In the first part of our two-part event, the Program for Public Discourse is joined by Democratic and Republican operatives for a discussion that utilizes the 2020 elections as a window into the broader ways in which Americans talk about politics.

Additionally, we hope to provide students with political insights from the ground level of the campaign trails, so they can better understand the choices campaigns make, along with the strategies behind them.

Read about this event

Brett O’Donnell is a political consultant for the Republican Party and President of O’Donnell & Associates, Ltd, a strategic communication consulting organization. He has served as a message and media strategist for several members of congress and for-profit and non-profit corporations. In the past, he worked on the presidential campaigns of Michelle Bachman, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and George W. Bush. Before becoming a consultant, O’Donnell served as the Director of Debate at Liberty University for 18 years.

B.J. Rudell is a field organizer for the Democratic Party and the former Associate Director of Polis: Center for Politics at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. He has written dozens of political op-eds for publications like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Dallas Morning News and has shared political insight on CNN and Fox News.

Kevin Marinelli is the executive director of the Program for Public Discourse and an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at UNC. He is a rhetorical scholar who previously served as director of the Speaking Center at Davidson College for three years before joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to teach rhetoric in 2019. He has also taught at Young Harris College, the University of Georgia and San Jose State University. He holds a Ph.D. in speech-communication from the University of Georgia and an M.A. in the same subject from San Jose State. He also holds bachelor’s degrees in both communication studies and political science from the College of Charleston.