RESOLVE

A political strategist draws on his victories in Arizona in this playbook for the Democratic Party.

“If Democrats are to win again, we must return to what worked in 2020,” writes Grodsky. As director of communications for the Arizona Democratic Party from 2019 to 2021 (a period that saw his party’s presidential candidate win the state for the first time since 1996) and as the communications director for Adrian Fontes’ successful campaign for Arizona’s Secretary of State in 2022 (he won by the largest margin by any non-federal Democratic candidate in state history), the author has a track record of securing victories in one of the nation’s most coveted swing states. These wins, per his telling, were not flukes but “the culmination of a deliberate, disciplined strategy.” Taking lessons from his party’s groundbreaking victories at the grassroots level in Arizona, Grodsky provides a playbook for further success in the 2026 midterm elections and beyond. As much as this book is about replicating the blueprint of 2020, it also offers a scouring critique of what went wrong in 2024. Not only did the party lack “an empathetic tone on the economy” and lazily rely “on monolithic communications practices” with diverse constituencies, per the author, but it also prioritized overly academic “lingo birthed from think tanks that pushed the limits of political correctness.” Regarding issues of racial injustice in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the author argues that too many Democratic pundits on the national level embraced terminology and policies that alienated moderate voters. Grodsky contrasts this failure with his own successful efforts in Arizona, where he led data-driven messaging campaigns that acknowledged the core message of BLM activists “without falling into the trap of the ‘defund’ [the police] rhetoric.” A concise volume that comes in at just over 150 total pages, the work doesn’t sacrifice research-based and anecdotal observations for brevity; the author both builds upon his own battle-tested strategies and also includes almost 20 pages of source citations that underscore his firm grasp of modern political strategy.

A well-researched, effectively argued approach for Democratic communication strategies in swing states.