Fran­cis Joseph

Two of the strate­gists who helped pro­pel Barack Oba­ma to be­come Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States in 2008, are in Trinidad and To­ba­go, as­sist­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) with its gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign.

Joe Gold­berg and Lar­ry Grisolano spent last Sun­day at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, meet­ing with the top brass of the Op­po­si­tion par­ty, to dis­cuss the par­ty's strat­e­gy, in an ef­fort to re­place the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) as the gov­ern­ment. Po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not at­tend the meet­ing. The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that the two men ar­rived in T&T on Sat­ur­day, at the in­vi­ta­tion of Ch­agua­nas West MP, Jack Warn­er, who is al­so chair­man of the UNC. This is not the first trip for Oba­ma's cam­paign team, as last year, at the in­vi­ta­tion of the Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent, two strate­gists came to T&T and had talks at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel with Warn­er and mem­bers of Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP).

At the time, Warn­er was wag­ing a cam­paign with his Move­ment for Change, seek­ing in­ter­nal elec­tion with­in the UNC. The vis­it now, ac­cord­ing to sources, is to as­sist the UNC with its cam­paign as the coun­try awaits the elec­tion date. The meet­ing on Sun­day was al­so at­tend­ed by the UNC's lo­cal pub­lic re­la­tions com­pa­ny, Ross Ad­ver­tis­ing, and sev­er­al mem­bers of the UNC hi­er­ar­chy. Sources re­vealed fur­ther that the talks with the Oba­ma team were in­com­plete and more dis­cus­sions would be held. The week­end be­fore, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Warn­er and deputy po­lit­i­cal leader, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal met US strate­gist, James Carville, at Per­sad-Bisses­sar's Pe­nal con­stituen­cy of­fice. That meet­ing was kept low-keyed, as the me­dia was kept away. The meet­ing al­so dis­cussed the UNC's strat­e­gy for up­com­ing elec­tion. Carville then left T&T.

?kam­la's con­nec­tions

?Joe Gold­berg joined AKPD Mes­sage and Me­dia in 2009 as Di­rec­tor of Glob­al Af­fairs. He leads in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness de­vel­op­ment for the firm, and is al­so re­spon­si­ble for in­ter­na­tion­al cam­paign pro­gramme man­age­ment. Gold­berg is founder of The JE Gold­berg Group, a spe­cialised po­lit­i­cal and in­tel­li­gence con­sult­ing firm. Pri­or to form­ing this com­pa­ny, he was se­nior di­rec­tor, In­tel­li­gence, in Mo­toro­la's Cor­po­rate Strat­e­gy Of­fice, where he was re­spon­si­ble for world­wide busi­ness in­tel­li­gence process­es, com­pet­i­tive analy­sis and col­lec­tion. He be­gan at Mo­toro­la in 1993. Be­fore that, he worked for the Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Agency (CIA) for eight years, dur­ing which he was in­volved in all facets of in­tel­li­gence col­lec­tion and analy­sis. Be­fore join­ing the gov­ern­ment, Joe worked in the Me­dia and Busi­ness Re­search De­part­ments of Frank N Magid & As­so­ciates, a lead­ing me­dia re­search and con­sul­ta­tion firm.

In 25 years as a po­lit­i­cal pro­fes­sion­al, Lar­ry Grisolano has been at the cen­tre of some of the most im­por­tant bat­tles for the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and for pro­gres­sive ideas. He has worked as a field or­gan­is­er and leader, a di­rect mail spe­cial­ist, a me­dia and re­search ad­vis­er, and lead­ing strate­gist. From Jan­u­ary 2007, to No­vem­ber 2008, Grisolano served as di­rec­tor of Paid Me­dia and Opin­ion Re­search for Oba­ma for Amer­i­ca and Oba­ma-Biden 2008.

In this role, he cre­at­ed, su­per­vised and di­rect­ed a so­phis­ti­cat­ed opin­ion re­search pro­gramme that pro­vid­ed the strate­gic road map for the cam­paign.

He al­so man­aged the paid ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paign that de­liv­ered the cam­paign mes­sage through tele­vi­sion, ra­dio, In­ter­net, di­rect mail and oth­er print ad­ver­tis­ing. A lead­ing cam­paign ad­vis­er in Cal­i­for­nia, Grisolano fought side by side with pro­gres­sives and civ­il rights ad­vo­cates as a gen­er­al con­sul­tant and cam­paign man­ag­er in some of Cal­i­for­nia's most high­ly-charged bal­lot mea­sures.