Edgy Interview: Kevin Reikes

When you climb the highest mountain (at least in the US), you get to know your guide. Actually, although political consultant Kevin Reikes and I summitted Mt Whitney in July of 2024, we go back a long way. One of the smartest consultants I know, Kevin and I started working together before he founded his firm Media & Associates in the mid-90s. We’ve worked together on countless issues in countless locales and Kevin brings strong strategic skills to the fight every time. He understands polling, messaging, and framing. In a phrase, “Kevin gets it.” If I were running for office, he’d be the consultant on my team tasked with convincing moderate Democrats to vote for me. Honestly, the following interview doesn’t do justice to the breadth of interests and expertise Kevin has… but know that I tried.

Take us through “Kevin and Tina Reikes’ perfect day.”

If I could script our perfect day it would likely be introducing our granddaughter to Paris for the first time. We’d wake up in a favorite little apartment we use in Paris and head downstairs for croissants before wandering down to Rue Cler to shop for provisions – amazing cheeses, flowers, fresh fruits and veggies, and charcuterie. Back to the apartment to stock the fridge and then on to the Eifel Tower to get a bird’s eye view of the city. After a lite bistro lunch some museum time and shopping, we’d finish with an over-the-top dinner at Pre Catelan for no other reason than to have our granddaughter try one of the most amazing desserts in Paris… “Le Pomme.” That would be an amazing day for Tina and me. What would make it perfect would be sharing it with our granddaughter.

Tell us about your farm and what’s special about it.

In 2003 my wife and I bought about 30 acres near Winters in Northern California and built an organic farm. It’s called Bear Flag Farm. We have lavender fields and distill essential oil, and an olive orchard for olive oil. We also have a small Syrah vineyard and winery where we produce about 300 cases a year. The property is ringed with fruit orchards and in the summer we grow row crops like heirloom tomatoes and peppers. In 2006 we started allowing a very limited number of events at the farm, usually weddings, and most of what we grow and produce is used for those events. Those were some of the first farm-to-fork weddings in the country and people have come from all over the world to get married at the farm. And while the lifestyle itself is unbelievably rarified, I think the most special thing about the farm has been creating it with my wife.

Truth be told, these days I get to make the 25-minute drive into my Sacramento office every day and my wife runs the farm’s day-to-day operations. But looking back, the literal blood, sweat, and tears that it took to create Bear Flag Farm is something that we both cherish.

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Well, I was Jewish and wasn’t very good at math. So med school was out, and that only left law school. I was stumbling down that path as an English major until my second year of college when I was invited to a weekend seminar on political direct mail put on by Murray Fishel from Kent State. I loved it. The perfect blend of creativity, strategy, and cynicism. After that, I quickly morphed my major into Applied Behavioral Sciences and have been adding to the lessons I learned on that weekend for the past 42 years.

What’s the best professional advice you’ve received and who gave it to you?

I was working out of the Capitol doing legislative campaigns and somebody must have pissed me off. I can’t even remember what the incident was. But I must have been sharpening my knives and getting ready to go to war when Willie Brown looked at me and said, “Make enemies on purpose.” Of course, that was great advice and I’m glad I was smart enough to heed it. That’s one of the things that I attribute my longevity in this business to. Though I’m constantly amazed at how many people in politics don’t appreciate that concept and are willing to make enemies over ego, vanity, or failures to take personal responsibility.

Who or what exerted the most influence on your career?

When I got back to California from DC after running around the country with a national campaign, I knew how to write and thought I knew about campaigns. But, of course, I didn’t know anything. It was Rose King who gave me my first real job in California politics. She was one of the first female political consultants in California and specialized in messaging and direct mail. She was wicked smart, scary at times, hard driving, and taught me a lot about how to truly connect with voters. I find that I still run my shop in much the same way she ran hers. To this day, the notes I write in the margins of polls or oppo research books look exactly like her notes from 35 years ago. Looking back, I was really lucky to have been raised professionally by a female consultant. Rose is gone now, but I don’t think she’d mind me saying that she would set up client meetings for us throughout the state that just so happened to coincide with where the Dead were playing that week. What a boss!

What advice do you have for young people starting out?

The absolute beauty of being a young person on a campaign is that you get to learn things from experienced people that can never be taught in a classroom. This is one of those rare professions where techniques and styles get passed down from one generation to the next. My advice would be to take time to be an apprentice. Spend as much time as you can learning from masters and from those whose asses are really on the line. As a young person on a campaign, you have an opportunity to watch how decisions are made and help to implement the tactics. And the longer you stay in that space, the more valuable you’ll be to your clients and your colleagues in the future. One campaign season does not a consultant make.

