Mark McKinnon Biography | Mark McKinnon Bio | Mark McKinnon
Mark McKinnon is an American political advisor, reform advocate, media columnist and also a TV producer. He was born on May 5th, 1955 in Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A.
He was the chief advisor to 5 successful presidential campaigns. He is also the co-founder of No Labels, an organization that is dedicated to bipartisanship and political problem-solving. He has also served as the vice chairman of Public Strategies, Inc.
He is the co-creator, co-executive producer and co-host of Showtime’s show, The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth. He used to be a regular columnist for The Daily Beast and also The Daily Telegraph in London.
Mark McKinnon Age
He was born on May 5th, 1955 in Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A. He is 64 years old as of 2019.
Mark McKinnon Wife
He is married to Annie and the couple has two daughters together.
Mark McKinnon Height
This information will be updated soon.
Mark McKinnon Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $ 17 million.
Mark McKinnon No Labels
He is also the co-founder of No Labels, an organization that is dedicated to bipartisanship and political problem-solving.
Mark McKinnon Career
He began his career while he was in high school but he dropped out. He was a songwriter and used to work with Kris Kristofferson. He went back to Denver and completed High School. He then went back to Nashville where he continued pursuing music.
He was then named the New Folk winner at the 1975 Kerrville Folk Festival. He then moved to Austin, Texas in 1976 and earned a living as a musician. He attended the University of Texas at Austin and used to serve as the editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Texan, from 1980-1981.
He was arrested for not releasing unpublished photographs of an Iranian student protest. He then left the University before completing his undergraduate course. He had his first political campaign experience when he was volunteering for then-Texas Senator, Lloyd Doggetts campaign in 1984.
He worked with James Carville and Paul Begala during this time and he was promoted to being the press secretary. He then worked for the former Texas Governor, Mark White, during his re-election campaign in 1985-1986. He then worked for the former Louisiana Governor, Buddy Roemer, during his campaign in 1987.
He then joined the Sawyer Miller Group, a New York-based political media company, in the late 1980s. After he went back to Texas, he joined the firm, Public Strategies Inc, in 1990 where he served as the Vice-chairman during the beginning of 1991.
He worked on several winning Texas campaigns including, those of late Governor Ann Richards (1990), former Houston Mayor Bob Lanier (2001), and the late Congressman Charlie Wilson. He then worked for Bob Bullock on his re-election campaign as the Lieutenant Governor of Texas.
Mark McKinnon George W. Bush
He returned to politics after he met the then Governor, George W. Bush at the Governor’s mansion. The two developed a personal relationship in this meetup. During an interview, McKinnon said, “Governor Bush was doing some things that really got my attention.
He was talking about education reform. He was talking about immigration reform. He was talking about issues that had typically been Democratic issues. He was talking about them in a really compassionate way.” He also said that he was happy with how he had gotten ahead of the Republican Party.
He led the advertising and media team for Bush’s gubernatorial campaign back in 1998. In the same year, he became president of Maverick Media, which was created for the purpose of having Bush elected as the President. He was the chief media advisor for Bush’s first presidential campaign.
He directed the advertising effort in 2000, a role he reprised in the 2004 elections. He was appointed by Bush to serve as a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.
Mark McKinnon John McCain | Mark McKinnon McCain
He started serving as the principal media advisor for Senator McCain’s presidential bid during the Republican primaries in January 2007 but then, he decided to leave the campaigns on May 21st, 2008. He stated that his reasons for leaving were that he did not want to campaign against the Illinois Senator, Barack Obama.
He clarified that he had not returned to his role as the media advisor after the Dallas Morning News reported that he had helped Cindy McCain in her preparation for her GOP convention speech.
Mark McKinnon Circus | Mark McKinnon The Circus | Mark McKinnon Showtime
He is the co-creator, co-executive producer and co-host of Showtime’s show, The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth. Presidential elections in America always garner a lot of media coverage, but the 2016 campaign is bringing new meaning to the phrase “media circus” thanks to the presence of media-friendly Republican hopeful Donald Trump.
