The Reality

Playwriting led to speechwriting, which led into more general communications strategy – with a focus on new media.

During most of his time in politics, he was Director of Strategic Communications with Advomatic, LLC. More on that is here. Founded by Howard Dean for President alumni, Advomatic clients include labor unions, progressive organizations and candidates ranging from city council to U.S. President.

Most past projects are acronyms: ACLU, UNITE-HERE, SEIU, PFAW, NRDC, UFT, Sony BMG, as well as Progress Now, The Courage Campaign, Empire State Pride Agenda, New York State Senate, Students for a Free Tibet, New York Observer, and many more.

Gooltz pioneered using online social networks to conduct volunteer recruitment and political coordination in 2003. He presented his research and strategy innovations at PoliTech conferences across the country. His research appeared in journals such as “Person to Person: Harnessing The Political Power of Online Social Networks and User-Generated Content”, Institute for Politics Democracy & The Internet —George Washington University. His original tactics have been reviewed by MacArthur Foundation Reports, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Wired, and more.

Early Political Work

Fred’s online politicking started in a small race in New York where testing some actor-network theory and social networking theories, Fred closed-out and helped win the City Council President race for a long-shot progressive reformer using Facebook, MySpace and MiGente to aid campaign departments.

Some of his early PoliTech political organizing innovations were reviewed at personal democracy forum and at network-centric advocacy.

Several election cycles of experimentation and refinement later, a decentralized team-based network organizing model, powered by internet tools, was famously adopted by the Barack Obama campaign. It worked okay.