Lis Smith Thinks Democrats Treat Voters Like Children

Lis Smith is one of the few political consultants who can approach the celebrity level of their clients. An opinionated, sometimes pugilistic presence in Democratic politics (and online), she is best known for engineering Pete Buttigieg’s overachieving 2020 primary run. But Smith already had an extensive résumé before that, including running rapid response for Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection and serving as a spokesperson for Bill de Blasio, before a romance with former governor Eliot Spitzer got her fired. Later, she advised — and defended — Andrew Cuomo during the thick of the sexual-harassment allegations that ended his governorship before turning against him sharply. Since releasing a campaign memoir in 2022, Smith has worked for Michigan senate hopeful Mallory McMorrow, among others, and is now advising a new Super-PAC, Majority Democrats, that advances a moderate agenda. I spoke with her about Zohran Mamdani’s star-making campaign, how Democrats bungled 2024, and who she has her eye on for 2028.

You have been very critical of Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral campaign. What do you make of what he’s been doing out there? This has been an unimpressive effort — did he lose his political touch at some point?
Look, he earned the nickname “The Prince of Darkness” for a reason. He’s channeling the side of him that people call Bad Andrew, where he will do basically anything he can do to hold on to power. And what we’re seeing is a very dark campaign that appeals to the worst aspects of humanity and is closing on the most pessimistic note possible. Laughing about Zohran Mamdani cheering on 9/11; standing with Eric Adams when he talks about radical Islamists burning down churches; having supporters run ads with the word “jihad” over Zohrani Mamdani’s face. Contrast that with Mamdani, who has run an issue-based, positive, sunny campaign. I think New Yorkers ultimately will choose a positive, sunny campaign over Andrew.

Wasn’t Cuomo always like this, on some level?
You really see someone’s character when they’re cornered. And with me, with other advisers, you really saw that at the end, when he was called on to resign and when he was faced with the threat of impeachment. That’s what you’re seeing right now. His general-election campaign is, I would note, much darker than his primary campaign was. His real character is coming out right now, and I think it’s the character of someone who should not be handed the reins of power again.

You’re somebody who’s pretty familiar with young talent in the Democratic Party. Was Mamdani on your radar before this race?
No. In October of last year, my friend Eric Koch, who is a Democratic consultant, told me, “You’ve gotta keep an eye on this Zohran Mamdani guy. I really think he could be the nominee.” I thought he was crazy, but I remember just being lights-out impressed by him, especially in the debates. Generational talents don’t come around that often — that’s why they’re called generational talents. I talk about Bernie Sanders’s socialism as DSA 1.0. AOC is DSA 2.0. I think Zohran Momani is DSA 3.0, where he’s less into demonizing political opponents and people who disagree with him and more interested in engaging with people who have different viewpoints. You’ve seen him do interviews on platforms and with media outlets that are not exactly DSA friendly — Fox News, The Bulwark.

He’s done the podcast circuit.
Yeah, Flagrant.  And he has run a very positive, issue-based campaign at a time when Democrats have gotten into a trap of only talking about Donald Trump and not offering up big ideas. I think there’s something Democrats on every part of the spectrum can learn: That you shouldn’t just run against Donald Trump, and that you need to offer an affirmative vision. And if you do that, people will rally around you, even if you are an unknown 33-year-old member of DSA.

On a somewhat similar note, there’s the Maine Senate race, where we’ve got Graham Platner, who is, in a way, a perfect test case of various questions surrounding the Democrats. There’s this debate about how big a tent the Democratic Party should be. Purity tests are less popular now, but Platner not only wrote all these Reddit posts he had to apologize for but he got a symbol associated with Nazis tattooed on his chest. Polls nonetheless show him winning by a lot, though at least one came out before the Nazi thing. People want a challenger who seems honest and authentic, but is there, like, a limit to that?
I managed to avoid the great online Maine Senate War of 2025, but I guess it’s inevitable I’d have to weigh in at some point. The poll that came out showing Platner with more than double the support of an established, relatively popular governor — that’s a real wake-up call. It should be a flashing red light to party leadership that Democratic voters are pissed off and they’re not gonna take it anymore. They are pissed off at the gerontocracy that cost us the 2024 election. They’re pissed off at being force fed, subpar subpar, uninspiring, yesterday’s-news candidates, and they’re just hungry for something new, for unconventional, refreshing voices, and even people outside politics like Graham Platner.

That being said, some of these revelations about him are obviously pretty troubling — the tattoo, his old posts. But we haven’t really seen much sign that Maine voters are moving away from him. I do think we need to leave room in politics and the Democratic Party for second chances and redemption stories, because, let’s be real, most of the people who turn out to vote for these candidates are not all a hundred percent good themselves. We’ve all done things through regret, all had our struggles. So I think some of Platner’s story — the idea of being lost, finding a community and purpose — is actually relatable to a lot of people. But that being said, one man’s redemption story shouldn’t come at the cost of a Senate seat.