The campaign really builds up steam as the calendar flips from 2015 to 2016, which is when this real-time docuseries begins its look at the campaigns of Trump, Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton and others vying for a chance to spend at least four years in the White House.
The series follows key characters and stories from the campaigns, providing behind-the-scenes access into a world the public rarely sees in its weekly half-hour episodes. Executive producers of “The Circus” include political analysts/authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann (“Game Change”).
First episode date: 17 January 2016
Network: Showtime
Genre: Documentary
Presented by: John Heilemann, Mark McKinnon, Alex Wagner, Mark Halperin (seasons 1–2)
Mark McKinnon Book |Mark McKinnon Game Change
Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain, and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime is a book by political journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin about the 2008 United States presidential election.
Originally published: 11 January 2010
Authors: Mark Halperin, John Heilemann
Followed by: Double Down: Game Change 2012
Genre: Biography
Publisher: HarperCollins
Adaptations: Game Change (2012)
Mark McKinnon Facebook
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Mark McKinnon Twitter
Mark McKinnon, the Guy w/ the Cowboy Hat | THE CIRCUS | SHOWTIME
Mark McKinnon NEWS
PopPolitics: Mark McKinnon on How ‘The Circus’ Finds a Narrative in a Torrent of Trump News (Listen)
Source; variety.com
The recently completed season of Showtime’s “The Circus” ended with the episode “Their Brand Is Crisis,” delving into how President Trump and the White House are coping with the protracted Russia investigation — which is to say, they’re attacking its credibility.
Mark McKinnon, co-host of “The Circus” along with Alex Wagner and John Heilemann, tells Variety that the context for Trump’s constant attacks on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt” have a lot to do with making sure that the president can maintain a political advantage, particularly if Democrats win back control of the House.
“If there is a Democratic House, which is certainly a possibility, and Bob Mueller lays out something, it doesn’t matter what that something is, I guarantee Democrats are going to move to impeach,” McKinnon says. “So Donald Trump knows in the long range, what he needs is a Clinton strategy to make sure that the Senate doesn’t move to impeach him.
So he needs seventeen Republican senators to make sure they don’t go with the Democrats. So this is really a long-range political strategy so that if he doesn’t have a legal alternative when Mueller lays out his findings, he’s got a political backup, and I think that is what this is all about.”
Given the length and extent of Mueller’s investigation, McKinnon thinks “he is going to find something. I don’t know what it is.”
The ongoing investigation certainly adds an aura of additional drama to the show’s third season, during what has proven to be an unpredictable presidency. The show’s ratings are up double digits over the first two seasons, and its second week had 1.3 million viewers, a series high, according to Showtime.
McKinnon says that it due in part to interest in this presidency, “whether you are for him or against him or somewhere in between.”
A challenge has been establishing each week’s narrative arc, given the fast-changing news environment yet the need for the show to stand out as an ultra-timely docuseries.
“One thing I learned from Hollywood is how important a storyline thematic is for every episode,” McKinnon says, adding that “with this presidency that is very difficult.”
Luck helps. The series kicked off the first season by traveling to Moscow, where McKinnon chatted with U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman on the same day that the Kremlin kicked out 60 diplomats in retaliation to U.S. measures.
As it turned out, an array of other storylines that week were Russia related, including Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before congressional committees and Trump’s decision to order airstrikes on Syria in response to another chemical weapons attack on the civilian population there.
One of the highlights of the episode was an interview that Heilemann did with Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry. In one clip that was not included in the episode, Heilemann mentioned Trump’s election to the presidency, and Zakharova blurted out, “Thank God.”
“She sort of let her defenses down when she said that and John said, ‘Did you just say, ‘Thank God’? She dissembled very quickly,” McKinnon says. “It was very clear she didn’t mean to say it out loud.”
McKinnon says that the trip to Russia was “pretty chilling” — which is underscored by the title of the episode, “The Looking Glass War.”
“If you want to see where ‘fake news’ started, go to Russia,” he says.
The next part of the third season, to start in the fall, will spotlight the midterms, but McKinnon says that he isn’t so sure the this is the year of a blue wave. The Democrats will face a president presiding over a healthy economy and low unemployment and, as we saw this week, a revival of talks with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un.