Joe Napolitan

Joseph "Joe" Napolitan was, by his own claim, the first person to call himself a political consultant (Perlmutter, ed. Manship Guide to Political Communication, pg19). He helped build the profession of political consulting into the major force it is today. Originally a specialist in grassroots organization, he evolved into one of the leading makers of political commercials. His management of the 1966 Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaign of Milton Shapp, a businessman who had no previous experience in public office and little name recognition at the start of the campaign, gained widespread national publicity when Shapp upset favored State Senator Robert P. Casey, who had the support of the Democratic State Committee and the vast majority of Democratic County organizations, by spending $1.4 million of his own money and flooding the airwaves with television commercials.

(The Casey name would later dominate statewide Pennsylvania politics for decades, as Casey would win two terms as Auditor General and two terms as Governor, while his son, Robert P. Casey, Jr. would win two terms as Auditor General and one term, so far, as State Treasurer.)

The Shapp campaign was the first major campaign effort that showed that a well-conceived media campaign could get the majority of the votes against a well-entrenched political machine. Previously, media campaigns had focused on the narrower task of winning swing voters from the opposite party and raising voter turnout, goals aimed at only a minority of the electorate.

The Shapp campaign also marked the beginning of the self-funded candidate for public office, as thousands of other wealthy Americans decided that it was worth spending large sums of personal wealth in order to win election to public office. Political consultants actively encouraged this trend.

Napolitan continued as a political consultant for over three decades after the path-breaking Shapp campaign, wrote books about politics, and served as President of the American Association of Political Consultants, the profession's trade association.