Robert Squier; Consultant Helped Shape Use of Media in Political Campaigns

Robert Squier, one of the most successful media consultants in American politics, died Monday of colon cancer at his Virginia home. He was 65.

From Hubert Humphrey to Bill Clinton, with dozens of Democratic presidential, gubernatorial and congressional wins in between, Squier helped shape the look, feel and outcome of elections for 30 years, largely by pioneering techniques for television commercials that now are widely used.

“In the entertainment business you count by how many Oscars you get. In baseball you count by home runs. Politics is a business where you count by the number of wins, and by that measure . . . it’s not even close. He’s the winningest political consultant ever,” said Democratic consultant James Carville. “He was the Hank Aaron of American politics.”

President Clinton, who along with Vice President Al Gore relied on Squier in the 1996 campaign, said, “I owe him much.

“Throughout the course of his career, Bob was a pioneer in the art of political communications,” Clinton said. “Bob helped make policy and politics understandable and exciting for millions of Americans.”

Squier was remembered as a witty man who loved the game of politics. The fact that he died on the day of the Iowa caucus, the first major joust of the 2000 presidential campaign, was seen as fitting.

“The irony of him dying today is unbelievable,” said Bill Carrick, a Santa Monica-based Democratic media consultant who knew Squier for more than 25 years. “He probably would have loved the fact that there are going to be more reporters gathered together in one place tonight telling stories about him than he ever thought possible.”

An accomplished filmmaker who had recently completed a documentary on Herman Melville, Squier was known for filming his own television commercials, which few other consultants do. It was Squier who first got candidates out of the TV studio, former colleagues recalled, instead filming “slice of life” ads in then-novel settings like public schools and farm fields.

He also was an aggressive “attack ad” man when necessary. But he carefully documented everything in a commercial, colleagues said, for instance relying on newspaper headlines and quotes before it became the norm.

Born in Brainerd, Minn., on Sept. 21, 1934, Squier was raised in Minneapolis. He graduated from the University of Minnesota and Boston University with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communications, spent two years in the Army, then worked for an Austin, Texas, television station, producing a documentary on President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 1968, he was asked to help Johnson in his reelection bid, but moved to the Humphrey campaign when Johnson bowed out of the race. For the next three decades, Squier exercised his trademark style for everyone from Jimmy Carter to a Virginia Indian tribe he admired greatly. He worked in the Gore campaign last year, but stepped aside when a new campaign staff headed by Carter Eskew was brought in. He was diagnosed as having cancer last fall.

Squier was “a wonderful friend to our family for many years, and one of the most talented and dedicated advisors the Democratic Party has ever had,” said Gore on Monday.

Mark McKinnon, chief media advisor for Republican George W. Bush, worked with Squier in 1990 on Ann Richards’ run for Texas governor.

While waiting for Iowa caucus returns in Des Moines on Monday, McKinnon called Squier “a pioneer and a godfather in Democratic media circles. Nobody endured as long or won as much.”

“Bob Squier invented much of what we think of as the modern day political campaign,” Carrick said Monday. “He was doing political campaigns when Lee Atwater [the late Republican Party strategist] was playing in a sandbox in South Carolina.”

Squier is survived by his wife, Prudence, and two sons. One of them, Mark, is also a successful political media consultant.

Times staff writer Maria La Ganga contributed to this story from Iowa.