Carrie spent almost eighteen years in NBC News’ Washington bureau — an embedded campaign reporter, an editor, eventually running the network’s Capitol Hill team — before she became Managing Editor of the . When she got there, she admitted something I loved: she pictured the ratings coming down like “stone tablets from on high.” Then she watched how they’re actually made, and the reverence gave way to something more interesting — nine people, meeting candidates, tracking fundraising, arguing over how much weight to give a single news cycle. Part quantitative, part qualitative, as she put it. Neither art nor science. In between.

What stuck with me most, though, wasn’t the process — it was what she said about failure. In 2012, her editors gave her what they called the best assignment on the beat: cover the man everyone assumed would be the Republican nominee. He wasn’t. Watching that campaign collapse in real time, she told me, taught her more than any winning campaign ever has. There’s something in that for anyone who covers, predicts, or works in politics for a living — the stories that don’t pan out are usually where the real education happens.

And then there was the number that stayed with me after we talked: new Gallup data found that roughly half of Americans aren’t confident their own ballot will be counted correctly. Carrie called it “a really alarming stat,” and she’s right that it isn’t getting nearly the urgency it deserves — not from candidates, not from officials, not from those of us in the media.

This is the second stop in our month-long takeover with the Cook Political Report, and Carrie’s conversation left me thinking differently about how much human judgment sits underneath every rating I’ve ever casually cited. Three moments that stayed with me, below.

Notable Quotes

“I envisioned these stone tablets coming down from Amy Walter on high of like, this is how we pronounce how these races are going to turn out.” — Carrie Dann

“Campaigns that are unsuccessful teach you a lot more, I think, as a reporter, than campaigns that are successful.” — Carrie Dann

“Voters and candidates are human people… they are driven by their lived experience… which is why every election is about the economy.” — Carrie Dann

Takeaway

The ratings everyone treats as certainty are made by people who know exactly how much could go wrong — and it’s the losing campaigns, not the winning ones, that teach them the most.

The full conversation with Carrie Dann — on stone tablets, failed frontrunners, and the number that should worry all of us — is live on YouTube now. Second stop in our month with the Cook Political Report.

Bonjean and Mollineau joined Brody Mullins and I to talk about the coffee meeting that turned into a firm, why they’ve turned down every private equity offer since, what “bipartisan” actually means for a Fortune 100 client under pressure, and the very different paths — one a Republican, one a Democrat — that led them both to the same table.

Drops Tuesday. [SUBSCRIBE LINK]

This week I sat down with Erin Covey, who leads House race coverage for , to kick off a month of conversations with their team. She told me something that stopped me: the team behind every rating you’ve ever cited is nine people. Nine people, tracking roughly 40 competitive House races every single week, plus the Senate, the governors, and the presidency every four years.

What struck me most was how much of the job is restraint. It would be easier, in some ways, to call every close race a toss-up and let the outcome sort itself out. Erin pushed back on that instinct directly — the whole point of the exercise is to make a call, even when the call might be wrong.

She also walked me through Texas’s 23rd, a seat that should be safely Republican and isn’t anymore — not because of redistricting or national trends, but because of exactly who’s on the ballot. It’s a reminder that all the modeling in the world still runs into the fact that candidates are people, and people are unpredictable.

And I loved her answer when I asked whether growing up outside Washington — in a military family, across the South and overseas — changes how she reads a district. Her answer, below, is the whole thesis of good political journalism.

Notable Quotes from Today’s Episode

“It’s our team, which is smaller than a lot of people expect. Currently, nine members on our team.” — Erin Covey

“If we put everything in toss-up, then we wouldn’t really be making any predictions at all, right?” — Erin Covey

“There’s something inherently important about having lived outside the Beltway to understand that you can’t apply the same rules or the same filter for each and every district because they all are so inherently different.” — Erin Covey

My Takeaway

Behind every House rating you read this fall is a small team making deliberate, sometimes uncomfortable calls — and the districts that surprise us usually do so because of the person on the ballot, not the map underneath them.

The full conversation — on toss-ups, cash, and the Texas seat nobody expected to be competitive — is live on YouTube now. First of a month of Cook Political Report guests on the show.

French Hill has been reviving that ritual for about a decade now, at his own dinner table instead of the Capitol basement. Two Democrats, two Republicans, dinner at his house, until the arrangement stops being a novelty and starts being a habit. It’s not nostalgia. It’s math.

