David Sirota
David J. Sirota is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, a reader-supported investigative news outlet focused on exposing the negative influence of corporate corruption on American society. Sirota was a speechwriter and senior adviser for the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign. In 2022, he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for conceiving the story for Netflix's Don't Look Up alongside co-writer and director Adam McKay.
Sirota's professional career has spanned politics, media, and journalism. In politics, he has held roles such as campaign manager, fundraiser, spokesperson, strategist, and consultant for a variety of left-leaning Democratic candidates and office holders. He twice worked for Bernie Sanders, both when Sanders was a member of the U. S. House of Representatives and as part of Sanders 2020 presidential campaign. He was also a staff member of the Center for American Progress, a liberal research and advocacy group.
Sirota has also been a columnist for Guardian US, editor-at-large for American left publication Jacobin and senior investigations editor for The International Business Times. He has also worked as television writer and radio host. He has written four books: Hostile Takeover, an exploration of corruption in the U.S. political system; The Uprising, about ordinary citizens frustrations with the U.S. government; Back to Our Future, which explores how the politics and culture of the 1980s influenced the thinking of later generations; and Master Plan: The Hidden Plot To Legalize Corruption In America, co-authored with Jared Jacang Maher.
In his political career, Sirota has been described by his critics as "an attack dog", and by his allies as "intense, driven, even obsessive", and someone with an "eye for critique and the instinct for the jugular ." In 2003, journalist Richard Wolffe described Sirota as "a man on a mission." In 2023, reflecting on Sirota's varied career, CNN media analyst Brian Stelter wrote, "Sirota's life has been one long campaign against plutocrats and the corrupt politicians who enable them."
Early life and education
Sirota is a native of Abington Township, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. He is the eldest son of Rob Sirota, a retired physician, and Karen Sirota, the former president of a local synagogue. He has two younger brothers. He has described himself as "growing up as a relatively observant Reformed Jew in a Jewish community." Sirota has also described himself as an "intense" fan of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team while growing up, particularly of the players Charles Barkley and Rick Mahorn. Sirota was able to meet Barkley in 1986 and have his picture taken with him. Sirota was also a fan of the local Philadelphia news station WPVI-TV. When Sirota was in the 8th grade, he shadowed local sportscaster Gary Papa for a day. He described his love of the local news station "as part of my journey into journalism".Sirota met the future actor Bradley Cooper, who lived in the neighboring town of Jenkintown, when they both played on the 1985 East Abington Little League Baseball team. Sirota attended the William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia, where he was close friends with Adam F. Goldberg, who went on to create the TV series The Goldbergs. Goldberg's series, about his life growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, featured a recurring character based on Sirota in multiple episodes of the series. The character was also named David Sirota. Sirota attended the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University from 1994 to 1998, where he earned a bachelor's degree in journalism and political science. While there, he worked as a reporter for the Daily Northwestern. He also worked on his first political race during his senior year.
Career
Political career, 1998–2008
Sirota's career in political campaigns began when he was a research director for Illinois State Senator Howard W. Carroll's unsuccessful run for U.S. representative in Illinois's 9th congressional district in the 1998 election; Carroll lost in the Democratic primary to Illinois State Representative Jan Schakowsky. In 1999, Sirota served as Dwight Evans's deputy mayoral campaign manager in Philadelphia. He was let go for "overzealous behavior" related to the creation of a fake website containing damaging racial comments attributed to Evans' opponent John White Jr. Evans said he believed that Sirota had not created the bogus page, but had discussed it with the person who created it, who was his friend and former college classmate at Northwestern. Sirota then became a fundraiser for Joe Hoeffel in his first successful campaign for the House of Representatives in Pennsylvania's 13th congressional district.From 1999 to 2001, Sirota worked as press aide and spokesperson for Bernie Sanders, who was then serving as the U.S. representative from Vermont. Sirota has stated that working for Sanders was "completely transformative for me as a person". Sirota also said: "When I first worked for him, I was right out of college. It helped me find who I was and what my values are." According to journalist Brian Stelter, " experienced Congress in all its possibility and all its vulgarity through the eyes of the only registered independent in the institution." From 2001 to 2003, Sirota worked as the communications director for the Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee. He managed press and message development on health care, education, defense, the environment and post-9/11 national security issues.
From 2003 to 2005, Sirota worked at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research and advocacy group, where he was responsible for rapid response and media outreach. Sirota was hired for the job by former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta. According to journalist Richard Wolffe, Podesta said of Sirota: "I didn't know him. I just saw he had an eye for critique and the instinct for the jugular." Wolffe wrote a profile of Sirota in Newsweek in Oct 2003, in which he described Sirota as "the Internet child of the Clinton war room generation." Wolffe also described Sirota as a "political operative" skilled at "hacking out a daily barrage of anti-Bush media clips, commentary, and snappy quotes" who made "guerrilla attacks on the Bush administration", and who was "well schooled in the art of Washington warfare." According to the article, Sirota's main weapons were computer emails. For example, Sirota unearthed a two-year-old comment that Colin Powell had made to the effect that "Iraq posed no threat to its neighbors, and possessed no 'significant capability' in weapons of mass destruction." Sirota made Powell's statements more widely known. Reporters pounced, and it became a public relations blow to the Bush administration. Sirota was credited with having revealed that $87 billion for Iraq could have been used to erase huge state deficits at home, a fact that was repeated by Democrats nationwide. Sirota also created the CAP publication Progress Report.