It does test the limits of the big-tent approach.
It does, and it also tests the limit of recruiting a 77-year-old to run for Senate. In all the research I’ve seen, Democratic voters are saying, “No more gerontocracy. We want fresh, new voices.”

Another young candidate, Jay Jones in Virginia, texted violent fantasies about his political adversaries but has not dropped out of the attorney-general race there. What do you make of that story?
Jay Jones made a mistake. It’s the worst possible text to come out in the weeks after Charlie Kirk was assassinated. But he apologized for it. He owned up to his mistake. And I do think people should be judged by more than their worst moments.

It’s really hard for me to take the criticism from the right wing all that seriously when they have a president who goes out and stokes violence on a monthly basis and who encouraged the insurrection on January 6. Ultimately, I think Jones will be able to pull through, because attorney-general positions right now are really important when you have a president who has completely weaponized his DOJ and weaponized federal law enforcement.

I was watching an interview you did with Jen Psaki in which you reminisced about working on Obama’s reelection bid in 2012, when the campaign painted Romney as this corporate villain early in defining him and how effective that was. That did not remind me of Mamdani a bit — not so much defining his opponents that way but the relentless focus on the economy and affordability. With all this talk about the future direction of the party, do you think that is the most surefire way forward for Democrats right now?
Yes. And the biggest mistake we made in 2024 was not leading every single conversation by talking about the economy. When people feel like they are one accident, one incident, one layoff away from financial collapse, they do not want to hear us starting conversations by saying, “The most existential issue you should care about is democracy.” Or abortion rights. Those are very important issues, don’t get me wrong. But we were not listening to voters, and we were not meeting them where they were.

I think this is part of a trend among Democrats in recent years, where we stopped treating voters like adults. When they would say, “Prices are killing me,” we would say, “Actually, inflation is higher in Sweden.” When they would say, “Crime is out of control,” we’d respond, “Actually, it’s lower than it was 40 years ago.” And when they said, “Hey, shouldn’t we maybe do something about the border?” we said, “Turn off Fox News. That’s a right-wing talking point.” Voters noticed that. They thought we weren’t listening to them. And that is why they were willing to go vote for someone like Donald Trump. Say what you will about him — he at least was speaking a language of grievance, talking about taking on the status quo that was driving a lot of these problems. And to a lot of people, that was more appealing than people who were talking down to them or not even listening to them.

The thinking was that Democrats’ strongest issues were abortion rights and democracy and that they were getting killed on the economy, so it was better to all but ignore it.
But it wasn’t even that, because you remember the Biden administration had the whole “Bidenomics” campaign.

Yeah, but then they got rid of it when they realized it wasn’t working at all.
In 2012, Barack Obama was running with an unemployment rate at which no president had been reelected in the past. How did he win that election? It wasn’t by ignoring the economy. It was by going right at it and saying, “We are working every day to dig our way out of this recession. I know it’s not enough, but look at who the opponent is. This is a private-equity guy who’s gotten rich by buying up companies, laying off workers, and destroying communities, and that’s not who we need to hand the economy over to at this moment.” By making the economic contrast clear and acknowledging that there was still work to do, that things weren’t perfect — we didn’t call it Obamanomics — Barack Obama was able to win when the economy was still in pretty dire straits.

Who in the Democratic Party is impressing you at the moment? It feels like things are wide open in a way they haven’t been in a long time, and there’s a real reward for being creative, mixing it up, doing something different.
I’ll put Pete Buttigieg aside, because people know I’m very biased toward him, so anything I say about him will come with that  asterisk. But I still do think that he is one of the Democrats’ best and most compelling communicators.

Ruben Gallego is someone I tell everyone to take a look at. He is someone who really understands how to speak to the financial fragility that people are feeling, this feeling that the American dream no longer exists, the feeling that you can do everything right in life and still not be able to pay your bills, not feel safe in your community, not be able to send your kid to a school that you feel is going to educate them well. And he meets voters where they are on immigration. He talks about the need for a secure border but also an end to the lawless ICE raids and the racial profiling that’s happening with interior-immigration enforcement across the country. And he’s someone who also just speaks like a normal person. He doesn’t talk in policy talking points. He doesn’t sound like he’s reading off a staffer’s memo. He’s also got a very compelling personal story. Another thing I think is impressive about him is that he was able to vastly overperform the top of the ticket in 2024 and to win Latino voters. Democrats will need to figure out how to fix our problem with Latino voters and our problems with Black voters and Asian voters if we’re going to win more elections.

