A group of top strategists and ad makers for prominent progressives is launching a new media firm with the goal of electing what they say is a “new generation” of candidates, following a bruising 2024 election cycle for Democrats.
Fight Agency, the firm’s founders said, is aiming to elevate candidates with non-traditional backgrounds who might otherwise be overlooked by heavyweight Democratic firms and the broader party establishment. They said they’re hoping to punch up Democrats’ anti-establishment and economic messaging in a way that better appeals to independent and working-class voters.
“Many Democratic consulting firms are set up to win generals, but not win primaries, and I do think it’s harder to get candidates who are more in touch with their communities out of primaries. Period,” said Rebecca Katz, one of Fight Agency’s principals who previously advised Sen. John Fetterman’s, D-Pa., 2022 campaign in Pennsylvania and Sen. Ruben Gallego’s, D-Ariz., 2024 bid in Arizona.
“Those candidates are out there,” she added. “They might just not have people who take a serious look at them.”
“Clues” for Democrats
Katz is launching Fight Agency alongside two seasoned ad makers: Tommy McDonald, who worked as the lead paid media consultant on Fetterman’s Senate campaign, and Julian Mulvey, who played a key role in Sen. Bernie Sanders’, D-Vt., 2016 presidential bid. Mulvey has spent years at the Democratic firm Devine Mulvey Longabaugh.
Mulvey said that his and his partners’ collective experiences working with candidates like Sanders, Fetterman and Gallego could help provide Democratic candidates with a roadmap for how to win over independent and working-class voters in the post-2024 election landscape.
“They’re different people, obviously, and they come from different parts of the country. But all three of those candidates have had tremendous success reaching independent voters and reaching working-class Americans,” Mulvey said. “And right now, in the aftermath of 2024, where Democrats are looking around and wondering what the path forward is…we think that those three campaigns offer a lot of clues.”
“I don’t want to pretend we have all the answers,” he added. “But there are some clues there.”
The Fight Agency, which will be based in Philadelphia, is already starting to get some traction, Mulvey said. A video reel of the founders’ past work has already amassed more than 300,000 views on X.
Mulvey said that Fight Agency has already begun assembling a roster of potential clients, but declined to name them. He said that the firm is “open to working with people at every level, from sheriff to Senate to president.”
“We’re not cutting ourselves off to anything,” he said.
Max Greenwood is the editor-in-chief of Campaigns & Elections. Prior to joining C&E in January 2025, he worked as the Miami Herald’s senior political correspondent and a national political reporter at The Hill. He can be reached at mgreenwood@campaignsandelections.com.
