Markow, who had watched her mother succumb to early-onset dementia, underwent genetic testing at the age of 35 and learned that she too could develop Alzheimer’s disease. He decided then that if he contracted the disease, he would end his life before his disability became too severe.
In an era of political politics in which campaign gurus often sold their services based on their supposedly oracle knowledge of voters, Markow was by all accounts an unusual consultant.
He argued that political science, like medicine and other sciences, should be a science informed by data collected in randomized controlled trials, the gold standard of laboratory experimentation.
Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who helped propel George W. It should have been,” he said. This obituary interview.
Mr. Markow worked for every Democratic presidential candidate from Michael S. Dukakis in 1988 to John F. Kerry in 2004., More than 30 U.S. senators and 20 governors are participating, as well as groups such as the Democratic National Committee, AFL-CIO, Sierra Club, and Emily’s List, which helps elect women who support abortion rights to Congress. ing.
His expertise lies in what is known as direct voter contact, an area of campaigning that sometimes goes unnoticed in the glare of television advertising but consumes hundreds of millions of dollars nationally in any election year. be.
Markow was interested in direct contact early in his career because it allows candidates to personally reach voters, unlike television ads or rallies. In his 2012 book, Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns, journalist Sasha Issenberg writes that he views voters not as a “puzzle of blocks and zones,” but rather as a “collection of individuals.” said that he had done so.
Old-fashioned direct contact with voters includes mailers (Mr. Malkow’s specialty), robocalls (which, as Mr. Malkow warned his clients, had little effect on increasing turnout), and door-to-door canvassing (which comes at a cost). includes tools such as (he emphasized that it is more effective than the telephone).
The key to any outreach is testing different approaches to specific flyers and other communications, gathering data on potential voter and donor responses, and adjusting your campaign accordingly. he claimed.
“In politics, we spend hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars on all kinds of ways to get voters to vote. But we pay almost nothing to find out what works. ” he wrote in the 2004 publication “Campaigns and Elections.” “The lack of real empirical knowledge on these questions by campaign professionals tells a sad and shocking story about the way we do business.”
Markow acknowledged that Republicans were pursuing such empirical data before Democrats. But in liberal circles and beyond, the methodology he championed “overturns much of what political circles thought they knew about how voters’ minds work, allowing campaigns to approach, placate, and manipulate voters.” It was widely acknowledged as having dramatically changed the way things are done. ” Issenberg wrote.
Markow spent years perfecting direct mail so it didn’t end up in a pile of junk mail. He rejected the glossy color pamphlets that benefited the consultants who produced them, in favor of simple correspondence printed on white paper. He felt plain mail was more persuasive to voters.
“Typically, the most important pieces of mail don’t have a lot of design,” Markow told NPR in 2012, noting that “the IRS doesn’t put any pictures or colors on envelopes.”
Doug Sosnick, who served as White House political director under President Bill Clinton, said the core of his insight is that “the more political and the less authentic the message, the less effective it is.” he said. “This is now the coin of all politics, because the alienation from politicians and politics is so strong.”
As election campaigns increasingly move into the digital realm, Markow’s consulting firm MSHC Partners, one of the largest voter liaison organizations in the United States, has become “the first traditional organization.” [Democratic] ” reports the political publication Hotline.
Markow was known as a pioneer in microtargeting. Microtargeting refers to large-scale targeting of voters who are likely to support a candidate or cause based on characteristics such as age, race, education, and even consumer data such as electric vehicle ownership. The use of a dataset. hybrid car.
He observed that voters generally respond better to communications that provide new information than to overreaching partisan lines.
Donald P. Greene, a political scientist at Columbia University who has researched the application of data to politics, said Malkow was once a “very dominant race against a strong Republican state legislator in a solidly red district.” He recalls being held back by his opponent.
Knowing that his client’s campaign fund only allowed for one mailing, Markow and his colleagues unearthed the kernel of information voters might not know. A review of the incumbent’s voting record revealed that he once voted to allow dog skins to be used for industrial purposes.
“A postcard of a cute dog begging not to be turned into a coat was the only salvo in the challenger’s campaign,” Green wrote in an email. “The challenger lost by a few votes. There is only one explanation for the fact that it was so close.”
Harold Clark Malkow Jr. was born on November 4, 1951 in Gulfport, Michigan. His mother was an economist and his father an engineer.
Thanks to his mother’s influence, Mr. Malkow was raised to support the Republican Party. Issenberg said she was upset when her desegregation brought an African American student into her son’s ninth-grade class. (His father secretly voted for Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.)
During the civil rights movement, Mr. Malkow was drawn to liberal causes. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Millsaps College in Jackson, Michigan, in 1973, helped organize anti-Vietnam War rallies, and founded Mississippi Freedom to resist racists in the state Democratic Party. Joined the Democratic Party.
One of his first campaigns was the unsuccessful 1971 gubernatorial bid for Charles Evers, the brother of murdered civil rights activist Medgar Evers.
After earning a law degree from the University of the Pacific in California in 1981, Markow won his first major election victory in 1984 as the campaign manager for then-U.S. Rep. Al Gore (D-Tennessee). , Mr. Gore won in the United States. Senate seat.
Markow summarized much of his research in his 2003 book, The New Political Targeting, but disbanded his consulting firm in 2010.
“Advertising has not only gotten more negative, it’s gotten more vicious and personal,” he explained at the time, adding, “I don’t want to do this job anymore.”
Markow, along with former AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhotzer, founded the Analyst Institute, a self-described “clearinghouse for evidence on voter contact and engagement programs” serving liberal candidates and causes. contributed to. In his spare time, he published several fantasy novels and political thrillers.
Mr. Markow’s marriage to Astrid Weigert ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of nine years, Ann Mahoney Marsh; son Alex Malkow from his first marriage; two stepsons, Michael Marsh and Timothy Marsh; two brothers; and a sister. Markow lived in the Washington area for many years before moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2018.
Under U.S. law that requires a person to be terminally ill and have only a few months to live, Marcou is not eligible for physician-assisted suicide. He recognized eligibility in Switzerland, which grants the right to euthanasia to patients with “incurable, permanent and severe mental disorders.” Issenberg wrote in Politico last week about Markow’s decision to euthanize him.
Earlier this year, despite worsening Alzheimer’s disease, Markow self-published a book called “Reinventing Political Advertising,” calling on Democrats to overhaul their approach to mass communications. He pointed to the decline in undecided voters and split-ticket users, and appealed to the left to increase support for the Democratic Party as a whole, not just specific candidates, as has been the practice for years.
As he neared his death, Markow told Issenberg that he knew that no matter the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, he would never see former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, in the White House again. He joked that he was relieved. Markow said the outcome of the election is at least partially in the hands of Democratic strategists.
“They’re targeting people in exactly the wrong way,” he told Issenberg, adding with a wry smile, “If I go back to Washington… my media consultants will kill me.”