Brett Guthrie doesn’t set a table for it. His instinct comes from a father who worked a Ford plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, until it closed, and a family that started an auto parts business rather than start over somewhere new. That’s the sensibility he brought to a bill to protect kids online, written with his Democratic ranking member, that passed the House with real votes from both sides. Guthrie’s staff and Frank Pallone’s staff, mostly young people who happen to also be young parents, found they agreed on something and didn’t need an invitation to admit it.

One chairman built an institution around bipartisanship. The other backed into it and decided not to talk himself out of it. Both will tell you it’s rarer than it should be. Neither seemed interested in making a show of it.

Here’s how each of them put it, in their own words.

Direct Quotes

“My philosophy is that good policy attracts solid legislative support from both parties.” — Rep. French Hill

“I have two Democrats and two Republicans come to my house for dinner... it’s a way to build relationships. And those relationships have been integral to the work I’ve done in the House.” — Rep. French Hill

“It’s okay to knock heads in Washington when you disagree on a policy. But this isn’t something we disagreed on.” — Rep. Brett Guthrie

My Takeaway”

Nobody’s filming Room 128 anymore. But somewhere between a Kentucky auto plant and a Little Rock dinner table, both men insist it’s still there.

Full conversations with Chairman Guthrie and Chairman Hill are on The Deciders — watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

After a recent conversation with my business coach, I realized I had never articulated — through my lens — what connects every single person who’s ever sat across from me on this show. Journalists. Communicators. Photographers. Lobbyists. To an outsider, the connection may not be altogether clear, so I chose today to fix that.

I was surprised to realize how far back the real answer goes — past the podcast, past the public affairs career, back to a small legislative district in New Jersey where I learned that making someone feel seen gave me my own purpose. That idea became the thread of this episode.

I’m also using today’s episode to signal a short break from this show — the first real break I’ve taken in five and a half years — and ahead to an exciting August takeover with Cook Political Report.

My favorite line of the episode: the moment you actually see someone — really see them — it gets a lot harder to hold onto anger at them. Connection isn’t just nice to have. It’s what makes compassion possible.

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Ubl joined Brody Mullins and myself to talk about gene therapies he calls “biblical,” the pharmacy benefit managers he blames for inflating drug costs, how AI is reshaping the path from lab to patient and why he thinks China is closing the innovation gap faster than most realize.

If you want to understand how the drug pricing debate actually looks from the industry’s most powerful voice, this is the conversation to catch.

Drops Tuesday. [LINK TO SUBSCRIBE]

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*Wondering if your communications strategy is keeping up with the current environment? [Start with the Comms Checkup.]

That’s exactly the space my guest this week lives in. Mira Adwell is a photographer who spent years shooting fashion editorial in Charleston before relocating back to DC, where she now works almost exclusively in portraits and personal branding — CEOs, senators, first-time founders, all trying to figure out how to show up.

What struck me most is how much of her job is actually psychology. She watches for the signs most people think they’re hiding — shallow breathing, a dry mouth, fidgeting hands — and instead of pushing through a shoot, she puts the camera down and just talks. By the time she picks the camera back up, the nerves are gone.

She also relayed something Kevin O’Leary told her directly — blunt, but it’s the whole argument for why this matters.

My favorite line of the conversation was about this city specifically. Mira sees it constantly in her DC clients — the low-grade performance anxiety of a town where perception never fully switches off.

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Maybe it’s because America is now 250 years old. Maybe it’s because over the last few years I’ve become more than a little obsessed with genealogy. Whatever the reason, I found myself thinking less about fireworks and more about the generations of people who made yesterday possible.

When I first started tracing my family tree, I thought I was looking for names. Instead, I found stories.

I discovered that one branch of my maternal grandmother’s family settled in the colonies long before there was a United States. My sixth great-grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War. As I dug deeper, I found newspaper clippings about Captain David Fleming of Point Pleasant, New Jersey, my great-great-great-grandfather. His obituary described him as one of the first volunteer lifesavers along the Jersey Shore, helping establish what would eventually become the U.S. Life-Saving Service before it became the Coast Guard. It mentioned that he was related to George Washington, but that wasn’t what struck me. What struck me was that he spent his life serving others.

The deeper I went, the more I realized that wasn’t the only story my family had to tell.

My maternal grandfather was born in Ireland. My great-grandmother was born in Italy before her family came through Boston. My grandfather’s name is now on the wall at Ellis Island, joining millions of others who left everything familiar behind for the chance to become Americans.

Some branches of my family have roots that stretch back to the earliest days of this country. Others arrived much later with little more than hope. For a while I thought those were two separate stories. Now I understand they’re really one.

That’s America.

