Dick Young, Paris, France
Behind the debates and rallies, much of the politicking of 2020 is done online. Guiding President Trump’s digital strategy is Gary Coby, a key figure in the President’s 2016 win over Hillary Clinton. Politico profiles Coby, writing (abridged):
Gary Coby was instrumental in giving Donald Trump his first four years in office. Now he’s expected to be a major force in the campaign to win Trump four more.
An architect of the Trump campaign’s innovative digital strategy in 2016, the 33-year-old Coby has been furiously working the past two years to help build the digital infrastructure for the 2020 campaign.
That includes growing the president’s already formidable supporter list by running and prospecting the re-election campaign’s millions of dollars in Facebook ads as well as co-founding Open Sesame, the fast-growing peer-to-peer texting company for the right that likely will play a central role in the Trump campaign’s “post-Facebook strategy.”
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign said Coby will “devise innovative techniques that will establish a whole new generation of volunteers, activists and donors throughout the new campaign cycle leading up to President Trump’s victory in 2020.”
A self-taught high school graduate from a blue-collar family in Maryland, Coby lives outside the Beltway with a home in Bowie, Md., and a social circle free of political junkies.
With many Republican big-money establishment donors keeping their wallets closed, the campaign and the RNC raised $238.6 million in donations under $200, which accounted for 69 percent of the campaign’s individual contributions, according to an analysis by the Campaign Finance Institute. That exceeded the small-dollar donation totals and percentages of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and even both of Barack Obama’s presidential runs.
Or, as Coby said: “Trump won because of the people, the grassroots, more than any other president.”
Gary Coby
CEO of Opn Sesame and president of Realtime Media
