David Sawyer

David H. Sawyer, a pioneer in the field of political consulting that burgeoned in the 1970's and 1980's as party machines lost their clout in choosing electoral candidates, died in July 1995 in New York Hospital. He was 59 and lived in Manhattan. He had been under treatment for several weeks for a brain tumor, his family said. By 1988, Mr. Sawyer's clients included four Senators, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, John D. Rockefeller 4th, Edward M. Kennedy and John Glenn, six Governors as well as leading politicians in the Philippines and Israel. One notable turnaround engineered by his firm, D. H. Sawyer & Associates (later the Sawyer-Miller Group) was in the 1987 gubernatorial primary in Kentucky, where his client, Wallace Wilkinson, started out with about 5 percent in the polls and went on to win against two strong contenders. Mr. Sawyer based his strategy then and later on polling studies of the electorate. In the case of Kentucky voters, both major opponents of Mr. Wilkinson had advocated tax increases and attacked each other bitterly. In place of higher taxes, the Sawyer-Wilkinson strategy advocated a state lottery. In a 1984 interview for the Inc. Publishing Company, Mr. Sawyer defined his work this way: "I don't manipulate voters, because I can't -- they're too sophisticated. I'm much more interested in the nature of communication itself. How do you create a dialogue with the electorate? How do you control the dynamic of the campaign? Set the agenda for discussion? Answer an opponent's charges? Those are my issues. You have to get way inside a campaign before you can resolve them, too." A Democrat, Mr. Sawyer worked only for Democratic candidates, but he had no problem dispensing advice to big corporate clients, including Coca-Cola, Apple Computer, Goldman Sachs, Time Warner and Resorts International. Colleagues, headed by Scott Miller, bought out Mr. Sawyer's ownership interest in his firm, which had a staff of 40, in 1993. In that same year he opened a political-economic consulting firm called the G.7 Group. By this time there were more than 200 political consulting firms across the country and more than 3,000 people working in the field. David Haskell Sawyer was born June 13, 1936, in Boston. After earning a bachelor of arts degree at Princeton University in 1959, he made documentary films, working in the cinema verite genre with Frederick Wiseman and Richard Leacock. One film dealt with rural poverty in Maine. Another feature, "Other Voices," about mental health patients, was nominated in 1970 for an Academy Award for best documentary. He was drawn into political consulting in the early 1970's in Illinois, where he did some film work for an elected official. He is survived by his wife, the former Nell Michel; a son, Luke, and two stepsons, Andrew and Gavin McFarland, all of New York; his mother, Mrs. Edward Brewer of Hartford; a brother, Edward of Cleveland, and a sister, Penny Sawyer, of New York.