We spend a lot of time today wondering whether our country has ever been this divided, this uncertain or this challenged. Then I remember that every generation before us probably asked the same question. They lived through revolutions, civil war, economic collapse, waves of immigration, political realignment and extraordinary change. They didn’t know how their stories would end. They simply kept building, serving, raising families and believing in this country.

Genealogy has given me perspective.

Two hundred fifty years suddenly doesn’t feel very long. It’s only a handful of generations. Long enough to appreciate the sacrifices that came before us, but short enough to remind us that the story is still being written.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately because it also explains why I love what I do.

Whether it’s a conversation on The Friday Reporter or The Deciders, I’m always trying to understand what shaped someone’s thinking. How did they get here? What experiences changed them? What do they believe is worth fighting for? I suppose that’s the same curiosity that keeps pulling me back to old census records and faded newspaper clippings. Every person has a story. Every story fits into something larger.

As America begins its next 250 years, I feel grateful to know a little more about the people who came before me. Not because any one ancestor was extraordinary, but because together they tell a story that feels deeply American—a story of service, immigration, resilience and optimism.

Those are the things we inherit.

Those are also the things we choose to pass on.

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This week we’re talking to Rep. Morgan Griffith on The Deciders. It’s a good one. Get on the list to get early access — > https://www.deciders.show/subscribe

ACLI member companies manage $8.5 trillion invested in the U.S. economy — and most people have never heard of them. Chavern joined Brody Mullins and Lisa to talk about what it cost the industry to fly under the radar (hint: $24 billion), why conventional wisdom in Washington is now dangerous, and the one thing nobody in power is thinking about.

If you’ve been following how Washington really works — and why the old playbook keeps failing — this is the conversation to catch.

Drops Tuesday. [SUBSCRIBE LINK]

Wondering if your communications strategy is keeping up with the current environment? Start with the Comms Checkup. (https://fridayreporter.com/comms-checkup)

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That’s where my conversation with Jeff Dooley starts this week. Jeff is an editor at NOTUS, where he’s building a local news operation from scratch — covering DC sports, food, news, and arts and culture. He grew up in Falls Church, Virginia, where reading the Washington Post sports section gave him his first love of journalism. And now he’s helping build the kind of coverage he grew up with, for a city that is hungry for exactly that.

We talked about the Nationals this season — a team where fans, after years of a pretty aimless rebuild, finally have a reason to care again. We talked about the Commanders, the RFK site, and a new ownership group that’s making real investments that players and fans are actually noticing. And we talked about the bigger thing underneath all of it: the way local sports coverage is part of what holds a community together.

“To understand sports is to understand life and to understand human nature and decision making,” Jeff told me. I’ve been turning that line over ever since we recorded.

Jeff also gave listeners a preview of something I’m genuinely excited about: NOTUS is launching a free local newsletter at the end of July — delivered to your inbox every morning, covering DC news, sports, food, and more. You can sign up now on any article page at notus.org, and I’ve included the link in the show notes.

This is the final episode of our month-long NOTUS takeover of The Friday Reporter — and it’s been one of my favorite months of conversations in a long time. From Kadia and Paul to Deirdre to Jeff, every guest reminded me of what great journalism looks like when people actually care about the community they’re covering.

I’m so grateful to everyone at NOTUS for making this happen. And I’m grateful, as always, to you for listening.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube.

— Lisa

“There are so few pathways for young people to come to D.C. and to do so especially if they don’t have family money, if they can’t afford to sort of take a risk.”

“Our politics have become sort of yet another fandom, yet another entertainment arena. And I don’t think that’s particularly healthy from a civic perspective.”

“The ability to go out and find facts in the real world is going to end up being more valuable than ever.”

TAKEAWAY

In a media moment full of doom and gloom, Alyssa’s clearest argument is an optimistic one: the same tools that have destabilized the old journalism business model are about to unlock a generation of journalists whose instincts were never fully matched by the platforms available to them. The nerds are coming — and they’re going to be incredible.

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Not because of what we know about it. Because of what we don’t.

By now, most politically engaged people have followed the story of Congressman Tom Kean Jr.’s extended absence from Congress and the campaign trail while dealing with a health issue. By all accounts, he’s recovering and intends to seek reelection, which is welcome news. What I find fascinating isn’t the health story itself. It’s the fact that in a political environment where virtually nothing stays private, so little information has emerged about one of the most recognizable political figures in New Jersey.

That observation immediately brought me back to another New Jersey political mystery. For years, the best-kept secret in the state was the identity of Wally Edge. Political insiders read him, candidates worried about him and reporters chased him. While political operatives spent countless hours trying to figure out who was behind the byline. Everybody knew Wally Edge. Nobody knew it was David Wildstein.

