taught atUC Berkeley, andJohns Hopkins University in the 1980s, and worked as an economist at the DC-basedWorld Bank in the 1990s.[120]
Ghani and Carville met in Washington in the spring of 2009 through mutual friends.[121] Carville would not say whether he was paid to advise Ghani,[121] whereas Ghani claimed that Carville volunteered his time.[122] Carville remarked at the time that the2009 Afghan presidential election is "probably the most important election held in the world in a long time," and he called his new job "probably the most interesting project I have ever worked in my life."[123] When asked about similarities between politics in Afghanistan and politics in Louisiana, Carville responded: "Yeah, I felt a little bit at home, to be honest with you." Carville's objective was to help prevent one of Ghani's opponents,Hamid Karzai, from garnering a majority of votes, to force the election into a second round.[124] Ghani garnered just 2.94% of the vote, with Kazai finishing just shy of a 50% majority. After a cancelled run-off election Karzai became president.
In 2010, Carville worked as senior advisor to elect presidential candidateJuan Manuel Santos in Colombia.[125][126] The Colombian-born Santos attended theUniversity of Kansas for undergraduate studies from 1969 to 1973, graduating with a degree in economics and business. He returned to the U.S. asFulbrightvisiting fellow at theFletcher School of Law and Diplomacy atTufts University in 1981,[127] and also earned amaster's degree fromHarvard Kennedy School in 1981,[128] and lectured as aNieman Fellow atHarvard University in 1988.[129]
Santos later joined theDC-based think tank, theInter-American Dialogue, and served as Colombia'sMinister of Trade,[130] andMinister of Finance and Public Credit of Colombia during the 1990s and early 2000s.[130] In 2006, then PresidentAlvaro Uribe appointed Santos as Colombia'sMinister of Defence. Santos supervised the military during a period of political tension and military action targeted at theFARC guerrilla group, including a controversial military raid onEcuador's border,[131] and extrajudicial assassinations during the"False positives" scandal.[132]
Carville played a crucial role for Santos, helping him to analyze voter polls, and crafted a winning strategy,[133][134] that included the night-timedistribution of pamphlets under the doors of voters' homes predicting the end of popular social welfare initiatives if Santos wasn't elected.[135]
On June 20, 2010, after two rounds ofvoting, Santos was elected asPresident of Colombia and was inaugurated on August 7, 2010, in the midst of adiplomatic crisis withVenezuela.[136] TheU.S. State Department remarked in official communications that it was "pleased" with the election of Santos, and praised the "spirited debate" before the runoff and Colombia's "longstanding commitment to democratic principles".[137] In 2017, Santos acknowledged that his2010 campaign received illegal payments from Brazilian conglomerateOdebrecht.[138]
Carville acted as advisor forDaniel Scioli's 2007 and 2011's campaigns for the governor ofBuenos Aires. He also consulted for his unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2015.[139] The election featured allegations of vote-buying, when Scioli'sFront for Victory party was alleged to have distributed sacks with bottles of cooking oil, pasta and flour to Buenos Aires voters in exchange for their votes.[140] Scioli was defeated in a November 2015runoff election.
In September 2004, after conversations with Bill Clinton, Massachusetts SenatorJohn Kerry engaged the assistance of Carville as an informal adviser tohis 2004 presidential campaign.[141] Rival political consultantDick Morris speculated at the time that Carville and Greenberg, instrumental participants in the Clinton's political machine, infiltrated Kerry's campaign as a way to engineer his defeat and clear a path forHillary Clinton torun in 2008.[142][143] In the aftermath of Kerry's loss, Carville and colleaguesStanley Greenberg, as well as journalistBob Shrum, sought to place blame on external events, including news media coverage of theIraq War, theOctober 2004 Osama bin Laden video, as well asBush's focus on cultural issues.[144]
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Carville co-hostedCNN'sCrossfire along with associatePaul Begala from 2002 until the show's cancellation in 2005. Carville was a CNN contributor until parting ways with the network in 2013.[145] The following year, Carville joinedFox News Channel as a contributor.[146]
In 2005, Carville taught a semester of the course "Topics in American Politics" atNorthern Virginia Community College. Among the guests he had come speak to the class wereAl Hunt,Mark Halperin, SenatorGeorge Allen,George Stephanopoulos, Karl Strubel,Stan Greenberg,Tony Blankley, representatives from theMotion Picture Association of America, andJames Fallows.
