David Sirota is a far-left journalist and political operative working as the senior advisor and speechwriter for the 2020 Presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as of early 2019. 1 Sirota has a long history as a left-of-center political activist and journalist, having contributed to numerous publications with left-of-center and socialist orientations, among them Harper’s, The Nation, Salon, In These Times, and The American Prospect. 2 3
Sirota once worked for the Center for American Progress (CAP), where his job, according to Newsweek, was “hacking out a daily barrage of anti-Bush media clips” to reporters that “tend to portray President Bush as a bullying huckster.” 4 CAP founder John Podesta has praised Sirota’s “instinct for the jugular.” 4
A number of controversies have followed Sirota throughout his career. In February 1999, Sirota was fired from his position as the deputy campaign manager in a Philadelphia mayoral campaign after the discovery that he had created a fake campaign website, loaded it with a racially-inflammatory quote, and then promoted it as if it were the official page of a rival candidate’s campaign. 5
Following the April 2013 bombing attack on the Boston Marathon but before the identities of the attackers were known, Sirota wrote a commentary titled “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American”;6 following the death of Venezuelan socialist dictator Hugo Chavez, he praised “Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle.” 7
In mid-March 2019, The Atlantic posted a report alleging that Sirota – who was then working as a journalist – had also been acting as an informal advisor to the pre-campaign efforts for Bernie Sanders’ run for President for a period that “goes back months.” 1 The Atlantic revealed that since December 2018, Sirota had “on Twitter, on the website Capital & Main, and in columns in The Guardian, been trashing most of Sanders’ Democratic opponents—all without disclosing his work with Sanders.” 1 Responding to the concern regarding journalistic ethics, the publisher of Capital & Main told the Washington Post: “If we determine that Mr. Sirota was advising the Sanders campaign while working for Capital & Main, we would be very unlikely to publish his work in the future.” 8
General Background
David Sirota grew up near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 1998. He currently lives in Denver, Colorado, and is married to Emily Sirota, a Democratic member of the Colorado House of Representatives. 2
Political Activities
In March 2019, Sirota became the senior advisor and speechwriter for the 2020 Presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). He had previously been the press secretary for Sanders, starting in the fall of 1999, when Sanders was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. According to a March 2019 report in The Atlantic, Sirota portrayed his two-decade old connection to Sanders as “a past association and nothing more, despite his continuing affinity for Sanders.” 1 5
Sirota was also a senior campaign aide to former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) and a campaign advisor in 2006 to Ned Lamont when Lamont defeated then-Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut in that state’s Democratic primary. Lamont had challenged Lieberman from the left-wing of the Democratic Party, in opposition to Lieberman’s support for then-President George W. Bush’s foreign policy. 2
Progressive Nonprofit Work
Center for American Progress
In 2003 Sirota became one of the first hires at the newly-formed Center for American Progress (CAP). An October 2003 Newsweek profile explained his job as “hacking out a daily barrage of anti-Bush media clips, commentary and snappy quotes” to reporters that “tend to portray President Bush as a bullying huckster.” 4
Prior to his hire at CAP, Sirota had moved from his job with Bernie Sanders to the office of U.S. Rep. David Obey (D-WI). According to Newsweek, it was from Obey’s office that Sirota “started e-mailing his attacks on Bush” that gave “journalists irresistible quotes.” This brought him to the attention of CAP founder John Podesta, who praised Sirota’s “eye for critique and the instinct for the jugular.” 4
State Innovation Exchange Predecessors
In 2005, Sirota and several other left-of-center activists, including one other former Bernie Sanders Congressional staffer, formed the Progressive Legislative Action Network (PLAN), with the goal of “providing solid public policy research to progressive state legislators” and their staffs. Sirota stated that this was an attempt to replicate the work the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) had done for right-of-center state lawmakers. PLAN was soon re-branded as the Progressive States Network (PSN), and existed until 2014 when it was merged with two other organizations to form the State Innovation Exchange (SIX). 9 10
Sirota has also been a senior fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future. 11
Journalism Work
Sirota has been a newspaper columnist for Creators Syndicate, a radio show host, and is the author of three books about left-wing politics and populist movements. He has often appeared on cable-TV news programs. Reviews of his work have characterized him as a “populist rabble rouser” (New York Times) and “a new-generation populist who instinctively understands that the only real questions are ‘Who’s getting screwed?’ and ‘Who’s doing the screwing?’” (the late left-populist pundit Molly Ivins). 12 2
