If you're thinking about running for office, you probably don't yet know how much you'll need to raise, who should be on your finance committee, or what FEC compliance actually requires of a fresh candidate. Shawn has spent more than twenty years getting candidates through exactly that moment.

Shawn has worked on Democratic campaigns since 2004, at every level from City Council to U.S. Senate. He oversaw the call time program that raised the majority of Robin Carnahan's U.S. Senate campaign — managing staff, coordinating with national consultants, and running the operation day to day. He led the major donor and donor prospecting programs for Jay Nixon's gubernatorial campaign, where he routinely staffed the candidate. And he built the fundraising operation for Jason Kander's Secretary of State campaign that outraised three Republican opponents combined, outraised incumbent statewide Democrats, and gave the campaign the resources it needed to win.

He has staffed and led events headlining President Barack Obama (twice), Vice President Joe Biden (twice), cabinet secretaries, senators, and other dignitaries — including the 2008 Missouri gubernatorial inauguration. He knows FEC regulations and NGP cold.

Shawn specializes in working with fresh candidates, competitive primaries, and red-to-blue districts.

Tommy is the firm's lead on donor research and network analysis. While Shawn runs the call time operation, Tommy builds the intelligence that makes it work — finding the donors who matter most for each specific candidate.

His research goes well beyond pulling FEC giving history. For every campaign, Tommy maps the candidate's and finance committee's networks against nonprofit boards, alumni associations, philanthropic giving records, and political contribution patterns. The goal is to find the donors who are most likely to give — not just because they've given before, but because they have a genuine reason to support this candidate. Capacity, propensity, and connection, all together.

This is the work that, at most consulting firms, gets handed to a junior researcher with a database subscription. At Borich Hernandez Solutions, Tommy does it personally for every client.

Before turning to research, Tommy spent more than a decade in field operations. During the 2012 cycle he ran the Kansas City headquarters of Claire McCaskill's U.S. Senate campaign, where his volunteer recruitment program set national records. He's worked gubernatorial, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, mayoral, and presidential campaigns across New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Missouri, and Nebraska. That campaign-operations background informs his research approach today — he understands what it takes to convert a researched donor into a closed pledge.