In 2006, Carville became a host on a sports radio show,60/20 Sports, onXM Satellite Radio, withLuke Russert, son of NBC journalistTim Russert. The show was an in-depth look at the culture of sports based on the difference in ages of the two hosts.
During2006 mid-terms, thenDemocratic National Committee chairHoward Dean mobilized aFifty-state strategy. Democrats won control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the1994 election. For the first time since the creation of the Republican party in 1854, no Republican captured any House, Senate, or Gubernatorial seat previously held by a Democrat.[147] Notwithstanding, after the election, on November 15, 2006, Carville blasted Dean's leadership as "Rumsfeldian in its incompetence," called for Dean's ouster as DNC Chair and his replacement withHarold Ford Jr., and claimed that, with a conventional strategy of piling money solely into close races, Democrats could have picked up as many as 50 House seats, roughly 20 more than they won that year.[148][149] In late November 2006, Carville proposed a truce of sorts.[150]
Carville was theexecutive producer of the 2006 filmAll the King's Men, starringSean Penn andAnthony Hopkins, which is loosely based on the life ofLouisianaGovernorHuey Long.
In January 2009, Carville predicted the execution of a peace agreement between Israel and Syria in the following 18 months, noting it would be a foreign policy priority for the incoming Obama administration.[151] For several months in 2010, then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participated in secret, American-brokered discussions with Syria toward a peace treaty based on a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. TheArab Spring ensued the following year, and the treaty never came to fruition.[152]
On March 4, 2009,Politico reported that Carville, Paul Begala, andRahm Emanuel were the architects of the Democratic Party's strategy to cast conservativetalk radio hostRush Limbaugh as the face of theRepublican Party.[153] Carville was particularly critical of Limbaugh for saying he wantedBarack Obama to "fail".
Carville was a regular contributor withStan Greenberg to the weekly Carville-Greenberg Memo atThe National Memo.
Carville advisedHillary Clinton during her2008 presidential campaign. In remarks about then rival candidate,Senator Barack Obama, Carville declared in 2007 thatBarack Obama was the Democratic candidate "most likely to explode or implode."[154]
On March 22, 2008, Carville compared New Mexico GovernorBill Richardson, who had just endorsedBarack Obama for the nomination, toJudas Iscariot, calling this "an act of betrayal." Carville remarked, "Mr. Richardson's endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic," referring toHoly Week. Richardson had served President Bill Clinton as hisEnergy Secretary andAmbassador to the United Nations so Carville believed Richardson owed an endorsement to Senator Clinton. Carville also claimed Richardson assured many in the Clinton campaign that he would at least remain neutral and abstain from taking sides.[155] Richardson denied Carville's account, arguing that he had not made any promises to remain neutral. Richardson claims that his decision to endorse Obama was "clinched" by his speech on race relations following the swirl of controversy surrounding Obama's former pastorJeremiah Wright.[156] Carville went on to note, "I doubt if Governor Richardson and I will be terribly close in the future," Carville said,[157] but "I've had my say...I got one in thewheelhouse and I tagged it."
Even as Clinton's campaign began to lose steam, Carville remained both loyal and positive in his public positions, rarely veering off message and stoutly defending the candidate. However, on May 13, 2008, a few hours before the primary inWest Virginia, Carville remarked to an audience atFurman University inSouth Carolina, "I'm for Senator Clinton but I think the great likelihood is that Obama will be the nominee."[158] The moment marked a shift from his previous and often determinedly optimistic comments about the state of Clinton's campaign.