Today, of course, everyone knows David. His New Jersey Globe has become required reading for anyone trying to understand New Jersey politics. When I interviewed him several years ago for The Friday Reporter, he was already running the Globe. But like many people who spent time in and around New Jersey politics, I first knew him as Wally Edge, the anonymous observer who always seemed to know what was happening before everyone else.

Back then, the mystery was David Wildstein. Today, the mystery is Tom Kean Jr.

What makes the Kean story so unusual is that it runs contrary to everything I learned during my years in New Jersey politics. Before moving to Washington, I spent nearly a decade working on campaigns, serving in government and lobbying in Trenton. That’s long enough to understand how information actually moves through the state. Contrary to popular belief, New Jersey politics isn’t fueled by gossip as much as it’s fueled by relationships. The same people have known one another for years, sometimes decades. They’ve worked campaigns together, served in administrations together and competed against one another often enough to know where all the bodies are buried. Information moves quickly because those relationships exist.

But relationships don’t just spread information. They also create trust.

That’s the part I keep coming back to when I think about Tom Kean Jr. We’re talking about a sitting member of Congress representing a district that could help determine control of the House. We’re talking about someone carrying one of the most recognizable names in New Jersey politics. Under ordinary circumstances, months of absence from Congress, public events and campaign activity would generate an endless stream of leaks and anonymous sourcing. Instead, remarkably little has surfaced. In fact, the only reporter who appears to have spoken directly with Kean during much of this period was David Wildstein, which is a fitting twist given his place in New Jersey political history.

The simplest explanation may also be the most New Jersey explanation. The Keans have occupied a unique place in the state’s political culture for generations. Tom Kean Sr. built one of the most respected political brands in modern New Jersey history, earning goodwill that extended far beyond Republican circles. Whether you agreed with him politically or not, he was viewed as someone who approached public life with seriousness, discipline and decency.

People often assume New Jersey politics is incapable of keeping a secret because it is so intensely political. My experience has been almost the opposite. New Jersey can keep a secret when the people involved decide it’s worth keeping. The same network of relationships that can spread information across the state in a matter of hours can also close ranks when circumstances call for it. Looking at the Kean story, I can’t help but wonder if that’s exactly what happened.

As someone who spent years in New Jersey politics and now watches it from Washington, that’s the part I find most interesting. That beneath all the noise, New Jersey remains a relationship business.

For years, the best-kept secret in New Jersey politics was the identity of Wally Edge. The Tom Kean Jr. story may be the closest thing we’ve had since.

That’s this episode.

Deirdre Walsh has been covering Capitol Hill since 2006 — CNN first, then NPR, now NOTUS, where she’s helping lead a newsroom that is genuinely doing something different. I’ve known Deirdre for years, and this is one of those conversations where I kept thinking: more people should hear this.

We got into a lot of things. How being a parent changed the stories she pitched — when Congress was debating a social media bill and she was simultaneously fighting her teenager about Discord, she knew that story from the inside in a way no briefing book could give her. The camaraderie of the Capitol Hill press corps — the informal COVID pool, the shared files, the reporter-to-reporter trust that outsiders almost never see. The shrinking number of members she can trust not to spin her, and why that matters more than it might seem.

And a few things that surprised even me. There is a pickleball court on the fifth floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Ted Cruz plays basketball there. Kirsten Gillibrand plays tennis. The Pickleball Caucus has converted it twice a week. I did not know this.

But the story I keep thinking about is the STOCK Act loophole she cracked in 2012. She covered the bill for months. A source offhandedly mentioned that the House and Senate were interpreting the rules differently. She started pulling on that thread with her colleague Dana Bash. What they found: one chamber’s interpretation let congressional spouses trade on insider knowledge without ever having to disclose it. They reported it. Congress closed the loophole a few days later. “You always dream of making Congress react to your reporting,” she said. That’s the dream and she lived it.

The advice she carries from her first job — watching Judy Woodruff prepare — is simple: do the work you can control. Be ready. Then adjust.

That one lands.

If you haven’t been paying close attention to what’s happening over there, now is the time to start. In a moment when most Washington newsrooms are contracting — the Washington Post went from roughly 1,000 to 400 people in three years — NOTUS is doing the opposite. It’s attracting some of the best reporters in the business, investing in a serious fellows program, and breaking news every week.

This week, I sat down with two of its newest and most high-profile additions: Kadia Goba, who came to NOTUS from the Post (via BuzzFeed News), and Paul Kane, who spent 19 years and three months at the Post before the February 4th layoffs became what he called his “before and after” moment.