Is there an important issue that you feel is flying under the radar these days in CA politics?

Pessimism and a crisis of confidence in California. Yes, voters have been moving toward No Party Preference and away from both major parties for years. Yes, Republican voters have been pessimistic about California for years. Yes, the state saw near 80% “wrong direction” numbers in 2008 thru 2010 and we’re only seeing mid-60’s wrong direction today. Hence, “flying under the radar.”

The indicator I’m looking at is the alarming increase in wrong direction numbers when it comes to local communities. In the past, national and statewide wrong direction numbers could be high, but the voters usually loved their local communities. Not anymore. Unaffordable housing, inaccessible insurance, sky high energy prices, cost-of-living pressures, and nearly 70% of Californians anticipating bad financial times over the next year make them deeply pessimistic. After Californians shake off the initial shock of what they see as a national dumpster fire, they’ll turn their ire toward their legislators and start demanding more than virtue signaling from Sacramento. Yes, California’s liberals will start messaging that California has to remain a bulwark against Trump and reflexively push for staying the course, but clever moderates would be well-served to build constituent coalitions to realign the high-cost low-return policies that steamrolled through Sacramento over the past 20 years when California could still afford the luxury of virtue signaling.

If you could go back in time, which former President would you like to chat with and what’s the topic?

Rather than smoking a pipe with Teddy Roosevelt and dreaming about which tracts of America should be preserved as national parks, I’d go back to the 1960’s and have a long chat with Lyndon Johnson. As a consultant, I appreciate getting advice from smart people, and when it came to making Congress work — and making Congress relevant — LBJ had a brilliance and a ruthlessness that would serve us well today. In our conversation, I would lay out the national political landscape and task him with putting together a strategy to help Congress reclaim functionality. People think of Johnson towering over legislators as he gripped their hands like a vice, smiled, and waited to get the answer he wanted. It was called the “Johnson Treatment.” But the real Johnson Treatment was the strategy and hardball tactics he deployed to make it impossible for those legislators – Democrat and Republican – to say “No.” Today, members of Congress on both sides are facing big problems. That’s why I’d be quick to recruit LBJ into the legislative foxhole and task him with crafting a Johnson Treatment for the 21st Century.

What advice to you have for centrist Democrats in the CA legislature?

For too long those of us in the moderate Democrat business would get promising centrist candidates elected only to see them swallowed up into Sacramento’s vortex of special interests. Those are fundamentally divided between liberal non-profits focusing on energy, housing and climate on one hand, and trade associations representing every business in California from cobblers to the farm bureau to big oil on the other. To author bills, legislators first build constituencies in Sacramento among “stakeholders” followed by the requisite local outreach if necessary, or if at all. But that system is a trap for moderate Democrats. In the Sacramento vortex, Democratic constituencies are primarily represented by liberal non-profits and labor. So, to win the blessing of those constituencies, moderate Democratic legislators are forced to move away from moderate positions, even though those moderate positions are more representative of their core values and those of most California voters.

However, moderate Democrats have an opportunity to turn that system inside out. Today, California’s working families are really struggling. Now is the time for California’s mod Dems to reach outside Sacramento to build constituencies for common sense legislation that makes living in California easier. Whether it’s lowering gas taxes until real household income rises, or requiring that new regulations in California trigger studies that measure the economic impact on poor and middle-class families just like construction projects trigger CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) studies.

Our mod Dems need to build broader and more authentic constituencies outside the Sacramento vortex. Yeah, it’s harder and takes more time. Fewer long lunches at Frank Fat’s and more town halls at Denny’s. At the beginning there may be little success. But here’s the secret: most of the legislation that happens in Sacramento is incredibly boring. And I’d rather build a campaign around a great idea that failed than a mind-numbing piece of legislation that managed to sneak through some committee that really only serves to keep the vortex spinning.

You’re a world-class backpacker. What’s the most impressive hike you’ve done and what’s the next one?

Well, “most impressive” isn’t necessarily the most fun or the most special. But summiting Mount Shasta in the winter was a difficult climb that not a lot of people do. It’s over 14,000 feet and involved a good deal of technical climbing, much of which I was prepared for, but I learned a few new skills from one of my climbing partners on that trip. The next big trip I’m edging toward is a trek up to the Everest Base Camp in Nepal. I like being at elevation and at 17,500 feet it would be my highest to date. All that being said, last year seeing Competitive Edge plant its proverbial flag on the summit of Mount Whitney was very special.

What was your favorite musical genre as a teenager and what are you listening to now?

