Doug Bailey

His consulting firm, Bailey Deardourff & Associates, which he started in 1967 with a fellow political hand, John Deardourff, worked mainly for moderate Republican candidates like Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York, Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York and Senator Charles H. Percy of Illinois. At one point in the late 1970s, the firm had 11 of the country’s 19 Republican governors as clients. Mr. Bailey, who had grown dismayed by the polarization of national campaigns in the 1980s, started The Hotline in 1987 partly as an experiment in bipartisanship, he said. With the Democratic strategist Roger Craver as his partner, he sought to expose the professional political class to a broad range of issues across the ideological spectrum. The Hotline, which was bought by The National Journal in 1996 and is part of its Web site, became a training ground for political reporters, including Chuck Todd of NBC and Norah O’Donnell of CBS. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University, Mr. Bailey received his master’s and doctorate degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts. Besides his daughter, Mr. Bailey is survived by his wife, Patricia, a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission from 1979 to 1988; his son, Ed; two brothers, Robert and Richard; and a grandson. In 1999, again with Mr. Craver, Mr. Bailey founded the Freedom Channel, which offers politically oriented video online on demand. In 2006, Mr. Bailey joined with the Democratic political consultants Hamilton Jordan and Gerald Rafshoon in founding a political reform organization, Unity08. It suspended its activities in 2008 after a failed effort to draft Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York to run for president.