I’ve managed crises for attorneys general, members of Congress, and candidates who thought their careers were over. Here’s what actually works.
By Randall Thompson | Pulse Communications
The phone rings at 6 AM. It’s never good news at 6 AM.
A reporter has a document. An opponent has a video. A staffer said something on a hot mic. A 15-year-old tweet just resurfaced. Pick your poison — the mechanics are always the same. Someone with a camera, a keyboard, or a grudge has decided that today is the day your political career gets interesting.
I’ve been on the receiving end of that call more times than I can count. As Communications Director and Spokesman for one of the highest-ranking members of Congress, as Spokesman for the Michigan Attorney General and Secretary of State, and as a consultant who’s been in the crisis trenches for two decades — I can tell you this with certainty: the crisis itself rarely destroys a career. The response does.
Here’s what happens in most campaigns when crisis hits. Panic. A flurry of texts. Somebody’s cousin who “knows PR” gets looped in. The candidate wants to fire back immediately. The campaign manager wants to pretend it didn’t happen. The finance chair is worried about donors. And while all of this internal chaos is burning oxygen, the other side is framing the narrative. By the time your team agrees on what to say, the story has already been told — and you weren’t the one telling it.
That’s the game. The first 72 hours of a political crisis are a narrative war, and the side that controls the story wins. Not the side that’s right. Not the side with the facts. The side that moves first and frames best.
Rule one: Assess before you react. The natural impulse in crisis is to respond immediately. Fight that impulse. Take 60 minutes — not 60 seconds — to understand what you’re actually dealing with. What’s the source? What do they have? What don’t they have? What’s the worst-case version of this story? What’s the true version? These are different questions, and the gap between them is where your strategy lives.
Rule two: Control the timeline. You don’t get to decide whether the story runs. You do get to decide when your version enters the conversation. In most cases, getting ahead of a story — even by hours — changes everything. A candidate who puts out a statement before the hit piece drops looks transparent. A candidate who responds after looks defensive. Same facts. Different framing. Completely different outcome.
Rule three: Pick one message and hammer it. Crisis communication is not the time for nuance. You need one clear, simple, repeatable message that your candidate, your surrogates, your staff, and your volunteers can all deliver without thinking. If your crisis response requires a flowchart to explain, you’ve already lost.
Rule four: Feed the beast, or it feeds on you. Reporters are going to write about this whether you cooperate or not. If you go dark, they’ll fill the vacuum with whatever your opponent gives them. Controlled access — a statement, a brief availability, a background call with a trusted reporter — gives you a seat at the table. Silence gives your opponent the whole table to themselves.
Rule five: Don’t let the crisis become the campaign. This is where most campaigns fail. They survive the initial hit, and then they spend the next three weeks relitigating it. Every press conference becomes about the crisis. Every door knock gets derailed. The opponent doesn’t even need to attack anymore — your own team is keeping the wound open. A good crisis response includes an exit strategy. You need to know, before you engage, exactly how you’re going to pivot back to your message.
I once worked with a candidate who got hit with an oppo dump three weeks before Election Day. Ugly stuff — taken out of context, but ugly. His initial instinct was to hold a press conference and go scorched earth on his opponent. That would have been a disaster. Instead, we issued a tight 90-second video statement that night, gave one interview to the largest paper in the district the next morning, and by 48 hours later we were back on message with a new digital ad buy that had nothing to do with the crisis. His opponent kept swinging at a target that wasn’t there anymore.
He won. Not because the crisis didn’t matter. Because we didn’t let it become the only thing that mattered.
If your campaign doesn’t have a crisis plan — and I mean an actual, written plan with decision trees, spokesperson protocols, and pre-drafted holding statements — you’re gambling. And in politics, the house always wins that bet.