.png){kind=logo}
After Hollywood Democratic politicos slogged through the past year with a mixture of donor fatigue and dejection, the coming year will see a midterm election cycle where the party out of power typically gains new life.
As such, one of the industry’s more active outlets, a monthly, off-the-record Zoom call with elected officials and aspiring candidates, is expected to be a prime spot for organizing, whether that be canvassing, providing creative content or other activism.
The team behind the call, Mathew Littman and Dori Howard, believe that the midterms this year will see a more activated Hollywood base for Democrats, as Donald Trump‘s popularity sags and Republicans struggle to hold an ever-so-slim House majority.
“There has been such fatigue, that there was this thought that people are writing off politics. I think people needed a little bit of a break, but they are back,” Howard said.
“We have been getting a lot of people [to the Zoom calls] because people are looking for a reason for hope in all the bad news,” Littman said. He pointed to a recent Zoom call with California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has emerged as one of Trump’s most audacious political foes, drawing about 100 people. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) is scheduled for a call later this month.
Littman, a strategist and a former speechwriter for Joe Biden when he served as a U.S. senator, teamed with Howard, a former production executive at Paramount and co-founder of ecommerce platform Milk & Honey, two years ago.
HowLitt is among a handful of political strategy firms that work in the nexus of politics and entertainment. Their clients include The Nuclear Threat Initiative, Virtue, the Save America Movement and Brady United.
Among other things, the firm has been organizing Brady’s Show Gun Safety program, designed to promote gun safety in Hollywood content, with Littman serving as Brady’s senior adviser, culture change; and The Nuclear Threat Initiative, including the coordination of a livestream commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings that featured director James Cameron and former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and moderated by Christiane Amanpour. They also put together advisory councils for both groups.
The Zoom calls, known as The Working Group, were launched in coordination with Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020 as a weekly way to get campaign updates and brainstorm ideas, and to enlist content creatives in his election bid.
The calls have continued since then, with the scope widened to an array of other Democratic politicos and operatives. The calls themselves are not fundraisers, but they have led to events, as candidates typically are looking to establish ties to the industry.
A mantra of the group is no complaining, but instead to get involved and ask “what can we do to be helpful,” Littman said. Some participants have been tapped to provide speeches and even jokes to political figures, set up phone banks, work on ads and offer advice on breaking through in a social-media-driven environment.
Among the participants have been Alyssa Milano, Helen Hunt, Barbara Hershey, Lawrence Bender, Jamie Patricof, Damon Lindelof and David Mandel, as well as social media influencers like Leigh McGowan. The Working Group email list of participants now numbers about 400, according to Littman.
One of the members, screenwriter Heather Hach Hearne, said, “I just think we all feel very helpless in this time, often very hopeless,”” while she hears a lot of frustration about the party and people “just feeling overwhelmed.” The Working Group, she said, has been “just a great way to connect and listen to people in the trenches.” She recently went to D.C. with Littman to participate in a roundtable with top Democratic congressional staffers.
She called the session an “interesting exercise,” as it included ideas on messaging, a frequent topic that has only gotten more urgent in the party. She also found that politicos were well aware of the challenges of breaking through in a social-media driven environment. “It is so much easier to be a critic than offer solutions in this landscape,” she said. The results are still a bit uncertain, but Hearne pointed to Trump’s unpopularity and the affordability issue as a reason for optimism in the coming midterms. “I think it is going to be a bloodbath,” she said, calling Trump’s actions “wildly unpopular.”
The monthly calls have drawn figures including Jocelyn Benson, the secretary of state of Michigan and a candidate for governor; Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), now a candidate for California governor; Maryland Governor Wes Moore; Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ); California Governor Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg; Stacey Abrams; and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), running for Senate in that state. Among those who appeared last year were Abigail Spanberger and Mikee Sherrill, who went on to win their governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey. The group tries to avoid longshot candidates, and generally has not endorsed in primary battles.
In the 2024 and 2022 campaigns, members trekked to Michigan to canvass voters, and plans are to return this year. Littman addressed the Democratic House Issues Caucus Retreat In Virginia last fall, and The Working Group calls recently led to a recent lunch meeting with Anderson Clayton, Democratic Party head of North Carolina, and Curtis Hertel, Democratic head of Michigan. Later this month, on Jan. 27, Kevin Nealon will host a Brady comedy night event at Largo.
Littman said that Hollywood’s involvement in the midterms will be different from previous cycles. There’s donor fatigue from the losses of 2024, the upheaval in the industry and the continued recovery from last year’s devastating fires, but also that Democrats find themselves out of power at a time when the Republican majority has largely let Trump run unchecked.
“The time is very ripe for change. The wind is going in the direction of Democrats now, but nothing is easy,” Howard said.
“It is different because people are much more upset with what it going on and much more careful about what they are doing,” Littman said. “They want to make sure that what they are doing has an impact.”
English (US) ·