Our Leadership
Mike Murphy - CEO
Mike Murphy is one of the Republican Party’s most successful political media consultants, having handled strategy and advertising for more than 26 successful Gubernatorial and Senatorial campaigns. He served as a top campaign messaging and political strategist to Sen. John McCain’s historic Straight Talk Express Presidential campaign in 2000, and also for successful gubernatorial candidates Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tommy Thompson, and John Engler. He’s directed dozens of successful Senatorial, Gubernatorial, Congressional, and local campaigns as well as statewide ballot measures in California, Missouri, Montana, Michigan, and many other states. Murphy has worked on five GOP Presidential campaigns and has advised foreign leaders in Europe and Latin America. In 2020 he served as a key strategist for Republican Voters Against Trump.
He's also advised many leading companies including Walmart, H&R Block, Devon Energy, MCI, Home Depot, Calpine, Carnival, and Pfizer as well as leading trade associations, tribal governments, and investment funds on messaging and communications strategies. He is a senior partner at the Washington DC-based Revolution Agency. Murphy is also a well-known media pundit; author of the popular “Murphy’s Law” column for TIME magazine and longtime senior analyst for NBC News and MSNBC with dozens of appearances on Meet the Press. He currently co-hosts the popular weekly politics podcast “Hacks on Tap” with David Axelrod, which boasts over 14 million downloads to date.
Murphy currently serves as co-director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Political Future. He served as a founding board member of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and was a longtime Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. A native of Detroit, Michigan Murphy also works as a writer and producer in the entertainment industry. He is a longtime automotive enthusiast. He and his family own two CCS EVs. In 2023, he wrote in his Substack blog about his experience driving their CCS VW ID4 across America from New Hampshire to Los Angeles.
David B. Hill, PhD – Senior Research Advisor
The EV Politics project’s research effort is led by Dr. David B. Hill of Hill Research Consultants.
Dr. Hill is a former faculty member at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. at Florida State University and completed his post-doctoral study at the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center. He has been an invited lecturer at the University of Florida and at Stanford University and in 2020 was appointed a visiting Fellow at the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California.
Hill Research Consultants has varied experience in political opinion research, having worked on polling for more than 40 states for a long list of Republican officeholders and candidates as well as multiple ballot initiatives at both the local and statewide level. Hill Research has also worked extensively in the corporate sector for clients including Xcel Energy, Safeway, RBC Bank, PWC and the Trust for Public Land. Dr Hill has been a Tesla driver since 2019.
The Hill Research team also includes Dr. Stephen White, who received his Ph.D. in economics from Texas A&M University in 1985 and has continued to work with Dr. Hill ever since. Dr. White is responsible for sample design and acquisition as well as data analysis. He has pioneered numerous proprietary analytical techniques and has successfully developed numerous innovative visual approaches to presenting complex data and research results.
Joe Sacks – Executive Director
Joe is a political strategist and previously a senior staffer to former Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo. In that role, Joe was responsible for advancing the Governor’s political agenda by mobilizing stakeholders, crafting communications strategies, passing legislation, and implementing programs. During his time in the Governor's office, Joe served on Rhode Island's COVID Executive Response team, the COVID-19 Equity Council, and the Rhode Island Census Complete Count Committee. Joe has worked on multiple successful Gubernatorial, Senatorial, and Congressional campaigns. He's also played a strategy role in a half-dozen successful statewide ballot measures.
Joe has also consulted for various public and private sector leaders during his tenures at Accenture, EY-Parthenon, and Enable Ventures. After getting behind the wheel of an EV, Joe became an enthusiast. Since then, he's been speaking with EV industry stakeholders on how to best integrate political strategy into their understanding of the market.
Joe holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a B.A. in Public Policy from Brown University and is a native Rhode Islander. Contact Joe here.