PERSON: David Plouffe

Senior Vice President of Policy and Strategy

Plouffe is an American political strategist best known as the campaign manager for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. A long-time Democratic Party campaign consultant, he was a partner at the party-aligned campaign consulting firm AKPD Message and Media, which he joined in 2000.

Plouffe was an outside senior advisor to Obama since the president’s first day in office and was then appointed as a Senior Advisor to the President (inside the White House) in 2011 following the resignation of David Axelrod, who went on to start Obama’s reelection campaign. In September 2014, he became the Senior Vice President of Policy and Strategy for ridesharing startup Uber.

Plouffe began his political career by working for Senator Tom Harkin’s 1990 re-election campaign.[14] He later worked as a state field director for Harkin’s unsuccessful 1992 Presidential campaign. In the same year he successfully managed Congressman John Olver’s first re-election bid in Massachusetts. In 1994 Plouffe managed Delaware Attorney General Charles M. Oberly’s unsuccessful campaign against Senator William V. Roth. He then worked as campaign director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 1995. In 1996 Plouffe managed Bob Torricelli’s successful campaign to fill Bill Bradley’s New Jersey seat in the United States Senate.

Plouffe was the campaign manager for Obama’s successful 2008 presidential campaign. He is credited with the campaign’s successful overall strategy in the race (primarily against Senator Hillary Clinton) for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, to focus on the first caucus in Iowa and on maximizing the number of pledged delegates, as opposed to focusing on states with primaries and the overall popular vote. He is also credited by The New Republic for Obama’s success in the Iowa caucus and for crafting an overall strategy to prolong the primary past Super Tuesday.


— Wikipedia