Campaign Lifer Looks for Life Off the Trail

Political Strategist Dodson Settles Down, for the Moment

Doug Dodson now works with Joe Slade White & Co. (By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)

The sword is what Rep. Timothy Bishop remembers about the day Doug Dodson showed up to run his first-ever campaign, in 2002. It was late summer. Dodson drove up to the New York Democrat's headquarters in the Hamptons. He stepped out of his Ford pickup truck wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, carrying a medieval blade.

For 20 years Dodson has lived on the road, racing from race to race, brandishing his swords. Through more than two dozen campaigns, he drank, he smoked, he swapped tales of the trail -- in the flashy fashion of flamboyant Southern political strategists James Carville, Paul Begala, Hamilton Jordan and Lee Atwater. At 48, diehard Democrat Dodson was big, brash, blunt and bold -- and older than most in the game.

"He was fearless," says Bishop, who was running uphill. "Protective of me.

"And a piece of work."

Swords became his trademark. Over the years he bought a half-dozen different kinds from a truck stop in Joplin, Mo. "First time I'd walk into a new office," he says, "I'd hang the sword right on the wall." A reminder to everyone that politics is war.

Now it's peacetime for Dodson. He's settling down. Hanging up spurs; sheathing his swords. After the 2006 cycle, he took a PR job with Joe Slade White & Co. in Washington. He's leaving that tribe of nomads -- the political operatives who roam this nation, going from campaign to campaign -- and setting down roots in a town teeming with the consultancy. He's got that new apartment -- and a 50-inch Samsung flat-panel. "Always promised myself that when I finally settled down, I'd buy a serious TV," he says.

On a recent morning, Dodson is sitting cross-legged on his bed -- a red industrial-strength air mattress -- in his newfound, sparsely furnished Cleveland Park apartment. The TV looms nearby. He's a big, voluble guy, thick white hair and mustache, in an XXL Dallas Cowboys jersey. A pack of Marlboros sits alongside his Treo 650, both within easy reach. His laugh -- and voice -- are full of smoke and Maker's Mark and Coca-Cola.

The unabashed Dodson says he was a man at risk -- of becoming the "world's oldest campaign manager." This last time around he ran Brad Henry's successful gubernatorial race in Oklahoma. Before that, it was the bids of state senators David Cain in Texas and Ilan Plawker in New Jersey, Connecticut congressman Jim Maloney and a bunch of others.

Record as campaign manager: 10 wins, 4 losses. "I have not lost a race since 1997," he says.

Andrew Whalen, a veteran of many campaigns, including the recent Heath Shuler victory in North Carolina, says he's known a lot of campaign junkies over the years -- folks who forsake home, hearth and hammock for a thankless existence in the political trenches. Of all the politicos he has met, Dodson is the most memorable. "Doug's a little bit louder than other people," Whalen says. "He's definitely more brash. He's not afraid to be Doug. Other people always have an eye on moving up. Not Doug."

Dodson has preferred to run campaigns, not report to some other poobah. Explains Dodson, "I wanted one war that was mine and mine alone."

Unpacking in his apartment, Dodson recalls some greatest hits. From a plastic box he pulls a campaign brochure of Rep. William Sarpalius (D-Tex.), the first candidate he worked for. "I'd been on the campaign for about a week in 1988," he says, "when Bill got his jaw broken."