Sirota served as a senior strategist for Brian Schweitzer's unsuccessful 2000 Senate campaign and successful 2004 gubernatorial campaign. In September 2006, Sirota worked as a political consultant for Ned Lamont's U.S. Senate campaign. Lamont defeated Joe Lieberman in the primary, but Lieberman ran as an independent and defeated Lamont in the November election. In 2008, Sirota was co-chair of the Progressive Legislative Action Network. He was a senior fellow at the Campaign for America's Future.
Journalism and media career, 2005–2019
In May 2005, while writing his own blog, Sirota became a contributor to The Huffington Post. He was a regular guest on The Al Franken Show and makes guest appearances on The Colbert Report, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, NOW, Lou Dobbs Tonight, CNBC, and NPR. He is a senior editor at In These Times, a regular columnist for The Nation and the Intermountain Jewish News, and a past contributor to The American Prospect. He has been published in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Sirota was a contributor to OpenLeft, a now-defunct progressive political blog. In June 2007, he replaced the late progressive columnist Molly Ivins with a column to be syndicated nationally by Creators Syndicate. Sirota became a contributing writer for Salon in May 2011.From 2009 to 2012, Sirota was the morning host at the Denver progressive talk station KKZN. Sirota was initially filling in for Jay Marvin on his eponymous program; but Marvin was ultimately unable to return, and Sirota became the permanent host in 2010. Sirota also guest hosted for Thom Hartmann and Norman Goldman. On July 16, 2012, Sirota moved to sister station KHOW to co-host an afternoon drive program with former George W. Bush administration FEMA director Michael D. Brown, The Rundown with Sirota and Brown. In January 2013, after nearly four years in radio, Sirota parted ways with KHOW/Clear Channel. Insiders speculate the reason for the abrupt departure was friction between the two co-hosts; it left Brown with his own show. In March 2017, Sirota joined The Young Turks online broadcast network as a contributor, providing periodic investigative reports. In early 2018, after four years of reporting for the International Business Times as senior editor of investigations, Sirota left that publication.
Sanders campaign 2019–2020
On March 19, 2019, the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign announced it had hired Sirota to work as a senior advisor and speechwriter. Sirota joined the Sanders campaign after fourteen years working as a journalist. He stated that he was "happy" working as a journalist, and that journalism is "extremely important." But he accepted the job on the campaign because "I think the crises we're facing now are so enormously existential that when I was asked to serve in this role, I felt I had an obligation and a responsibility to serve. That's why I'm doing it." In describing his role as a speechwriter for Sanders, Sirota stated, "But even though the position is called 'speechwriter,' nobody puts words in Bernie Sanders's mouth. He knows exactly what he wants to say and exactly how he wants to say it. So I'll be supporting him in doing these speeches in the sense of everything from research to data to incorporating examples and stories about what he's saying."In addition to speech writing, Sirota helped to "plan campaign strategy" and functioned "as a rapid-response war room." Sirota also published the email newsletter Bern Notice and the podcast Hear the Bern. The newsletter and podcast were ways "through which the campaign has tried to bypass traditional news outlets and reach voters directly." The Sanders campaign was notable for its criticism of the mainstream media outlets and their coverage of the issues surrounding the campaign. Writing in the New York Times, journalist Marc Tracy stated:
Mr. Sirota... has amplified the campaign's consistent focus on criticizing news outlets that most regard as mainstream, targeting stories that he considers unfair.
As an example of the campaign's media criticism, Tracy cited an instance of the campaign's newsletter :
When the first in-house newsletter of Bernie Sanders's campaign landed in inboxes last August, its chief antagonist was neither President Trump nor a rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, but rather The Washington Post and, as the email said, "the Washington pundits who are paid by the corporations and billionaires who own the media."
Campaigning in Iowa a few days earlier, Mr. Sanders, the senator from Vermont, had accused The Post of withholding positive coverage because of his efforts to raise the minimum wage at Amazon, the internet retail giant founded by the newspaper's owner, Jeff Bezos. Several prominent journalists objected to the comment—a "full freak out," as the newsletter, which is called Bern Notice, put it.
"Reporters don't have to receive a call from Jeff Bezos," said, "to know that their paychecks are signed by a billionaire with a well-known personal and corporate agenda—and knowing that agenda exists can shape overall frameworks and angles of coverage."
Soon after Sirota joined the Sanders campaign, the journalist Edward-Isaac Dovere published an article in The Atlantic accusing Sirota of secretly working on behalf of the Sanders campaign while he was still working as a journalist for The Guardian and Capital & Main. Sirota, The Guardian, and the Sanders campaign refuted these accusations; the editors of Capital & Main declined to comment on the accuracy of the story. Dovere's accusations were also refuted by other investigative journalists. According to journalist Walker Bragman, " story hinged on an unverifiable quote which the speaker claims was misrepresented, along with innuendo stemming from the fact that Sirota deleted thousands of tweets following his employment. Paste spoke to multiple campaign insiders familiar with the matter, all of whom disputed Dovere's timeline and narrative. Their accounts lined up with what we found through our own reporting on unrelated matters over the last few months. Other individuals have also come forward to publicly refute the article’s claims." Journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote, "Most critically, the key claim that made the article such a sensation – that Sirota's 'informal work for Sanders goes back months' and included 'quietly writing speeches' for the Senator – is entirely and demonstrably false." Sanders suspended his presidential campaign on April 8, 2020. He endorsed Joe Biden on April 13.