We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alex Vanden Heuvel a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alex, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

We just want to do the best we can to make our little corner of the world a better place. I hope that we are remembered for bringing people together and making positive things happen on every level of government, whether it’s on a local, state, or federal. We’ve built a business on the strength of our client referrals and our integrity – I hope that’s always the case because that’s the best advertising you could ever ask for.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My spouse and I run FTR Strategies, a left-aligned political management firm. We are a one-stop shop for anything a campaign needs. From creating a start-to-finish execution strategy, creating a brand identity, managing staff or volunteers, completing financial compliance requirements, running a campaign budget, operating GOTV efforts, and more – we have the experience and skill set to do it all.

There’s a lot of folks in our industry who are only interested in races that they view as being easy wins, and they take a “my way or the highway” approach to dealing with candidates and their loved ones. We push back against that by operating with a community-first mindset and creating a bespoke plan that is unique to the needs of each campaign. We’re interested in making Georgia, and the communities that we live/work/play in, better for everyone. We’re not here to parachute in and leave for the next shiny thing.

This year is our first full calendar year as a business, and we have learned so much. We are so thankful for the ways that we’ve grown. People think that our work must be extremely cyclical to Presidential Election years, and that isn’t true. In Georgia, municipal elections take place in odd-numbered years. That is the case for many states. We’re already talking to people about their plans in 2025, 2026, and 2027.

We believe that everyone in America should feel empowered to run for office at least once in their lifetime – if that were the case, our elected officials would be much more representative of the people in terms of age, race, occupational background, life experiences, and every other dimension. We’re always happy to talk with people about their options and interests, and we hope you’ll reach out to learn more about how you can run for office!

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Our best source of new clients is our old and current clients. Your reputation matters so much in this business. We’re proud to be known as honest, incredibly hard-working, and dedicated to the mission.

In our industry, the potential pool of clients is small because there aren’t a ton of people out there who want to run for office or know someone running for office. That said, an old supervisor of mine had this saying:

“Fast runners keep up with other fast runners.”

The enterprising and hardworking people who care enough to run for something in their community tend to hang around other folks like them, and the strength of the recommendations we have received is something that we are immensely grateful for.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A recent lesson I’ve had to internalize is the importance of staying grounded and maintaining an outsider’s perspective on your work.

I love the work I do, and it’s within areas of interest that I’ve held for most of my life. In reality, people who run for office, volunteer for campaigns and work for campaigns are in the top 1% of people who engage with our political system. Their perspective is radically different from someone in the top 15%, which is a person who donates to campaigns and votes in almost every election – let alone someone in the 75th percentile, which is a person who might not consistently vote even in Presidential elections.

I was guilty of lacking that perspective – I assumed that people stay more within this universe than they do. I think that’s something many entrepreneurs and artists do because we’re so consumed in these fields we care about so much. Surprising results or trends that I’ve seen in recent low-turnout elections have pushed me towards re-evaluating my understanding of how most people engage with politics in their day-to-day lives, and I’m better for it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ftrstrategies.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ftrpolitical/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ftrstrategies/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ftr-strategies/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/FtrPolitical

Image Credits

Portrait by Randi Curling – Randi Curling Photography (Roswell, GA)