By FP1 Strategies
Managing Director Maddy Karon is one of the best young opposition researchers in GOP politics. Maddy has an innovative mind, a tireless work ethic and a keen sense for how to use research to disqualify an opponent. In her leadership role at FP1, Maddy develops in-depth research books and storylines for national Republican committees, super PACs and candidates.
Maddy came to FP1 after serving as Research Director at the NRCC. In her three years at our firm, she’s been promoted twice. A native of Minneapolis, Maddy graduated from Vanderbilt with three majors and developed an affinity for country music during her time in Nashville.
“Maddy is a rising star in the party,” said FP1 Partner and Competitive Intelligence founder Jim Landry. “She’s meticulous and diligent, but more importantly, she’s creative and thinks like a political strategist. Maddy knows how to find the five bullets out of a thousand pages of source material that can turn a campaign. That’s a rare skill, and I’m thrilled she’s advancing her career at FP1.”
“As a media consultant, I’ve read a lot of oppo books over the past three decades,” said FP1 Partner and Creative Director Trent Wisecup. “Maddy excels at distilling information into tight narratives that strategy and media teams can use quickly. I’m thoroughly impressed by her ability to think like a storyteller. She has a bright future in Republican politics.”
Read this Q&A with Maddy Karon.
How did you get your start in politics and doing opposition research?
I moved to D.C. after grad school in Israel, explicitly to apply to the FBI and CIA. While waiting for my clearance, I applied to a job at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). I went into the interview with no idea what oppo was, somehow convinced them I did, and took the job because it sounded interesting. Four years later, when my agency start date was confirmed, I loved campaigns so much that I stayed at the NRCC.
Tell us some of your most memorable experiences serving as the research director at the NRCC.
It’s a blur. It wasn’t abnormal to start the day doing rapid response for 30+ races; have two hours of down time to edit a book, poll or ad and then present research on an entirely new race in the afternoon. During my cycle as research director, we had 98 target races. It was sort of like watching every show on Bravo all at once on full volume.
We had divorces, prostitution, insider trading, affairs, DUIs, an FBI conviction and tracked a member as she walked around Capitol Hill in a batgirl costume. You learn to be flexible, creative and just incredibly hard working. In my three cycles there, we researched hundreds of candidates. You can’t be on the team that crafts 1,000+ hits without being incredibly inspired and learning new angles and approaches every day.
What is your favorite piece of oppo that you’ve dropped on a rival campaign?
Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) had been in office for 30 years when we discovered he’d been renting out a storefront to a massage parlor that was offering illicit services. Congressman Kind wisely retired after the police raids, but before the case was fully litigated in the press. It was a moral and political victory.
I look forward to seeing some other favorites on TVs across Texas for the rest of the year.
Talk to us a little bit about your process and how you approach looking into an opponent. What are the key first steps you take to uncover damaging information?
I start with a kickoff meeting where the whole team reviews the target’s biography and timeline and brainstorms unique angles. What’s weird? What doesn’t add up? Where could they have gotten into trouble? After hundreds of races, I can usually look at someone’s life and sense a ‘profile,’ but good research is about being creative, so the more people in the meeting, the more ideas we get. We have a methodology we follow religiously, but what sets our work apart is identifying where someone would have hidden their skeletons and going off the beaten track to find them.
How are you thinking about AI and what it means for the future of political research and campaigns?
AI isn’t an amazing researcher, but it’s great at comms. One AI hallucination could ruin my credibility, so I still compile and review most info myself, but I find AI helpful when I’m ready to craft narratives and present the hits. A 300-page oppo book is worthless if the campaign can’t follow my thinking because I’m too in the weeds, and I really strive to write oppo that lands in the news, which means my work needs to be digestible and interesting to a reporter.
I’ve been experimenting with AI to help me distill complex details into language for pitches and polling, find through-lines I would have missed and I’m working on an agent now that I told to talk to me like the editor of an investigative news desk. Its job is to stress-test my assumptions and tell me places I need to dig deeper. It’s off to a great start. Headlines in the NYT, WSJ and AP so far this year!
Now for a fun lightning round
###