A Conversation with Legendary Political Strategist Hank Sheinkopf

    This past week, I reunited with my dear friend Hank Sheinkopf who spoke at the Metropolitan Republican Club on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  Legendary NY political strategist (and President of Sheinkopf Communications) Hank Sheinkopf has worked on an estimated 700 political campaigns on 4 continents, in 14 foreign nations and 44 American states over the last 35 years. His political clients have included former US President Bill Clinton, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Leonel Fernandez, former President of the Dominican Republic, and former President of Mexico Vicente Fox.

    Dr. Sheinkopf’s opinions are widely sought by media outlets nationally and internationally, in which he has been featured in The New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Australian Financial Review, ABC World News Tonight, CBS, NBC Nightly News , Fox News and has been cited in at least 30 books written about international and domestic politics. Additionally, media outlets throughout the globe regularly seek Sheinkopf’s opinion on political events internationally. He has been a CNN paid contributor, and has appeared and been interviewed on the Fox News Channel, CBS Nightly News, BBC radio and television, Reuters news service, and other national and international news programming. Recently, MSNBC featured Sheinkopf in its groundbreaking “Drain the Swamp” series.

   Hank has also served private-sector corporate clients in many industries including: real estate development and investment; insurance; education; banking; construction; transportation; medicine; adult care facilities; entertainment; sports, and others.  The holder of many earned academic degrees—BA, MA, MPhil, PhD—Sheinkopf has taught and/or lectured at New York University, Fordham University, Brooklyn College, Baruch College, and Harvard. He is a widely sought after speaker. Sheinkopf maintains a robust public relations and crisis management practice with offices in New York City. He has routinely been listed as one of New York’s most powerful figures. As I spoke to Hank at the Met Club, I asked him a series of questions and gained some valuable insight as to where he feels we are holding now with the upcoming elections less than 2 weeks away.

    It has been almost a year since the election of Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of NYC. What do you see as a viable road ahead for the Republicans that are currently running if they want to get elected to office in New York?

    It has to be a youth-based action, you don’t have two parties running here in NYC. What you have are these dynamic women that are running for office here in NYC as Republicans and some people who are running in the outer boroughs as Republicans and the only way that you can get organized is if you get more young people who are voting, registering as Republicans and finding a reason to engage as Republicans. If they don’t then this will continue and you need an opposition that is very well organized. The DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) are very good at this and the thing that we must do is stop them from growing into the State Legislation. You are not going to get rid of the people they have but you can stop them from growing more and I think that it requires a bipartisan coalition.

    We have seen antisemitism grow under Mamdani, would you agree that this is a troubling theme that we must mention and invoke in this upcoming election?

    I believe that we can’t think of it as antisemitism only; anti-Catholicism has increased exponentially. It is an attack by Islamists that are hiding behind the DSA against the other Abrahamic Religions and it is to be expected. If you look at the history of the Middle East and Africa, what you see is violence against non-Muslims as part of the cultural activity that happens on a daily basis. So why is anyone surprised? If we don’t take action and start organizing ourselves then we will turn out like Paris and Milan.

  We saw the hypocrisy of French President Emmanuel Macron who urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to show restraint when Israel was brutally attacked on October 7th. What are both he and the French thinking now?

    Macron has acted as a fool and the French have historically acted as idiots so what do you expect? You cannot tell people who have dominated the population of Marseilles for an extraordinary amount of time (which is the Arabs) what to do when you have given them authority. When you tell them that their only Western ally in the Middle East is going to be rejected, you are essentially telling them that this is ok and then what do you think is going to happen? You also have a Country that is in real trouble. France spends more money on education per capita and gets less of a return than any other Country in the World.

What are your last words of advice moving ahead?

We have to organize and understand that guys like me, people who have fought the wars, patrolled the streets (cops, soldiers and my generation of people) are going to be gone. That’s the nature of the World. If you don’t start as young people to recreate the two party system in this Country the what you will have is a disaster.