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I lived in a fallout shelter with Matthew Dowd for a year-and-a-half.
In the spring of 1999, Mark McKinnon assembled the media team to make ads for the 2000 Bush presidential campaign. The Bush campaign had headquarters in an office building in downtown Austin, but Mark moved our little team into an old fallout shelter that was attached to a video post-production house. Of course, we called it “the Bunker.”
Mark and Matthew knew each other from Texas Democratic politics. Both had worked for successful Democratic statewide candidates back when Democrats dominated Texas politics. Matthew had started as a driver for Senator Lloyd Benson, and Mark ran Governor Ann Richards' press operation. Both were close to the longtime Democratic powerbroker, Lt. Governor Bob Bullock. When George W. Bush was elected governor in 1994, he shrewdly enlisted Bullock as an ally and mentor in a genuine bipartisan coalition.
When Governor Bush decided to run for president shortly after his reelection in 1998, he asked Mark to put together the media team for the campaign. That’s how I ended up moving to Austin in April 1999 and stayed through our glorious landslide. Mark brought Matthew in to be part of the team, and he was the de facto CFO of our little group...

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