PERSON: Sarah Longwell

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Sarah Longwell is an American political strategist and publisher of the conservative news and opinion website The Bulwark. A member of the Republican Party, she is the founder of Republican Accountability (originally named Republican Voters Against Trump), which spent millions of dollars to defeat then-President Donald Trump in 2020. According to The New Yorker, Longwell has “dedicated her career to fighting Trump’s takeover of her party”.

After graduation from Kenyon College in 2002, Longwell worked for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative group in Delaware. In 2005, Longwell moved to Washington, D.C., where she found a job with Richard Berman, a Republican lobbyist and later PR expert who runs several industry-funded nonprofit lobbying and PR organizations. Over the next 15 years she worked at Berman and Company and became senior vice president and communications director, leading media campaigns on a wide range of public policy issues. Longwell also served as managing director of the American Beverage Institute, a trade association set up by Berman that lobbies on behalf of the alcohol industry, such as by arguing that the risks of drunk driving have been exaggerated and laws that have been adopted to reduce it are ineffective or inappropriate and opposing the lowering of the blood alcohol concentration limit for driving under the influence (DUI) in Utah. According to Berman, “Sarah always had a knife in her teeth”.

Longwell became the first female national board chair of the Log Cabin Republicans. Longwell was instrumental in persuading the Log Cabin Republicans to refrain from endorsing then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016. In 2019, the Log Cabin Republicans endorsed President Trump for re-election and Longwell resigned as board chair. That same year, Longwell left Berman and Company to start her own communications firm, Longwell Partners, headquartered in Washington, D.C. She also became publisher of The Bulwark, a conservative website that opposes President Trump’s agenda, bringing together a moderate coalition of traditional conservatives and libertarians. Longwell is a prominent voice in the Never Trump movement. She was instrumental in founding Defending Democracy Together, an umbrella organization for Republican Voters Against Trump, Republicans for the Rule of Law, and other anti-Trump projects. Longwell advocated for the impeachment and removal of President Trump in 2019, and for his impeachment and conviction in 2021.

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