After Barack Obama's clear lead for victory in the Democratic presidential campaign on June 3, James Carville said he was ready to open up his wallet to help Obama build a political war chest to take onJohn McCain in November.[citation needed]
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Carville was retained byPalantir Technologies as a paid adviser in 2011, and was instrumental in bringing about Palantir's collaboration with theNew Orleans Police Department to quietly deploy predictive policing software inNew Orleans.[159][160]
Carville has criticized Obama's political style and demeanor over the years. On November 18th, 2010, Carville spoke to an audience at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast and remarked: "If Hillary gave up one of her balls and gave it to Obama, he'd have two."[161] Carville made a similar remark to political journalistEleanor Clift during the midst of the primaries in May 2008, insinuating that Hillary Clinton was a tougher candidate, remarking: "If she gave him one of her cojones, they'd both have two."[162]
In November 2013, in light of President Barack Obama's decliningapproval poll numbers, Carville commented "I think the best thing he can do is take a toke on the mayor of Toronto's crack pipe, because his numbers are about 48."[163]
On October 21, 2018, Carville participated with Fox News punditTucker Carlson at the 2018 PoltiCon in Los Angeles in "A conversation with Eddie Izzard", an event chaired bythe British comedian.[164]
Carville joined the faculty of Louisiana State University's Manship School of Mass Communication in January 2018. His work at the Manship School was supported by philanthropic gifts.[165] He has also lectured in political science atTulane University.[166]
In 2019, political punditMark Halperin consulted with Carville for his upcoming book,How to Beat Trump: America's Top Political Strategists on What It Will Take. Carville was asked what he would tell Halperin's sexual assault victims, who have expressed disappointment and outrage that so many top Democrats were willing to talk with someone accused of such serious allegations, and remarked: "I know he's been accused by a lot of people and lost his job. The guy called me and asked me to speak to him on a topic that I obviously care about. And I spoke to him."[167]
In January 2020, Carville endorsed Colorado SenatorMichael Bennet's ultimately unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.[168] Carville appeared on stage with Bennet leading up to the2020 New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary at his political events in the state. Carville remarked of Bennet during the campaign season: "This is John Kennedy recloned, you can't get any better than this guy!"[169] Bennet, who leaned hard on Carville's endorsement, garnered 963 votes in New Hampshire, or 0.3% of 300,022 total Democratic ballots cast in a year of record-shattering turnout.[170][171][172]
Carville has also entered thepodcast business, and, along with Al Hunt hosts2020 Politics War Room, which purports to offer "a backstage pass to impeachment and the 2020 Election."[173] He continues to make frequent appearances withBrian Williams inMSNBC cable news programming to comment on the2020 Democratic debates, caucuses and primaries, and the trajectory of the2020 Democratic nomination andgeneral election.
In February 2020, Carville suggested jettisoning theDemocratic presidential primaries and caucuses, lettingHouse SpeakerNancy Pelosi select the Democratic Party's presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and suggestedMitt Romney should "resign from theSenate to save the Democratic Party's ass, and run our convention." Carville further added he might cast a write in vote for Nancy Pelosi when he votes in Louisiana.[173]
In February 2020 media appearances and interviews, against a backdrop of presidential candidateBernie Sanders' rise in the polls, Carville expressed his displeasure at the prospect of Sanders being nominated, branded Sanders as a "communist" and pejoratively labeled Sanders' base of support as a "cult", warning of the "end of days" if Sanders were to win the Democratic nomination.[174][175] Carville used his media appearances surrounding the dustup to rail against the ascendance of progressive populist Democratic policy positions such as student loan debt forgiveness[176] and "people voting from jail cells."[177] Carville also decried banning hydraulicfracking for shale gas.[178]
In November 2020, Carville predicted that the result of the presidential election would be known by 10 p.m. on election day. After theAssociated Press took an additional four days to declare the winner,Politico named Carville's prediction among "the most audacious, confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications about the year".[179]