Sirota has produced reports and political/policy commentary for at least a dozen publications, including The Guardian, Politico, Harper’s, The Nation, Salon, International Business Times, Wired, The New York Times Magazine, Pando Daily, In These Times and The American Prospect. 2 3
Controversies
1999 Philadelphia Mayoral Election
In February 1999, shortly before then-Congressman Sanders hired him later that fall, Sirota was the deputy campaign manager in the Philadelphia mayoral campaign of Democrat Dwight Evans. (Evans would lose the mayoral race, but in 2016 won the general election to become the Congressman from Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District). 5
Evans, who is African-American, fired Sirota from the mayoral campaign after discovering Sirota had created a fake campaign website and then promoted it as if it were the official page of another African-American candidate. Sirota had loaded the website with an out-of-context quote, which created a false impression that the rival candidate was promoting a racially-charged statement that could be perceived as insulting to the city’s white voters. Evans denounced the website as an example of “dirty tricks” and blamed Sirota for being “overzealous.” 5
“I deeply regret being involved in this whole incident,” said Sirota, when asked about it in March 2019. “I am absolutely ashamed that it happened, and I have felt genuinely terrible about this for 20 years.” 5
Boston Marathon Bombing Commentary
Following the April 2013 bombing attack on the Boston Marathon, but before the identities of the attackers were known, Sirota wrote a commentary for the left-wing website Salon titled “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American.” His wish was based on his assertion that the U.S. government has a bias in favor of “white privilege.” He argued the American reaction to attackers from an Islamic nation, or those claiming radical-Islamic justifications, would more likely be a military response against another nation, while the U.S. government’s reaction to the revelation of domestic, white, and non-Muslim attackers would be less extreme. 6
Greg Gutfield of Fox News was one of many to denounce Sirota’s column, stating “it’s lesser minds who seek to answer “why”” (i.e.: identify an enemy group to blame) before answering “who.” 13 14
The bombers were later arrested and revealed to be two immigrant brothers who had adopted radical-Islamic attitudes against Americans as the motive for their attack. One of the brothers died during the manhunt to apprehend the pair, while the other was tried, convicted of the crimes, and sentenced to death. There was no known nation nor organized terror group blamed by American government authorities for the Boston attack, nor retaliated against afterward.
Praise for Chavismo
In early March 2013, following the death of Venezuelan socialist dictator Hugo Chavez, Sirota wrote a commentary for Salon titled “Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle.” The piece stated that “Chavez became the bugaboo of American politics because his full-throated advocacy of socialism and redistributionism at once represented a fundamental critique of neoliberal economics, and also delivered some indisputably positive results.” As evidence of this point, Sirota noted strong GDP gains during Chavez’s rule and falling poverty rates, and suggested there were lessons the United States could learn from Venezuela’s socialist economic model. 7
Other observers have pointed out that extraordinary oil exports, coupled with historically anomalous high oil prices, allowed Chavez’s high-rolling but unsustainable socialist economy. Critiquing Sirota in March 2016, three years after Chavez had died and following a steep 64 percent collapse in world oil prices, a commentator writing for Fox News noted that 3 million refugees had fled a demolished Venezuelan economy, that the “average citizen of Venezuela has lost 19 pounds from malnutrition,” and that the nation was suffering power outages because the state energy industry – nationalized under Chavez – could no longer keep the lights on, despite the rich fuel resources. 15 16
Sirota has a very different attitude toward the U.S. energy industry and its contribution to the American economy, portraying the energy industry as a threat to the “survival of the human race.” In a November 2018 commentary for The Guardian, he called for a retreat from “drill, baby, drill,” with lawsuits and regulatory sanctions against “oil and gas moguls” and their “scorched-earth campaign” who “will not accept even a tiny reduction in their revenues.” 17
Blurred Activist and Journalist Boundaries
As of March 2019, the month it was announced he would become a full-time staffer for the 2020 Bernie Sanders Presidential campaign, Sirota’s biography on his personal website stated that he became a “full-time journalist in 2006.” 2 Two incidents after 2007 – both involving Sirota’s connections with Bernie Sanders – sparked controversies regarding whether Sirota was blurring the lines between journalism and political advocacy.
