Distinguished Visiting Urbanist Michael Blake in Conversation with Cornell Belcher

NYU Wagner Distinguished Visiting Urbanist Michael Blake will speak with Cornell Belcher who will discuss urban policymaking.

About the Speaker

Cornell Belcher is President of brilliant corners Research & Strategies, a political contributor to NBC/MSNBC, and one of the premier strategists in national progressive politics as well as in the rebranding of corporate America. Cornell served as Pollster for the DNC under Chairman Howard Dean making him the first minority to lead in that role for either national Party. He also served on the polling team for both groundbreaking Obama presidential campaigns. Over the years, Cornell has worked with both Senate and House Democrats as Senior Political Advisor to the DSCC in the 2002 cycle and Special Projects Director for the DCCC in the 2000 cycle. Cornell also served as Women VOTE! Coordinator for EMILY’s List in the 1998 cycle, helping to put together communication and GOTV operations targeting women voters all over the country.

Cornell is an experienced hand at campaign politics and has years of expertise in quantitative and qualitative research, message development, and product and behavioral insight. Founding brilliant corners in 2002, he is considered the vanguard for demographic trends among the emerging younger and browner America. In 2008 and 2012, youth and minority voters over-indexed and changed the face of the electorate helping not only President Obama, but progressive candidates and issues up and down the ballot; indeed in 2012 African American voter turnout surpassed that of whites for the first time in history.  Both historic watershed moments that greatly depended on Cornell’s nonconformist contributing work.

As the pollster for the Democratic National Committee, he was able to ignore beltway criticisms and take the national Party’s research into previously unchartered directions, exploring how best to challenge Republicans’ strengths among voters in supposedly untouchable "red states," particularly "faith" or "values first" voters. Under Governor Dean’s leadership, Cornell helped to construct a savvy framework for the visionary 50 State Strategy that expanded the Democratic footprint on the electoral map and ultimately produced a Democratic realignment. Asked about Cornell’s role, Governor Dean was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that the research conducted by brilliant corners for the DNC was "the best poll [he'd] seen in ten years."