A Letter from Rick Ridder
It all started at Union Station in Denver, Colorado on April 1, 1985. 150 square feet of office space for $110 a month – including parking. We opened our doors with a voter file license from Voter Contact Services, a consulting contract with the Colorado Democratic Party, an Apple IIE, and the name “Great Plains Voter Contact.”
The name lasted about a week, when our good friends Bob Hughes and Jody Severson told us we could expand our brand by simply calling the firm Ridder/Braden, Inc. That way they reasoned, we could do whatever we wanted, and not be limited to simply voter contact. Seemed to make sense, and besides the acronym was RBI which was appropriate for our baseball affliction.
We struggled a bit, at first, trying to make our mark in the Rocky Mountains. Fortunately, compatriots from the Lamm and Hart campaigns kept us going. Then, through Sherrie Wolff and Buie Seawell, we became the general consultants to Ben Nighthorse Campbell for Congress, the voter file vendor to the Colorado Party, and the consultant to the targeted State House and Senate races.
Our first election cycle, 1986, was a success with the election of Campbell, Tim Wirth and David Skaggs – all of whose campaigns we helped. That started the streak. For 18 years– until 2004 – every successful Democrat for federal office used Ridder/Braden in some capacity. From developing a vote by mail program in a primary for Pat Schroeder to overseeing the campaigns of Ben Nighthorse Campbell (D only campaigns), David Skaggs, Diana DeGette, and Mark Udall.
We are also pleased that there is a mini-streak. Since 1986, we have worked for every member of Congress from the first and second Congressional Districts of Colorado. Schroeder, Skaggs, DeGette, Udall and Polis have all been clients.
But the off year of 1987 came, and there weren’t many campaigns in Colorado. So we went looking elsewhere. Europe seemed like a good place to start. After our first International Association of Political Consultants (IAPC) meeting in Istanbul, we met with the nascent political party, the Liberal Democrats of the UK. Eighteen months later we had our first overseas clients.
Our first assignment taught us an early lesson in international consulting – English is Not Always English. It was a simple assignment: write a manual on the use of telephones in Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts. We worked long and hard to be able to have a demonstrable product for promotion and sales; we wanted to show the world we were the experts through “our book.”
We sent off the 5 1/2” floppy disk to London, and waited for our copies of the book to show-up. Seven weeks later, a brown-wrapped package arrived from London. We tore off the wrapping to find our book: Knocking Up – A Guide by Joannie Braden and Rick Ridder. Apparently we had written a sex manual for international distribution.
The Lib Dems have remained a client ever since, and we are pleased that we have helped them go from 18 members in 1989 to currently over 60 members of Parliament. Moreover, we hope to expand the number in the upcoming UK elections this spring.
The efforts in the international arena expanded dramatically during the 1990s and into the 21st century. RBI helped elect heads of state in Sweden (twice), Canada, and Malta. We assisted parties, candidates and campaigns in Argentina, Australia, Denmark, Italy, Scotland, Spain and Venezuela. We lectured and performed trainings in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Kenya, Portugal, and Uganda.
The peak of activity came in 1999 with campaigns in Sydney, Buenos Aires and Barcelona. It was bad news, good news. The bad news: Rick flew 190,000 miles that year. The good news: given the client locations, the gang at RBI never drank a bad glass of wine the whole year.
Some of it came with risks though. There was the Presidential candidate in Bogota, Columbia who failed to pick up Rick at the airport, and who three days later told him, “They were kidnapping Americans that day. So, we decided not to pick you up.” We decided to decline the account. Or the Argentinean candidate accused of murdering an 18 year-old girl asking amidst his five trained-to-kill German Shepherds, “Okay, so maybe I did kill her; you will help me get elected, right?” We left the premises shortly and declined the account. Or the shadowy figure that followed Rick for three days in Kiev. We left the country.
In 1999, the firm was awarded its first Pollie as “International Political Consultants of the Year.” The award, then considered one of the three major Pollies, is given for management. In 2006, we won our first of numerous Pollies for creative efforts. We know of only two other firms/individuals who have won both management and creative Pollies – Karl Rove and David Axelrod.
In 1989, in retrospect, the big news is that some lanky, endlessly talkative but unassuming guy came by the Union Station office with his clipboard asking us to sign a petition. We spoke at length about his ambitions for lower downtown and what we did in politics (he was mildly interested), and then we became one of the first signatories on John Hickenlooper’s petition for an alcohol beverage license for the Wynkoop Brewery.
The domestic front in the 1990’s opened with new opportunities. With Congressional campaigns in three states in 1990 – all of which were in tough Republican Districts – RBI’s efforts were rewarded by being named as one of “America’s Top 15 Political Consulting firms” by “Campaigns Magazine.”
This was followed by the 1992 cycle when RBI was an early supporter of Bill Clinton and sent our best man, Craig Hughes (whom we’d first “hired” as in intern in 1987, his sophomore year of college), to Little Rock. RBI worked the West for Clinton and helped elect Ben Nighthorse Campbell to the US Senate. But it was also a year when RBI began to develop a reputation for research and strategy for progressive ballot initiative campaigns.
In 1995, the RBI team wrote a complete campaign manual for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) on ballot initiatives and referenda. That manual, now in its 3rd edition is still used and available through the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center. Lisa Cohen, who headed up our Chicago office made significant contributions to the manual and introduced us to the rough and tumble of Chicago politics.