Sanders Consulting Ethics
In mid-March 2019, The Atlantic posted a report demonstrating that Sirota – who was then working as a journalist – had also been acting as an informal advisor to the 2020 Bernie Sanders Presidential campaign for a period that “goes back months.” The Atlantic revealed that since the prior December Sirota had “on Twitter, on the website Capital & Main, and in columns in The Guardian, been trashing Sanders’ Democratic primary opponents—all without disclosing his work with Sanders.” 1
The Atlantic cited numerous statements from mid-December 2018 through early 2019 in which Sirota had used his journalism byline or his Twitter social media account to launch criticisms at potential Democratic Presidential primary rivals of Sanders. Sirota wrote a December column in The Guardian, citing research from Capital & Main, purporting to demonstrate that former Texas Democratic Congressman Beto O’Rourke “frequently voted against” his fellow House Democrats and with the Trump Administration. On Twitter from December through February 2019, according to posts preserved by The Atlantic, Sirota also launched criticisms of former Vice President Joe Biden, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (D), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA). 1
On March 11, 2019, the Sanders campaign officially announced it had hired Sirota. The Atlantic noted the timing was peculiar: “Sirota’s hiring as a senior adviser and speechwriter was announced by the Sanders campaign on Tuesday morning after The Atlantic contacted the campaign and inquired about the undisclosed role Sirota held while attacking other Democrats.” 1
Sirota’s behavior the day before was also noteworthy, according to The Atlantic: “On Monday night, after being contacted for a second time by The Atlantic with a list of specific questions about his undisclosed work for Sanders, Sirota did not respond to the email but deleted more than 20,000 tweets. He left fewer than 200 online.” 1
The next day, shortly after his new position with the Sanders campaign had been announced, Sirota responded to The Atlantic, claiming the Twitter deletions were the result of an “autodeleter” he had implemented months earlier. 1
Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir told The Atlantic that discussions about a job for Sirota had been discussed at the “top levels” of the campaign “since before the senator launched his bid for the presidency.” Yet, shortly after the announcement of the job, and almost a month after Sanders formally announced he was in the race, Sirota issued a statement declaring “This new job was not something I expected or planned for—but it is something I am excited to do.” 1 Sirota also stated he hoped to return to journalism in the future. 1
But a Washington Post analysis of the incident stated that adherence to journalistic ethics might preclude some news organizations from hiring Sirota. The publisher of Capital & Main told the Post: “If we determine that Mr. Sirota was advising the Sanders campaign while working for Capital & Main, we would be very unlikely to publish his work in the future.” 8
The Post also provided an interpretation of how journalism ethics applied to the situation: 8
A reporter’s undisclosed connection to a political candidate would constitute a breach of journalistic ethics. The basic rule is that journalists are supposed to be free of any personal or financial relationship with those they cover or comment on, even an “informal” relationship. Alternatively, reporters are obligated to at least disclose such relationships so that readers or viewers can evaluate the integrity of the reporting for themselves.
A politics writer for the left-of-center Salon observed that Sirota had developed a reputation for biased and unfair reports: 18
Sirota has an almost single-minded obsession with crapping on any Democratic politician perceived as competition for Bernie Sanders. In doing so, Sirota has sometimes argued in bad faith, such as when he framed individual donations from employees of oil and gas companies to Beto O’Rourke’s Senate campaign as “oil/gas industry campaign cash,” a move that Charles Pierce of Esquire characterized as “the laziest form of campaign gotcha.”
Among Sirota’s deleted tweets preserved by The Atlantic were many instances of him arguing with other left-of-center critics who had been accusing him of biased reporting. In one instance, Sirota asserted that “while Dems deride Trump’s war on the press, there are a cadre of Dems who try to bully campaign finance reporters if they report facts that are inconvenient to Democratic candidates.” At another point he declared he was not participating in “some sort of secretive political conspiracy for a particular candidate.” 1
U.S. Senate Credentials Incident
In February 2007, the Washington Post reported that Sirota roamed the U.S. Senate with an intern identification pass issued by the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sirota was using the special access to interview Sanders and other senators regarding a book he was working on and told the Post he had used his “intern” status for more than two days. 19
Senate rules had allowed the Executive Committee of the Periodical Correspondents’ Association (PCA), an organization of credentialed journalists, to discern who qualified as a legitimate reporter deserving of special press access to the senate gallery. According to their standards: “Persons eligible for admission to the Periodical Press Galleries must be bona fide resident correspondents of reputable standing, giving their chief attention to the gathering and reporting of news.” 19
