Steve Jarding

Steve Jarding is an American political consultant from Rapid City, South Dakota. Jarding has managed and worked on both statewide and national campaigns for the Democratic Party, including winning Senate races and a winning gubernatorial race.

Education and Teaching

Jarding graduated with a degree in government from the University of South Dakota. He received a master's degree and pursued a PhD in government from the University of Oklahoma, where he later served as a fellow at its center for congressional studies.

In 2004, Jarding was selected to serve as a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics. He is currently a lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, where he teaches courses on political strategy and campaigns.

Campaigns

In the 1980s, Jarding served as Executive Director of the South Dakota Democratic Party, and on the first Senate campaign of former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle. He also worked on the unsuccessful 1988 and 1992 presidential campaigns of former U.S. Senator from Nebraska Bob Kerrey. In the 1990s, he served as Communication Director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC).

In 2001, Jarding managed Mark Warner's victorious Virginia gubernatorial race, along with fellow political operative Dave "Mudcat" Saunders. This race was featured heavily in a profile of Jarding by Matt Bai that ran in the New York Times Magazine in 2002.

In 2006, Jarding was a senior adviser to the winning Virginia U.S. Senate campaign of former Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb, who defeated the incumbent Republican governor George Allen.

In 2008, Jarding was the campaign manager on the winning campaign of South Dakota U.S. Senator Tim Johnson.

Political Strategy

Jarding is notable in Democratic political operative circles for his focus on white male voters in the South and Midwest that he believes the Democratic Party has needlessly ceded to their Republican counterparts. According to Jarding and Saunders, Democrats have proven distinctly incompetent at expressing their common values with "Bubba voters" (referred to as NASCAR Dads by other analysts). To rectify the problem, the winning gubernatorial campaign for Mark Warner sponsored a NASCAR team and a bluegrass band to convey to these voters that Warner did not condescend to them and was not the stereotypical Democrat. Jarding and Saunders spelled out this thesis in their 2006 book Foxes in the Henhouse.