We were a bit bigger firm with a Washington, DC office – which we closed in 1996 to be reopened in 2009 – but still in Union Station. Now, however, LoDo magic had arrived with the establishment of Coors Field and the ensuing bars, restaurants and apartments. This brought higher rents, parking spaces, and theft. Joannie’s and Rick’s “RBI” license plate was stolen three times in one year by baseball aficionados. No more vanity plates for RBI. And when a parking space was more expensive than our original rent, we left Lo Do for Upper Downtown where we still exist. Rachel Biederman and Beach vonOesen joined RBI in the early ’90s, bringing wisdom, humor, and talent to the team.
The late 1990s were filled with new clients such as DeGette, Udall and David Wu (D-OR), but also helping our traditional clients such as President Bill Clinton (Rick was the official authorized Clinton campaign representative in the State of Colorado), the Pro-Choice and the conservation communities. But, perhaps more importantly, RBI’s team began to build with Bob Nelson forming our subsidiary, Campaign Products of the Rockies (CPR). In 1997, Faye Diamond, now one of our partners, came to RBI with the Mike Feeley Campaign and has been here ever since. Benji Kupersmit joined use for a few years to head up the research department and also expanded our Spanish language repertoire. Luther Symons took the lead on numerous RBI campaigns, including Amendment 20 – Medical Marijuana. He also traveled to Spain where he brought U.S. fundraising techniques to foreign soil. Thanks to Luther, we’re now figure skating connoisseurs.
We look at 1999-2000 as a turning point in our firm. Craig returned from a White House hiatus, our staff expanded to eight during October of 2000, when we were instrumental in passing Amendment 23, Medical Marijuana, and Closing the Gun Show Loophole in Colorado and Oregon. We also helped elect candidates in five states, and 3 foreign countries.
And yet the fun was just beginning. In October of 2001, Joannie answered the phone and on the line was a guy who wanted to “talk to Rick about a job.” In October of 2001, we certainly were not hiring, but Joannie was convinced he wanted to hire us.
Rick returned the phone call. Over the next three years, RBI was intensely involved in a possible Congressional campaign against 3 opponents including Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Senate race that featured dead bodies in the candidate’s garage, allegations of domestic violence (the charges were dropped), a $10 million pre-nuptial agreement, $28 million, and some guy with the strange name of Barack Obama. Our candidate, Blair Hull, lost to the guy with the strange name, but remains a great friend of the firm.
In the summer of 2002, through a Joe Trippi introduction, the RBI team met with Governor Howard Dean. By October, Rick agreed to be the Campaign Manager in what both Dean and Rick agreed would be a “low-key, under the radar” campaign until September of 2003. Then Dean became the only major candidate for President to oppose the war in Iraq. Low key quickly became high drama and Rick left the campaign because he could not maintain other client and family commitments in the 24 hour cycle of a Presidential campaign.
Sometime around 2004 or 2005, we had a staff meeting, and discussed a name change. No one wanted Great Plains Voter Contact. So, after much debate, the name of the firm became RBI Strategies and Research. Ridder and Braden were both relieved now that all the foibles of the firm would not be directly linked to them personally.
In 2006, we celebrated 16 years of working with the Tennessee Democratic House Caucus. What initially began as “the BBQ tour” in which Rick would travel across the State visiting candidates that were proximate to target BBQ dispensaries, turned into 14 years of survey research and over 100 surveys in the State.
That year, we started working with National Wildlife Action Fund and have become advocates for hunters and anglers. We now are fully cognizant of the impact of climate change on “prairie potholes,” “habitat,” and “duck migration.” But, Tyler Chafee joining the firm and our winning of our first Pollies for creative efforts highlighted that year. “Pombo Mombo” still brings smiles to all of us, and strikes fear into the opposition. Cary Kennedy joined our successful client list as Colorado State Treasurer.
We were a split firm briefly during the 2008 cycle. For the primaries, Tyler headed up Hillary’s campaign in Colorado, while Rick did the same for her successful effort in the Arizona primary. Craig was actively working for Obama, which led him to take a senior role in the Colorado campaign in the fall. We all came together, though, for a wonderful party with the gang at Isaacson, Rosenbaum at the Democratic National Convention. In the fall, we were thrilled to see Jared Polis elected to Congress as well as the defeat of the Personhood amendment. And the election to the Presidency of the guy with the strange name from Illinois.
2008 was also the year that RBI seems to have made a connection with the University of Denver. Rick teaches at the Korbel School of International Studies, and via DU, Niki Hawthorne and Kevin Ingham joined RBI.
2009 was somewhat back to the future. Work was found again in Australia, Spain, the UK, Sweden and Denmark. Craig again took a leave of absence to run Michael Bennet’s U.S. Senate campaign. And we once more opened a Washington, DC office, headed by Jess O’Connell. But also, we were active in trying to preserve Colorado’s roadless areas and promoting climate change legislation. We supported our union friends at UFCW in their pre-strike media activities, began the planning for the Kennedy re-elect, and Bernie Buescher’s SOS initial statewide campaign.
Well, that is the abbreviated and abridged 25-year history of RBI. Very abbreviated and abridged! Because we didn’t say much about our persevering clients, extraordinary staff and brilliant interns – all of whom have made us look good. What’s next? We don’t know. That’s why we are holding the party to see if all the wonderful people who helped us to 25, have ideas on the next 25.
RBI: Doing good things for good people and progressive causes