Former Bernie Sanders campaign staff launch consulting firm

Two former members of Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign have launched a consulting firm.

Based in Washington, DC, Karthik Ganapathy and Mike Casca will jointly head MVMT Communications, which will focus on media relations, message development, crisis management, strategy consulting, speechwriting, and media training. The firm was founded to “create far-reaching structural change” while serving “campaigns and causes working to build a fairer world for all” according to its website.

Ganapathy served as battleground states communications director for the Sanders’s campaign. He also played a role in launching the American Civil Liberty Union’s People Power volunteer-organizing initiative, as well as headed the communications office for DNC Deputy Chair Keith Ellison during his tenure.

Casca worked as Sanders’s rapid response director. He also served as communications director for New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. Prior to that, he was a press intern – eventually working up to communication director for Ellison.

“We're doing this because the consultant class is a big part of what's so broken within the Democratic Party, and it's due for a competitive primary," Casca and Ganapathy said in an email interview with political publication The Hill. "For too long, even left-leaning consultants have been happy to build big business empires with cash from huge corporate clients, even those that profited from the destruction of our planet. That needs to end."

MVMT Communications is currently engaged in talks with potential clients who will be carefully vetted before being taken on. This will ensure that the firm maintain its moral and ethical grounding.

“Say you’re a teacher running for office somewhere in this country, you actually can have consultants that won’t fleece you, that are actually aligned with your values,” Ganapathy said in an interview with politics and pop culture publication The Daily Beast. “That aren’t going to try to change your mind on specific issues and that’ll help you get your message out without compromising your message or your ideological integrity.” 

“Taking fossil fuel money, not being for Medicare for All, not being for $15 minimum wage. We’ll have to take it by situation,” Casca added in the same interview. “But the truth is we’re going to have a really high bar for the kind of folks we want to push. We are not afraid of the longshot, two percent, isn’t going to ever win, no one knows who they are. We’re not in this to rack up tons and tons of notches in our belt. We’re in this to make change.” 

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