According to the Post, Sirota had been denied a press pass because the PCA executive committee “felt that Sirota’s chief intention is not to the gathering of news but to the advancement of Democratic causes and candidate.” Some of the evidence for this finding came from Sirota’s own website and its biography, which at the time stated the following: 19
David Sirota is a veteran campaign strategist, political operative and writer living in Helena, Mont. He is the founder and co-chair of the Progressive Legislative Action Network (PLAN)—an organization created to support progressive state legislators and fight back against the right wing’s extremist campaigns at the state level. 19
The chair of the PCA’s executive committee informed the Post that Sirota “rewrote his Web site” following their ruling that his own description self-identified him as a partisan activist and disqualified him from consideration for a press pass. The Post stated that Sirota’s “end-run” around the media credentialing process had “irked” reporters and Capitol Hill aides who knew him as a “not a liberal writer but a liberal strategist, which, by definition would preclude him from getting a press pass.” 19
References
- Dovere, Edward-Isaac. “Bernie Sanders Just Hired His Twitter Attack Dog.” The Atlantic. March 19, 2019. Accessed March 22, 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/sanders-promised-civility-hired-twitter-attack-dog/585259/
- “Biography.” DavidSirota.com. Accessed March 22, 2019. http://davidsirota.com/biography/
- “Author Profile: David Sirota.” In These Times. Accessed March 26, 2019. http://inthesetimes.com/community/profile/236
- Wolffe, Richard. “A Man With A Mission.” Newsweek. October 26, 2003. Accessed March 25, 2019. https://www.newsweek.com/man-mission-139099
- Dovere, Edward-Isaac. “From a Bogus Website to Bernie Sanders’s Inner Circle.” The Atlantic. March 22, 2019. Accessed March 25, 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/bernie-sanderss-new-speechwriter-has-controversial-past/585547/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
- Sirota, David. “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American.” Salon. April 17, 2013. Accessed March 26, 2019. https://www.salon.com/2013/04/16/lets_hope_the_boston_marathon_bomber_is_a_white_american/
- Sirota, David. “Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle.” Salon. March 6, 2013. Accessed March 26, 2019. https://www.salon.com/2013/03/06/hugo_chavezs_economic_miracle/
- Farhi, Paul. “A journalist (and Bernie Sanders supporter) had a relationship he kept from his readers.” Washington Post. March 20, 2019. Accessed March 25, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-bernie-sanders-supporter-and-journalist-had-a-secret-he-kept-from-his-readers/2019/03/20/063aabee-4b26-11e9-b79a-961983b7e0cd_story.html?utm_term=.9429591b5786
- Singer, Matt. “Man with the PLAN.” In These Times. July 15, 2005. Accessed March 25, 2019. http://inthesetimes.com/article/2253
- Blades, Meteor. “The resistance: State Innovation Exchange provides a progressive economic blueprint for legislators.” Daily Kos. December 9, 2016. Accessed March 25, 2019. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/12/9/1609162/-The-resistance-State-Innovation-Exchange-provides-a-progressive-economic-blueprint-for-legislators?
- Transcript. “Book World: ‘The Uprising.’” Washington Post. June 4, 2008. Accessed March 25, 2019. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/06/02/DI2008060202445.html
- “Books.” DavidSirota.com. Accessed March 22, 2019. http://davidsirota.com/books/
- “Gutfeld rips media reaction to Boston bombings.” Fox News. April 18, 2013. Accessed March 26, 2019. https://video.foxnews.com/v/2310103261001/?intcmp=obinsite#sp=show-clips
- “Salon contributor David Sirota has fingers crossed for white male marathon bomber.” Twitchy. April 16, 2013. Accessed March 26, 2019. https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2013/04/16/salon-contributor-david-sirota-has-fingers-crossed-for-white-male-marathon-bomber/
- Turner, Daniel. “Venezuela is close to becoming a post-apocalyptic society – That’s what socialism has created.” Fox News. March 9, 2016. Accessed March 26, 2019. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/venezuela-is-close-to-becoming-a-post-apocalyptic-society-thats-what-socialism-has-created
- “Europe Brent Spot Price FOB (Dollars per barrel).” U.S. Energy Information Agency. Accessed March 26, 2019. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/RBRTED.htm
- Sirota, David. “Big Oil v the planet is the fight of our lives. Democrats must choose a side.” The Guardian. November 15, 2018. Accessed March 26, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/15/climate-change-democrats-oil-gas
- Marcotte, Amanda. “Democrats can’t afford another ugly primary campaign in 2020. Is that where we’re heading?” Salon. March 20, 2019. Accessed March 25, 2019. https://www.salon.com/2019/03/20/democrats-cant-afford-another-ugly-primary-campaign-in-2020-is-that-where-were-heading/
- Akers, Mary Ann. “Sirota: Journalist or Activist?” Washington Post. February 12, 2007. Accessed March 26, 2019. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2007/02/sirota_journalist_or_activist.html