In 2022, Carville led the "Penn Progress"Super PAC,[180][181] which spent the entirety of its funds in support ofRep. Conor Lamb's bid for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by retiring senatorPat Toomey.[182] Lamb worked closely with Carville's Super PAC, and participated in donor calls Carville arranged.[183][184]
Carville's Super PAC bankrolled TV ads which sought to portray one of Lamb's primary opponents, Lieutenant GovernorJohn Fetterman as a "self-described democratic socialist." Within a day of airing,PolitiFact and Factcheck.org called the attack ad false,[185]The Philadelphia Inquirer commented that Fetterman had never actually described himself that way,[186] the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia, stopped broadcasting the ad,[187] andSenator Elizabeth Warren called on Lamb to disavow it.[188] Echoing a fanciful attack byPennsylvania Republican Party chairman Val DiGiorgio, Carville himself re-tweeted news coverage on Fetterman being labeled a "silver spoon socialist."[189][190]
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Carville argued in an interview withMaureen Dowd that the Democrats' political culture had become "too dominated by preachy females", which he claimed was one reason for Democrats' waning support with black male voters.[191][192]
Following U.S. PresidentJoe Biden's poor performance during the June 27, 2024, debate, Carville was among those who called for Biden to end his bid for re-election.[193] In an interview with CNN'sJake Tapper on July 1, Carville stated, among other things, "The country wants something new. Let them have it."[194]
Carville's biographical documentary filmCarville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid!, which debuted at the2024 Telluride Film Festival before receiving a theatrical release on October 11, 2024, includes the 18 month period when he persuaded Biden to end his re-election.[195] Carville’s position was later vindicated, following Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race,Kamala Harris was made the Democratic nominee and eventually lost.
In 2004,The New York Times noted that Carville was making more than 100 speeches per year to various audiences, including business groups, colleges and universities andDemocratic Party fundraising events. Charles Lewis, executive director at theCenter for Public Integrity, a Washington research group, remarked that "No political consultant has carved a space as unique as his."Fred Wertheimer, president ofDemocracy 21, said at the time: "He's become a commodity of himself by design. He's a walking conglomerate."Joe Lockhart, a former press secretary toBill Clinton, characterized Carville as "a multimedia corporation, and he's been smart about it. He is a model of the future. This could not have happened pre-1992 when campaign consultants were viewed by a small audience. Now they are public celebrities."[196] Carville was noted to have been represented exclusively by the Washington Speakers Bureau, with a speaker's fee of $20,500 in 2004 to get him to the podium for an hour, plus first-class expenses and top accommodations.[197]
Carville had an array ofcommercial endorsements, and starred in print media and television advertisements for leadingconsumer brands includingCoca-Cola,Little Debbie snacks,Maker's Mark bourbon,Heineken beer,Alka-Seltzer antacid,American Express credit cards,Nike shoes, theCotton Council, andAriba software.[196]
In 2000, through Bob Chlopak's andPeter Schechter's Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates (CLS), a DC-based public relations firm, Carville enjoyed a sponsorship withPlayboy media andCaptain Morgan rum, which included a trip toHugh Hefner'sPlayboy mansion.[198]
Carville is married to political consultantMary Matalin, who worked for RepublicanGeorge H. W. Bush on his 1992 presidential reelection campaign. Carville and Matalin were married in New Orleans in November 1993. They have two daughters. In 2008, Carville and Matalin relocated their family from Virginia to New Orleans.[199]
Carville hasattention deficit hyperactivity disorder and has spoken publicly about ADHD for organizations like Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.[200][better source needed]
Carville sold his house in Uptown New Orleans in May 2021. He temporarily relocated toBay St. Louis, Mississippi, until moving back into New Orleans in June of 2021. Carville still owns his house in Bay St. Louis and frequently visits. In many of his appearances on cable news, he can be seen in his living room there.[201]
In 2019, Carville andAl Hunt launched the podcast.[202]
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Children's fiction
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, revived a 1999 libel suit filed by Gennifer Flowers against two former aides to Bill Clinton.
Ruling dismisses defamation claim by woman who said she, ex-president had affair
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