Paul Tewes is a Democratic

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 strategist specializing in national political organizing in the United States.

Tewes was the Iowa

Iowa

Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...

 state director for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and continued after the Iowa caucus to lead Obama's field operations in key states such as Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania. According to the Huffington Post, Tewes "is widely regarded among the very most talented of political organizers in the nation," and was "largely responsible for Obama's surprise win in Iowa".

Life and career

In 1994 Tewes was a field director for Ann Wynia

Ann Wynia

Ann Wynia is a former member of the Minnesota House of Representatives and former president of North Hennepin Community College.-Early life and education:...

's US Senate Campaign in Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

. The following election cycle, in 1996, he was Campaign Manager of Congressman David Minge

David Minge

David R. Minge is an American Judge and former political figure. David Minge currently serves as a Judge on the Minnesota Court of Appeals...

's successful re-election bid to Minnesota's Second Congressional District. Then, in 1998, Tewes ran the successful re-election campaign of Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold

Russ Feingold

Russell Dana "Russ" Feingold is an American politician from the U.S. state of Wisconsin. He served as a Democratic party member of the U.S. Senate from 1993 to 2011. From 1983 to 1993, Feingold was a Wisconsin State Senator representing the 27th District.He is a recipient of the John F...

. In 2000, Tewes was Al Gore

Al Gore

Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....

's Iowa State Caucus director. From 2001-2004, he worked for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), where he was the National Coordinated Campaign Director for the 2002 election cycle and the Political Director for the 2004 cycle.
In 2005 Tewes partnered with Steve Hildebrand

Steve Hildebrand

Steve Hildebrand is a Democratic political strategist based out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He was the deputy national campaign director of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.-Biography:Hildebrand grew up in Mitchell, South Dakota....

 to form Hildebrand Tewes Consulting, a political campaign consulting firm with offices in Washington D.C. and Sioux Falls. In early 2007 Tewes and Hildebrand took a leave of absence from day-to-day operations of the firm to work for the Obama campaign--Hildebrand was Obama's Deputy Campaign Manager.

Shortly after Barack Obama clinched the nomination of the Democratic Party for president, it was reported that Obama would send Tewes to the Democratic National Committee

Democratic National Committee

The Democratic National Committee is the principal organization governing the United States Democratic Party on a day to day basis. While it is responsible for overseeing the process of writing a platform every four years, the DNC's central focus is on campaign and political activity in support...

 (DNC) to overhaul the organization and help oversee fundraising. Howard Dean

Howard Dean

Howard Brush Dean III is an American politician and physician from Vermont. He served six terms as the 79th Governor of Vermont and ran unsuccessfully for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. He was chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009. Although his U.S...

 stayed on as DNC chairman.

In 2009, Tewes started a new consulting firm called New Partners.

Tewes is a 1993 graduate of Carleton College

Carleton College

Carleton College is an independent non-sectarian, coeducational, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, USA. The college enrolls 1,958 undergraduate students, and employs 198 full-time faculty members. In 2012 U.S...

 in Northfield, Minnesota

Northfield, Minnesota

As of the census of 2000, there were 17,147 people, 4,909 households, and 3,210 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,452.2 people per square mile . There were 5,119 housing units at an average density of 732.1 per square mile...

.