Swing Strategies and the business of getting to yes

The most revealing word on Swing Strategies’ website is a rowing term. When a crew finds a shared rhythm, the boat acquires what rowers call swing. The firm borrows the idea to explain its work in public affairs. It is a surprisingly useful image for a business whose assignments can involve a pollster, a lawyer, a television producer, a trade association, and a roomful of people who disagree.

Each can be competent. Each can also pull at the wrong moment. The Sacramento consultancy’s proposition is that research, relationships, and advertising should move together. In California, where a company’s plans can become a public argument and a public argument can become a ballot measure, there is a market for that kind of coordination.

Swing serves companies, investors, associations, and campaign committees. Its work includes reputation management, political strategy, coalition building, and advertising. The interesting part is the connection between them: how an organization moves from knowing what it wants to explaining why anyone else should want it too.

The number with a condition attached

Swing advertises an 88% win rate across 33 statewide initiatives in five states. That is a company-reported record, and it deserves to be read alongside the principle on the same page: research is used to judge whether a campaign is viable. The firm says it will not spend a client’s resources on a losing proposition.

That condition changes the meaning of the number. A win rate can reflect execution, the choice of assignments, the strength of clients’ positions, and the political environment. It cannot, by itself, tell a prospective client which of those factors did the work. The useful question is what evidence would justify taking the next campaign on.

The firm’s ballot-measure practice combines repeat surveys, voter modeling, direct mail, television, and coalition work. It also reports a database of more than 5,000 California organizations. That is a distinctive business asset: an advertising operation whose preparation includes knowing which institutions might give an argument a hearing.

The people between the poll and the camera

Founder and CEO Tom Ross brings a political career stretching back more than three decades. His biography describes ballot-measure work dating to 1996, including redistricting, open primaries, and tax fights. Those dates describe his experience; they also help explain why clients might buy his judgment before they buy a piece of creative work.

President Tino Rossi’s biography emphasizes coalition building and stakeholder engagement. It lists successful campaign efforts involving eight California propositions from 2018 through 2024. His described relationships span business, healthcare, faith organizations, public safety, and other constituencies. The practical task is finding shared interests among groups with different reasons for participating.

Then comes the person who has to make the argument fit in an advertisement. Chief Strategy Officer Josiah Keane works across direct mail, radio, digital, and television. His biography describes both survey analysis and writing and production, and credits him with dozens of Pollie Awards. The combination matters: the person shaping the message has experience with the evidence behind it and the constraints of the finished format.

Swing’s advertising service covers concept through execution across those channels and social media. A business can therefore hire the firm for both an argument and its production. That arrangement gives strategy a shorter trip to the camera, the mailbox, or the screen.

Who needs this much persuasion?

The customer list makes the business easier to understand. Public testimonials include the California Medical Association, Global Medical Response, the California Hotel & Lodging Association, and Western National Property Management. A former Disney communications executive describes a long working relationship with Ross and the team. These organizations operate in different markets, but all can face decisions influenced by public opinion.

The medical association’s CEO credits Swing with work including Proposition 35. A Global Medical Response executive points to Proposition 11. These are client endorsements published by the firm, rather than independent measures of its contribution. They do, however, identify the kind of buyer: an organization with a specific policy stake and a reason to reach beyond its usual customers or members.

“When you hire the team at Swing Strategies, it’s a relationship that is built to last.”

Wendy Hales · Client testimonial published by Swing

In market terms, Swing occupies the overlap between political consulting and public relations. California Strategies offers an alternative with overlapping campaign and public affairs services. A specialized advertising shop can handle a narrower production assignment. Swing’s pitch is the combined engagement: research, strategic leadership, public communication, and the people needed to carry it.

A victory has more than one author

California’s Proposition 36 provides a concrete example. In 2024, the measure received 68.4% of the vote. Swing identifies it among the campaigns its team worked on, and Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman credits the firm’s role in a testimonial.

The wider campaign had substantial resources. CalMatters reported around election time that supporters had raised about $17 million and opponents about $7.7 million. Those figures describe campaign fundraising, not Swing’s fees. The reporting also described strong pre-election support and a campaign drawing on concern about theft and drugs. The result belongs to that larger setting, as well as to the organizations and people working inside it.

For a buyer, this is a useful distinction. An election offers a wonderfully clear outcome. It offers a much less tidy answer to how much credit each participant deserves. A sensible review asks what the firm actually delivered and how those deliverables matched the assignment.

The hotel that voters turned down

The public record also contains a less celebratory example. In 2023, the committee supporting the Cheval Blanc hotel proposal in Beverly Hills reported payments to Swing Strategies. Voters subsequently rejected the proposal, and LVMH said it would scrap the plans. The hotel would have had 109 rooms; it had already passed through the city’s approval process.

The committee’s amended filing for January 1 through April 8 records a $30,000 consulting payment to Swing and, separately, a $30,000 unpaid consulting bill. Other payments refer to vendor schedules. This is evidence of paid professional services and campaign execution, with accounting distinctions that matter. Adding every line bearing a consultant’s name and calling the sum its fee would blur those distinctions.

The revealing sequence is approval, referendum, rejection, withdrawal. Official permission had not settled the argument with the electorate. The outcome illustrates a limit of the whole public affairs business: when the underlying proposal fails to win public acceptance, access and campaign activity cannot guarantee the desired result.

The part worth borrowing

Swing calls its process the Swing Cycle: research, strategy, road map, advocacy, and analysis. The final stage feeds back into the first. A client could reasonably use those stages as an agenda for assessing an engagement: what is known, what is planned, who is responsible, and what evidence would prompt a revision?

The lesson I would borrow is the willingness to revise before the expensive parts harden. A budget, a production schedule, and a set of public commitments can make an early assumption awkward to revisit. Building review into the assignment gives people a place to challenge it. That is an interpretation of the process, not evidence that every Swing engagement follows the same path.

There is also a way to encounter the firm before commissioning a campaign. Swing publishes initiative updates, runs briefings, and offers access to ballot tracking and past webinar presentations. Its June 2026 preview highlighted a redesigned website with those resources. The work begins with understanding what may become an issue.

For an association preparing its members, or a company considering a public-facing project, that is a useful starting point. The rowing metaphor eventually comes back into view. Before asking everyone to pull harder, establish where the boat is supposed to go - and whether the people aboard agree.