Adrienne Elrod and Rufus Gifford, who have been top strategists on Democratic campaigns and officials in recent presidential administrations, are partnering to launch a new communications, fundraising and strategy firm.
The Elrod Gifford Group will represent individual, non-profit and corporate clients, at a moment when Democrats and progressives grapple with when and how to respond to the Republican dominance at the federal level. Elrod said that the firm will work with clients to “navigate this increasingly challenging and complex world.”
Elrod most recently was senior adviser and senior spokesperson for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and, before that, had the same position for President Joe Biden’s reelection bid. She was director of external affairs for the CHIPS program office for Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. She also was director of surrogate strategy and operations for Biden’s 2020 campaign and had a similar role in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 bid.
Gifford was finance chair of the Harris-Walz and Biden-Harris campaigns, which raised a combined $2.2 billion. He was chief of protocol with the rank of ambassador during the Biden administration, and served as U.S. ambassador to Denmark during the second term of Barack Obama. He also has been national finance director of the Democratic National Committee and served as an aide on Obama’s 2008 campaign.
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In addition to corporate and philanthropic organizations, they also want to work with political figures and groups.
Gifford said that “there’s something of an opportunity right now, both for the Democratic Party, but also the opposition to Trump, to reorganize and build ourselves back up again. Adrienne and I want to be part if that conversation, and want to lead some of that work that will inevitably be happening over the next couple of months, as well as years in advance of 2028.”
Elrod noted that Democrats “have not been in this place since 1988,” after Michael Dukakis was defeated in the presidential race, and the party was left without a clear leader. Now, she said, Democrats and “don’t necessarily have a referee, one human being who is sort of known as the leader of the party. And then that person’s people become the operative class if you will.”
“We’re by no means trying to say that we’re the leaders of the party, but we want to work with individuals, the next generation of talent, that is going to lead the party going into the future, going into 2026, going into 2028,” Elrod said. “We want to work with those individuals. We want to work with those organizations. We want to work on the front lines of really helping to reorganize the party.”
Gifford said, “Trump 2.0 is a chaotic version of governing, the likes of which we haven’t seen in our lifetime and, I would argue, longer than that. So how can we help people who have anxiety, who want to help, who want to help in one way, shape or form, how can we help that? And we do think that we will have the ability to try to steer some of those conversations.”
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