Trump does already seem to be alienating some of the Latino voters who came over to vote for him last year.
Yeah. One thing we saw is Latino voters are pretty conservative on the issue of the border and illegal immigration. But the racial profiling we’re seeing from ICE, and these chaos-inducing raids, are just a bridge too far. But we’re not going to be able to win by hoping Trump screws up enough on immigration. Democrats need to go out and say some hard truths. One is that we need a secure border. We’re a sovereign nation; sovereign nations have secure borders. Two is that we need to deport criminals, violent criminals especially. And until we state those two plain truths that a lot of Democrats have seemed loath to do in recent years, we will not have credibility with voters. Voters will not let us get to the part where we can criticize the ICE raids and talk about how they’re undermining public safety and how they’re deeply immoral until we acknowledge the hard truths that Democrats have had so much trouble acknowledging in recent years.

How do you feel about Gavin Newsom’s strategy of going on offense by trolling Trump all the time?
There’s always a room for a troll in a political party, so I’m glad he’s taking up that mantle.

You think he’s presidential timber?
I don’t know, but in 2028, whoever is going to win will be someone who doesn’t just focus on Donald Trump and who has an affirmative vision, one that’s rooted in understanding that people are sick of the status quo, sick of the Establishment, and they really want change. I think 2028 is very ripe for our party finding another Barack Obama type. Voters are pissed off and want to take on the status quo, just as Obama did in 2008 when he criticized all the people who voted for the Iraq War, when he took on the Clinton dynasty. And I think we’re ripe for another moment like that.

How do you think Chuck Schumer and Democrats have handled the government shutdown? It seems like Schumer has quelled the critics a bit, for now at least. Everyone wants a fight, and he’s finally picked one.
Democrats have been smart to zero in on the issue of health-care costs and ACA subsidies. They could have gone in a million different directions.

I’m a little surprised at how effective it’s been.
Cost is the No. 1 issue for voters. And one of the top three concerns about costs is health care, so it was a really smart fight to pick. It’s also smart because Democrats know there are Republicans in the House and Senate who want to extend these subsidies. They know it’s a fight they’ll win with the public, and it’s one that they’ll likely win with the House and Senate, whether it’s in a shutdown negotiation or months afterward.

I sometimes see people make the point that maybe the median voter’s No. 1 issue isn’t Trump destroying democracy, or tearing down the East Wing of the White House, or any of the other crazy things he’s doing, but that the point of politics is to make people care about these issues more. And so to downplay those issues is political malpractice.
We’ve got to meet voters where they are. Do we need to save democracy? Hell yes. But to save democracy, maybe we don’t talk about democracy. Maybe we talk about cost. Maybe we talk about a commonsense approach to the border. Maybe we talk about ways we’ll overhaul health care, whatever it is. But election after election has shown us that voters do not respond to this democracy argument.

To go back to Pete Buttigieg: Do you think America is ready for a gay president?
I think America could be. The same question was raised in 2008 with Barack Obama — was America ready for a Black president? A lot of people thought no. I think sometimes we don’t give the American people enough credit that their views can change and evolve over time and that they’re willing to look past identity labels and look more at someone’s characters, someone’s ideas, someone’s passion to lead, more than an identity characteristic. That’s something we learned with Barack Obama and that maybe one day we could learn with Pete.

I was surprised he didn’t run for the Michigan Senate seat. Does experience like that matter to voters anymore?
Actually, in a lot of races, we’re seeing that experience is more of a negative than a positive, because a lot of voters equate experience with being part of the problem. If you’ve been in office and you haven’t fixed things, why should I vote for you? It’s not always fair, but this is a moment when people are looking for leaders who will challenge the status quo. That’s more likely to come from someone who hasn’t spent their career climbing the ladder and who hasn’t spent their career asking for permission to run for this office or that office, or get this endorsement from leadership or that endorsement from leadership.

It reminds me of what was happening with the GOP in the early 2010s.
There’s this conversation about whether Democrats are going through a Tea Party moment. Maybe — maybe it’s our own little version of the Tea Party. But to me it feels less ideological than the GOP version in 2009 and 2010. It feels more generational, and more rooted in who will fight versus who will fold. Also, Democratic voters, more so than Republican voters for whatever reason, seem a bit more concerned about electability. 2026 will test it; these primaries will test it. But in focus-group polling I’ve seen for 2026, the top issues for voters are generational change, getting rid of the gerontocracy, who will stand up and fight, and electability. And that’s pretty notable — that even when they want to take on the Establishment and want a new generation of leadership, they still want someone who can win. Whereas in 2010, it really felt like Republican voters wanted just to burn the house down, even if they were in it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.