Joe Trippi is a long-time Democratic campaign operative, serving most recently as campaign manager for presidential candidate and former Vermont governor Howard Dean. He previously worked on the presidential campaigns of Edward Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, and Dick Gephardt, and until Spring 2004 was principal at the political consulting firm Trippi, McMahon & Squier, which produced ads for Dean's presidential campaign as well as his previous gubernatorial bids.

By the 1990s, Trippi had become largely burned out on politics, and was serving as a corporate consultant in Silicon Valley before he joined the Dean campaign in February 2003. The campaign, and Trippi specifically, soon became widely acclaimed for the innovative use of the internet, especially for fundraising.

In particular, he was largely responsible for the creation of an official campaign blog, and the use of Meetup.com and other social networking technologies to connect supporters, both innovations widely utilized today by other social and political campaigns.

His was a key voice in the Dean campaign's decision to forego the use of federal matching funds for the nomination to escape the fundraising limits the matching funds brought -- which prompted John Kerry to follow suit and allowed his campaign to remain financially competitive with Bush in the months leading up to the convention. Al Gore had raised $45 million dollars pre-convention in 2000, while John Kerry raised $235 million in 2004.

Dean replaced Trippi on January 28, 2004 after consecutively losing the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary. Trippi subsequently signed on as a commentator for MSNBC, launched a new organization, Change for America, and started his own consultancy, Trippi & Associates.

Published Work

• The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything (2004)

Quote

"There is only one tool, one platform, one medium that allows the American people to take their government back, and that's the Internet."

External links

• Change for America
• Joe Trippi's official website