There was a lot of music in my house growing up. It ranged groups like Chicago, The Association, Simon & Garfunkel on the folk- and folk-rock side to Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Ornette Coleman on the jazz side. There was also a decent emphasis on Broadway show tunes, which comes in surprisingly handy when watching Jeopardy. But right after middle school when everyone I knew seemed to be taking charge of their own musical tastes and drifting predictably toward bands like AC/DC, Kiss and the Rolling Stones, I was introduced to the Grateful Dead. And growing up in the Bay Area in the 70’s and 80’s it wasn’t hard to get access to that music and even find real community among the youngest of the Deadheads. Of course, along with the Dead came explorations into New Riders of the Purple Sage, The Flying Burrito Brothers and lots of bluegrass. Sprinkle in some flirtations with Pink Floyd, Eno, and Cream and that paints a pretty good picture of what’s in those boxes of ticket stubs and set lists that I’ve been collecting since high school. It’s stuff that I’m still listening to today… with no sense of nostalgia.

What was the first concert you attended and how did it make you feel?

I think the very first concert must have been the Boston Pops in San Francisco with my parents in ‘72. I remember how big and filling it sounded. But the first concert I went to where I had some agency was the Grateful Dead in ’79. I was lucky enough to have a cousin who was into the Dead and had a drivers license. The music, the crowd, the vibe… it immediately felt like home, and I had definitely found my tribe. Over the hundreds of Dead shows that followed, I’m glad to say that that feeling has never changed.

Grace us with your favorite Grateful Dead story.

After hundreds of Dead shows there are a lot of fun, magical, and strange stories. But one of my favorite So Cal Dead stories happened on April 29, 1989. I was doing a campaign in Long Beach and my brother was going to school in Riverside. He’s also a huge Deadhead and we arranged to meet at the Best Western on Newport Blvd in Costa Mesa before for the show at Irvine Meadows.

That morning, I get to the hotel, check into room 8 and then I wait for my brother… and wait… and wait… and wait. Oh brother, where art thou? I’m getting hungry, so I order a pizza. The pizza guy eventually gets there, apologizes for being late, but he went to the wrong Best Western. I ate the pizza and waited another hour. Certainly, Garcia and the boys couldn’t start if I wasn’t there, and the show must go on, so I jump in the car, without my brother, to join the ranks of the tie-dyed. Hours later when I was moving from the parking lot into the amphitheater among a sea of thousands packed shoulder to shoulder pushing through an unusually small gate I feel a tug on my arm. “Where the Hell have you been?” said my brother. I told him I was waiting at the hotel for so long that I ended up ordering a pizza. He looked at me a bit confused and said that he was also waiting at the hotel and a pizza guy came to the door asking for Kevin. He told him that there’s no Kevin here, so the pizza guy left. My brother had checked into a different Best Western on Newport Blvd in Costa Mesa… also in room 8. To this day we still argue about who was in the wrong place. I remember it was a stellar show with a beautiful Wharf Rat coming to life from the ashes that Jerry and Brent left after shredding the Other One. Ugh, those were the days.

You turned your back on your hometown A’s and became a huge Red Sox fan. How did that happen?

Being born in Oakland and growing up in the East Bay with the real Oakland Raiders and the Oakland A’s, I was incredibly sports-spoiled as a kid. It was a time when baseball teams stuck together for years. We had Vida Blue, Sal Bando, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, Bert Campaneris, and this guy named Reggie Jackson. They wore spiffy white uniforms, and it was so routine for the A’s to be winning that there were playoff games at the Oakland Coliseum that didn’t even sell out. And they were fun to watch.

But then the Red Sox would come to town. Rather than finesse baseball, they were tough and played a more brutish game. Their uniforms were gray. I loved it. They had players like Carlton Fisk, Dwight Evans, Louis Tiant, Jim Rice and Carl Yastrzemski. I think they lost to the A’s the first time I saw them, but I was hooked. I had to follow them mostly through box scores and baseball cards because most of their games weren’t carried in the Bay Area, but from then on, I was all in. And a mere 30 years later I would actually get to see them win a World Series. Worth the wait.

If you could return to a place you’ve already visited, where would you go?

There was about a 15-year period where every November I would head down to a little Indian reservation in the Mexican jungle and stay through January. Essential for drying out after a tough election cycle, it was only accessible by boat, with electricity from generators for a few hours in the evening, a clean beach, wonderful people and amazing food. But with the advent of the internet, little hideaways like that have all but disappeared. So, I would absolutely love to go back to “that place.” But I’m not sure that it exists anymore, and I’m not too interested in going back to what it’s become. I really miss Thanksgiving and Christmas in the jungle.