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Both of them cover Capitol Hill every day. And both of them see things most people miss.

PK’s framing stuck with me: the public already has a brutally low opinion of Congress — a 10% approval rating in Gallup. But even with that as the baseline, most people still don’t understand how little is actually getting accomplished. Last year was the lowest legislative output in recorded history. The Senate spent three-quarters of its time processing executive nominations. The noise of apparent conflict gives the impression that things are happening. They aren’t.

The counterintuitive insight that surprised me most: the Freedom Caucus — the most conservative bloc in the House — are actually among the biggest supporters of the mainstream press. They beeline for Manu Raju’s camera after every vote. They give reporters their cell numbers. If Speaker Johnson ever tried to curtail press access, PK says the Freedom Caucus would revolt. I believe him.

There’s also a genuinely hopeful note in this conversation. The incoming freshman classes of 2026 weren’t in Washington on January 6th. They don’t carry the same scar tissue. PK thinks that matters. So do I.

It’s a conversation that left me more optimistic about journalism — and more clear-eyed about Congress — than I’ve been in a while.

Watch the full episode on YouTube

I sat down with Chad Peace, the voter advocate and attorney behind the More Choice initiative and the Independent Voter Project. If you’ve heard of California’s top-two primary — the system where the two highest vote-getters in a primary advance to the general, regardless of party — Chad was one of the architects. He’s spent years in courtrooms and state legislatures arguing for something that sounds deceptively simple: that the right to vote should belong to you, the individual, not to the party you join.

The conversation that stuck with me was about incentives. Right now, our election system rewards division. You don’t have to win by being good — you can win by making your opponent look terrible. That’s not a bug in the system. It’s the design. And it’s why we keep electing people who are better at tearing things down than building consensus.

More Choice — Chad’s proposed next step beyond the top-two — would advance four or more candidates to November and give voters the ability to rank their preferences. The idea is simple: if second- and third-place votes matter, you can’t win just by going negative. You have to actually persuade people who don’t already agree with you. That changes the calculus completely.

I also appreciated how clear-eyed Chad is about the opposition. Both parties — left and right — want to get rid of the top-two. They call it a “jungle primary” (a term he correctly identifies as deliberately pejorative). Their solution? Go back to closed primaries, where party members pick the candidates and everyone else chooses from whatever’s left in November.

His response: that’s not reform. That’s consolidating power.

Chad grew up between a Republican family on his mom’s side and a Kentucky Democrat on his father’s. They never fought at the dinner table. They respected each other. He believes most voters are actually like that — closer to the middle than our political system reflects. The system just isn’t built to show it.

This one is worth your time, whether you follow election reform closely or you just found yourself standing in a voting booth last November thinking: really? These are my only options?

Full episode is on YouTube now.

— Lisa

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I wanted to give teams a way to answer that question honestly. So I built one.

The Comms Checkup is a structured self-assessment built around five pillars of effective association communications. You score your program channel by channel, find out exactly where the gaps are, and get specific recommended next steps — pillar by pillar.

It includes a 12-page framework guide, a scoring worksheet and an action guide. You can work through the whole thing in an afternoon. Find The Comms Checkup here.

If you are a paid subscriber to this newsletter, reply “checkup” and I will send you a discount code.

If you know a communications director, executive director or senior staff member at a trade association or nonprofit who could use an honest look at their program — forward this along.

Lisa

I’ve worked with Kasia personally. She is the real thing. And bringing her onto The Friday Reporter felt long overdue, because what she does for founders and executives is genuinely hard to describe until you experience it — and I wanted to try.

We talked about a lot in this episode. Why most systems fail solo entrepreneurs (hint: they built it for someone else’s business). How to actually integrate AI without generating what Kasia very accurately calls “slop.” And the thing I’ve gotten the most value from in our work together: how to have the hard conversations you’ve been avoiding.

Her framework for that is deceptively simple. Make the decision before you go in. Strip to one fact. Then stop talking. She said something I think about every time I’m about to have a difficult conversation: your job is not to manage the other person’s emotions. Your job is to stay grounded enough to have the conversation at all.

There’s a story near the end about a client who had been avoiding a phone call for two weeks — a conflict of interest situation with real money on the line. Kasia helped her prepare, and she made the call that night. Three minutes. No blowup. No fallout. And the outcome was better than if she’d taken the new client in the first place. That’s not magic. That’s just what happens when you stop rehearsing and start doing the actual work.

This one is for every founder who is running — really running — and can’t quite figure out why the battery never feels full.