Mark Mellman, who dominated Democratic political polling for four decades and who used his prominence to speak out in defense of Israel even as elements of his party were turning against it, died on Thursday in Washington. He was 70.
His wife, Mindy Horowitz, said his death, at a hospice, was from pancreatic cancer.
Mr. Mellman burst onto the political consulting scene in 1982 while still a graduate student in political science at Yale.
An unknown, untested candidate for Congress, Bruce Morrison, had hired him to run polling for his bare-bones primary campaign to represent Connecticut’s Third District, encompassing the New Haven area, in the House. Not only did he help Mr. Morrison defeat the party-endorsed Democratic candidate, Stephen Wareck, but his polling insights helped Mr. Morrison narrowly defeat the Republican incumbent, Larry DeNardis, that fall.
“We won, it was a big upset — and the phone started ringing,” Mr. Mellman told The Baltimore Jewish Times in 2014.
Over the next decade, he established himself as a polling wizard, able to tease out crucial insights to shape his clients’ messaging. Over the course of his career he helped 30 senators, 12 governors and dozens of members of Congress win races.
His highest-profile race was in 2004, when he was chief pollster for Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts in his campaign for president against George W. Bush.
Mr. Mellman spent about half his time on political races; the rest he spent polling for corporate and issue-oriented clients, tasks that often had him working alongside Republican consultants.
“He was fierce to go up against,” Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster, said in an interview. “But he was a joy to work with on bipartisan projects.”
In contrast to the image of the political consultant as a hired gun willing to work for anyone, Mr. Mellman insisted that he and his firm, the Mellman Group, work only for people and causes he believed in.
“We need to like them on a personal basis and agree with them on a political basis,” he told The Baltimore Jewish Times. In one case, he said, a member of Congress “called me several weeks ago — a leading anti-choice, anti-gun-control advocate. But he was too far from where we are, and we told him no.”
Among his dearest causes was Israel. Mr. Mellman worked frequently with the advocacy group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and he was an early consultant for Yair Lapid, an Israeli centrist politician who served as prime minister in 2022 and is now the leader of the opposition in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.
As a growing number of Democrats grew critical of Israeli policies, Mr. Mellman pushed back. In 2019, he founded the Democratic Majority for Israel, which worked on behalf of pro-Israel candidates.
“He took a real professional risk starting D.M.F.I.,” Kenneth Baer, the founder of Crosscuts Strategies, a communications consulting firm, and a longtime Democratic strategist, said in an email. “He stepped up where no one else did and created an organization that has made a meaningful difference for the longstanding, pro-Israel wing of the Democratic Party.”
Mr. Mellman helped clients tailor their pro-Israel positions and respond to shifting criticisms of Israel by some Democrats. He played a key role in the primary defeats of two prominent members of Congress in 2024, Cori Bush of Missouri and Jamaal Bowman of New York, both of whom were highly critical of Israeli policies.
“We’re not interested in defeating people who are progressive,” Mr. Mellman told The Hill in 2024. “We’re not interested in defeating people who are pro-Palestinian; we’re interested in defeating people who are anti-Israel.”
Mark Steven Mellman was born on Sept. 13, 1955, in Hampton, Va., where his father, Carl, was stationed as a captain in the Air Force. The family later moved to Columbus, Ohio, where his father practiced law.
His mother, Sylvia (Shapiro) Mellman, worked for Hadassah, the Jewish women’s organization, and eventually sat on its national board.
Mr. Mellman graduated with a degree in politics from Princeton in 1978, having taken an extra year because he was also working as executive director of the Committee of Concerned Scientists, a human rights group.
He received a master’s degree in political science from Yale but left before completing his doctorate.
While in graduate school, he met Ms. Horowitz, who was then a doctoral student in music history. They married in 1988.
Along with her, Mr. Mellman is survived by their children, Yedeedya Mellman, Aryeh Mellman and Mira Mellman Shapiro; his sister, Randi Oze; and five grandchildren.
Having spent much of his career working both with and against conservative political consultants, in recent years, Mr. Mellman despaired over the bitter partisanship that he said had settled over American politics, even as he remained insistent that the blame lay with the Republican Party.
“I’ve never been a conservative. But we desperately need a real conservative party in this country,” he said in an interview with Salon this year. “We don’t need a radical, right-wing, revolutionary, authoritarian party. That’s what today’s Republican Party has become by following Donald Trump.”
Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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